Top Ten Reasons to Record Agent Screen Activity

Author: Kevin B. Levi, November 19, 2018

Call recording systems have been around for decades and their utility is proven. The same goes for agent screen recording systems, although you may not know it. Many organizations which have deployed call recording have yet to deploy screen recording, and in not doing so, they are really only capturing half of the customer interaction, as much of the agent activity happens on screen.

Since your call center agents are on the front lines in terms of interacting with your customers, you want to be able to monitor how well your agents are servicing their needs. When your agents are on the phone with your customers, they should be serving their needs quickly and effectively, by swiftly and accurately navigating the necessary screens on their desktop to access and input customer data, find product/service information, etc. Sometimes, however, these screens or workflows can be interrupted by navigational problems (by the agent or the system) or application glitches (not the agent’s fault). Other times, unfortunately, agents may engage in unauthorized or even illegal activity on their screens. With screen recording software, you can monitor these workflows and actions to identify any system or agent issues and remedy them at once. These remedies can translate into substantial time and cost savings as well as risk mitigation for your contact center and enterprise.

Here are the top 10 reasons to record agent screen activity during customer interactions:

  1. Identify application or system breakdowns that affect agent screen navigation and overall performance and productivity
  2. Discover areas to improve agent efficiency through additional skills training (for example, increasing proficiency with certain applications or workflows)
  3. Uncover unauthorized personal activity by agents (for example, checking their own Facebook or playing Solitaire during a customer interaction)
  4. Identify PCI, HIPAA or GDPR compliance issues upon data entry (such as the agent’s screen erroneously displaying the credit card information upon entry when it’s supposed to be masked).
  5. Record best-practice agent screen performance to share with under-performing agents
  6. Record worst-practice agent screen performance to share with newer agents to help them avoid similar mistakes
  7. Gain a comprehensive view of customer interactions as they occurred
  8. Prove compliance to regulators by sharing the full interaction – audio and screen video – in order to avoid costly penalties
  9. Identify any fraudulent behavior by an agent
  10. See all of the promises and/or commitments agents make to customers

Agent screen recording solutions today can capture full motion video of the agent’s desktop throughout the entire customer interaction. This recording synchronized upon playback with the corresponding agent and customer audio recording) gives supervisors and managers a clear, 360-degree view of exactly what transpired during a given customer interaction.

For ease of retrieval, recordings (screen and audio) can be identified and accessed by date, user name, agent, phone number, and so on. These same recordings can be shared and viewed in industry-standard MPEG4 format and played or viewed on any desktop or capable mobile device.

Lisa Powell Fortna

lisa-fortna2

Lisa Powel Fortna is a senior professional with over 20 years of experience in human resources and project management. Her experience covers multiple industries including financial services, manufacturing, retail management, health and human services, telecommunications and government agencies. Lisa’s focus has been on large transformative human resources and technology initiatives and she has led the design and delivery of multiple projects and programs to improve processes, build organizational capabilities and enhance business results in complex environments. She has also supported organizations in compensation design and analysis, instructional design and delivery and performance and talent management initiatives. Lisa’s key competencies are aligning and implementing organizational processes and structure to improve business results.

Key Competencies:

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  • Program & Project Management
  • Process Analysis & Redesign
  • Performance & Talent Management
  • Career Coaching & Counseling
  • Organizational Design & Development
  • Instructional Design & Delivery
  • Change Management
  • Compensation Analysis

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Lisa has a B.S in Managerial Economics from Cornell University, M.S. in Organizational Dynamics from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.S. in Adult Education from Buffalo State College.

Jim Lovvorn

Jim LovvornJim Lovvorn brings more than 25 years of contact center operations management experience to the organization. He has proven accomplishments in the area of customer services, sales/marketing, training/personnel, communications and financial results. He has a successful track record in the development and implementation of start-up operations, new initiative launches and pilot programs. Jim has managed large scale work forces in multiple locations including responsibilities for outsource vendor performance.

Jim’s key competencies include the management of all aspects within a contact center for inbound, outbound, eChat and back office processes.

Key Competencies

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  • Contact Center Operations Management
  • Contact Center Organizational Design
  • Contact Center Staffing and Workforce Planning
  • Contact Center Outsource Management
  • Performance Management
  • Strategic Planning
  • Change Management
  • Analytics and Reporting
  • Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP)
  • Quality/Sales Performance Initiatives
  • Consolidation and Reorganization Implementation
  • Call Center Design
  • Team Development
  • Employee Communication

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Some noteworthy positions Jim has held include Director of Call Center Planning and Development, Director of Customer Services, Director of Business Data Support, and Director of Business End User Care for ATT Mobility. For Sheraton Hotels, Jim was the Director of Human Resources Training Development and Director of Reservations. For Eastern Airlines, Jim was a General Manager in Austin, Texas as well as a Regional Training Manager.

