Technologies for improved keyword spotting are disclosed. A compute device may capture speech data from a user of the compute device, and perform automatic speech recognition on the captured speech data. The automatic speech recognition algorithm is configured to both spot keywords as well as provide a full transcription of the captured speech data. The automatic speech recognition algorithm may preferentially match the keywords compared to similar words. The recognized keywords may be used to improve parsing of the transcribed speech data or to improve an assistive agent in holding a dialog with a user of the compute device.