A system and method are presented for a multiclass approach for confidence modeling in automatic speech recognition systems. A confidence model may be trained offline using supervised learning. A decoding module is utilized within the system that generates features for audio files in audio data. The features are used to generate a hypothesized segment of speech which is compared to a known segment of speech using edit distances. Comparisons are labeled from one of a plurality of output classes. The labels correspond to the degree to which speech is converted to text correctly or not. The trained confidence models can be applied in a variety of systems, including interactive voice response systems, keyword spotters, and open-ended dialog systems.