Mr. Lovvorn is a graduate of Texas Christian University where he obtained his bachelor degree in Fine Arts and received his MIM degree from the Thunderbird School of Global Management. He and his contact center was the recipient of the JD Powers Award for Customer Service. Jim is Six Sigma certified with White, Yellow and Orange Belts.

Kevin O’Neill

KMO - Head Shot2With a career that spans more than 40 years, Kevin O’Neill is an adeptly skilled call center operations executive with broad industry experience that spans the airline, hotel, car rental, financial services, outsourcing, cable/telecom and health insurance industries. His operational roles have included both customer-facing functions of sales, service, billing and retention, as well as back-office support functions of volume forecasting, workforce planning, and agent scheduling and budgeting.

While his functional area of expertise is in the efficient and effective delivery of operational excellence, his passion lies in the development of management teams and the creation of environments in which the talent already in place can flourish.

Key Competencies

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  • Contact Center Operations Management
  • Contact Center Staffing and Workforce Planning
  • Inbound and Outbound Sales Oversight
  • Customer Service Back Office Functions
  • Customer Interaction Management
  • Performance Management
  • Blended Contact Center Operations
  • Post-merger Contact Center Consolidation

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Some noteworthy positions Kevin has held include Manager of Reservations Operations for American Airlines, Director of Worldwide Reservations for Avis Rent A Car, Vice President of Customer Service for American Express Travelers Cheques, Vice President & General Manager for the Database Research Group, Director of North American Reservations for Best Western Hotels, and most recently, Director of Call Center Operations, Planning and Development for Comcast Cable.

During a period as an independent consultant in call center management, Kevin oversaw the merger of Doubletree Hotels and Guest Quarters Hotels, consulted on the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE (which formed Verizon), instituted a sales incentive program at Budget Rent A Car – U.S. and Canada, and developed a sales training program at InterContinental Hotels. As a consultant for Universal Teleservices Corporation, he was sent to India, where he designed, staffed, and opened one of the country’s first client-based inbound/outbound call centers.

Ann Rybowiak

Ann RybowiakAnn Rybowiak has over 20 years of instructional design experience. Her experience covers corporate training, military and government contracts, and educational institutions. She has worked in a variety of industries such as healthcare, military management, electronics, hardware, software, internet, security, education, auto, and entertainment. She has experience designing for instructor-led courses, Webinars, web-based training, computer-based training, web-based educational games, and offline workbooks.

He also has experience in Human Resources, specifically in the areas of compensation analysis, training, and HRIS.

Ann’s key competencies are creating effective instructional materials and training plans to help clients achieve desired strategic goals.

Key Competencies

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  • Instructional needs assessment
  • Analysis of instructional objectives and needed competencies
  • Subject matter expert relationship management
  • Design and development of instructional materials and courses
  • Editing
  • Website planning and maintenance
  • Project management
  • Training delivery
  • Assessment design

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Ann has a Master’s of Science degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from San Diego State University. Her many contacts in the instructional design field help her stay in touch with developments in the industry. She enjoys spending time at the tennis court and baseball field with her son and husband, in addition to attending at her son’s rock band concerts. She is board member of the Solana Beach Foundation for Learning. Volunteer service is important to her family, and they participate in KidsKorps service activities whenever possible.

You Don’t Build a Church for Easter Sunday: A Good Lesson for Contact Center Capacity Planning

At the time of the Easter holiday, I happen to be working on forecasting and workforce planning and site planning for a new contact center operation and am reminded of a favorite quote from a former client. We were going through an exercise similar to my current project at the time and some of the client’s own staff felt that we were planning on building too small to accommodate their peak season, which is a very short annual window.  “You don’t build a church for Easter Sunday,” she told them.  While I had never heard that before, it fit the situation perfectly.   Just because you have overflowing church parking lots and standing room only Easter services, you don’t overbuild the size of your church. Likewise, you don’t always build your contact center to accommodate your periods of peak volume over time.  This is especially true if those peaks are for short periods of time or represent extreme spikes (double or more) relative to your normal volumes.  While it is important remember peak period needs, it is equally important to consider the cost of space, equipment, and staff that will remain idle under normal operating conditions.

