# Topics

A topic enables you to boost the recognition of a specific business issue by telling SpeechMiner what phrases to look for. For example, if you want to identify interactions in which the customer wishes to cancel an account, you could create a topic named Cancellation with the following phrases:

- "Close out my account"
- "I need to cancel"

More specifically, topics are a collection of phrases defined globally for the SpeechMiner system, and included in one or more programs as required. When a topic is included in a program, SpeechMiner searches for all of the phrases included in the topic's definition, in all the interactions associated with the Program. When one of the phrases is found, SpeechMiner identifies it as a linguistic event and registers the topic as found at a specific time during the interaction.

Each linguistic event identified by SpeechMiner in an interaction has a start time, an end time, a name, and a type. For example, if a topic called "Loan Offer" is identified by the phrase "can offer you a loan," the start time is when the agent began saying "can," the end time is when the agent finished saying "loan," the name is "Loan Offer," and the type of event is "Topic."

Although a topic can contain one phrase, the more phrases you add the more useful the topic.

Once a topic is created you can always make modifications based on the accuracy of the results the topic is achieving.

#### Related Topics

Introducing the Topic Interface
Create a Topic
Auditing a Topic
Programs