Spring and summer are the times when many customer contact operations experience peak volumes.  The April tax filing deadline means many customers are receiving their refunds, often driving sales of big ticket items like automobiles and home electronics.  The summer travel season typically drives peak volumes for many hospitality providers.

In order to provide good customer service, it is important for any business to be prepared to handle these peak periods.  For a sales operation, it is even more critical because the competition is often just a quick phone call or click away.   Below are nine tips to help you flex up your operation to effectively manage peak periods without wasting cost on over capacity year round:

  1. If your operation has work-at-home capabilities for your agents, consider increasing the number of work-at-home agents and/or expand work-at-home hours and rules during peak periods to provide more seat capacity in your facilities.
  2. Provided you can easily identify call type and route accordingly, hire and train temporary staff to handle the simplest calls.
  3. Offer overtime to your staff.  While it can be costly, it generally costs less than overstaffing year round.
  4. Take advantage of spaces, such as your training rooms, conference rooms or any vacant offices/cubicles, in your site to add extra staff.
  5. Offer customers as many self-service channel options (website, interactive voice response, and any mobile applications) as possible for as many transaction/inquiry types as possible. Be sure to promote channel availability via on-hold message and web and application banners/pop-ups, etc.
  6. If you still have some potential slower or idle time during your peak periods within a given day, offer an automated call back option through your phone system for those customers who prefer the return call over waiting on hold.
  7. Configure your phone system to automatically communicate hold/queue times to your customers on hold, with regular status updates, allowing customers the convenience of planning other productive activities during the hold time.
  8. If your operation does not use assigned seating, consider implementing “hot-seating,” where available agents can take the seat of a agent who is at lunch or on break.  Be sure to thoroughly communicate this arrangement to the staff so as to avoid confusion. Also, ensure there is a mechanism/process in place for returning agents to quickly locate the first available seat so you don’t lose as much capacity as you’re saving.
  9. Consider partnering with an outsource vendor to support overflow during your peak times/seasons.  This is best accomplished by identifying specific contact types for which an agent can be easily trained and the call easily routed.

 

Jan Swanke

JanSwanke2Jan Swanke has more than twenty years of professional experience in customer experience environments with a broad range of career positions in consulting, operations and information technology.  She began her career answering mail in the United Airlines Mileage Plus Program customer service center in Marina Del Ray, California while attending UCLA, and has gone on to spend her entire career in contact center environments, creating software, testing applications and in service delivery operation management positions.   Prior to joining Contact Center 411, Ms. Swanke held leadership positions in enterprise operations, IT and professional services for many companies including United Airlines, MCI, US West, Century Communications, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard and Convergys.

Jan’s primary expertise lies in contact center optimization and improving the customer experience.  Jan has an extensive background in managing a variety of project types including operational design, business process reengineering, technical and contact center assessments, vendor assessments, as well as authoring and designing corporate contracts and legal documents.   She has been consulting for more than seven years in a broad spectrum of industries including healthcare, financial services, cable and telecommunications, and business services.  Her operational experience includes managing inbound, outbound, blended centers in the corporate domain.

Key Competencies

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  • Service Delivery Model Development and Roadmap Execution
  • Contact Center Optimization Assessments – Technology, Process, Operations, HR, Customer Satisfaction
  • Contact Center Operations Management
  • Business Requirements Development and Facilitation
  • Contact Center Organization Design
  • Contact Routing Design & Multi-channel Service Delivery Strategies
  • Process Reengineering
  • Technology Development and Deployment

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Jan has led projects through all phases: business requirements, design, test cases and test plan execution and deployment. She has also built and managed centers from inception, and performed as interim leadership during organizational redesign transitions.

Jan also has extensive experience in application development assessment for new technologies, including both off-the-shelf and custom-developed applications. She has defined and managed the delivery of contact center desktop applications, voice technologies, knowledge base software, and intelligent contact routing technologies.

She is also an active member of the fine arts community in Orlando and Tampa Bay, teaching drawing and supporting local art programs.  She participates in community career development programs as a speaker and mentor, and is a principal fund raiser for the Multiple Sclerosis Bike MS charity drive each year.

Steve Saniuk

 

Saniuk - Photo - Jan 2014

With 30 years of experience managing large, complex global teams, Steve Saniuk is a veteran of management and management consulting. Steve has implemented world-class management systems and best-practice processes for organizations around the world. Throughout his career, Steve has shown a consistent ability to identify root cause issues and evolve management discipline, organizational effectiveness and performance management systems. As both a manager of business and most recently as a management consultant, Mr. Saniuk has achieved significant results and driven sustained operational improvements, in part through his natural ability to form strong relationships with business stakeholders ranging from frontline Supervisors to C-Level Officers.

Particularly unique is Steve’s depth of experience in driving operational improvements through process reengineering initiatives, while implementing sound management systems and providing effective management training and feedback to frontline leaders and middle management. Results have streamlined organizations and their decision making processes, rapidly evolved the effectiveness of frontline leaders, instilled accountability within organizations and better aligned operational areas of companies with business goals. Having overseen the creation of multi-site, internal support organizations, Steve is a leading subject matter expert regarding optimization from a 360 degree perspective (people, process, applications and technology). Mr. Saniuk brings rapid, yet meaningful results that nearly every organization needs to fine tune its operation.

Key Competencies

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  • Contact Center Optimization
  • Operational Assessments
  • Process and Performance Improvement
  • IVR assessment and design / Customer-self service
  • Technical Infrastructure and Technology Design and Implementation
  • Business Requirements Development and Facilitation
  • Multi-channel Service Delivery
  • Process Reengineering
  • Strategy Development and Execution
  • Change Management

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Steve has provided leadership for clients in driving positive improvement, quite often by optimizing existing technology in coordination with management and process improvements. Many clients have seen dramatic improvements in efficiency and cost with their existing technologies thanks to Steve’s efforts.

Steve received his BS degree in Finance & Economics as well as his AS degree in Accounting from Bentley University. Technologies that Steve has developed expertise in over the years include, but are not limited to: Entire Avaya Product Line – S8700 / Call Manager; Cisco IPCC Call Center Platform – UCCE / UCCX; Interactive Intelligence – product line; Siemens – HighPath 300 / 4000 / 8000 / Resume Writer; Nortel – all key systems / Merdian Series / Symposium; SONET Local and Metro Rings and Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM); ICM Routing platform; Quality Monitoring and Workforce Management platforms – Aspect and IEX/ Nice; Nortel / Cisco DWDM equipment / FLM & DMS switches; Nortel data switches & routers, Cisco Switch and Router lines; and Checkpoint, Cisco & Nokia firewall products / Citrix / various VPN’s – IVR platforms for major vendors.

Larry Feipel

 

Larry Feipel photoMr. Larry Feipel is a results-driven Contact Center Consulting Professional with an impressive list of diverse industry experiences in maximizing the productivity and quality of Contact Center People, Processes, Automation, and Facilities.  During his 12 years of consulting, Larry has successfully delivered effective solutions for clients in the United States, Canada, Latin America, and Western Europe.  His areas of expertise include Contact Center Optimization, Project Management, Workforce Management, Reporting, Business Process Redesign, and Training.

 

 

Key Competencies

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  • Strategy Development and Execution
  • Process Reengineering
  • Consolidation and Reorganization Analysis
  • Consumer Experience Design and Analysis
  • Contact Center Operations Management
  • Organizational Design
  • Outsourcing / Offshoring Strategy & Selection
  • Workforce Optimization
  • Quality Assurance
  • Multi-channel Service Delivery
  • Client Relationship Management
  • Contact Center Technologies
  • Project Management
  • Training for Results
  • Change Management
  • Operational Assessments
  • Business Continuance Planning
  • Vendor Management

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Prior to his consulting career, Larry held several key positions including: Process Engineer for the Cadillac Assembly Division of General Motors, Senior Manager of Operations for Walt Disney World Central Reservation Office, and Senior Vice President of Operations for Ross Roy Communications. Larry has a proven history in implementing contact center restructures, moves and builds including domestic and Off Shore sourcing. He has specialized in agent and management staffing for results.

Greg Van Zandt

Greg Van Zandt is a Customer Service professional with over thirty years’ experience in developing and managing customer service organizations for predominately Fortune 1000 consumer products companies. Professional services experience includes projects across the financial, insurance, hotel/travel, automotive, utility, consumer and business products industries, and federal government with a focus on customer service operations and contact centers, contact flow optimization, computer telephony integration, IP telephony integration, process optimization, customer relationship management, knowledge management, and training in the Utilities, Automotive, Hotel / Leisure, Telecommunications, Financial, and Insurance industries.  Greg has significant experience in multi-site contact center and field service management, rules based routing and customer focused handling optimization. Most recently he assessed the self-care readiness of a South American global wireless services provider for their Brazil, Chile, Peru, Argentina and Mexico markets – recommendations included dynamic IVR prompting and self-service, social media /management and facilitation, customer experience differentiated treatment modeling, presale customer education and agent training.  Greg is a founding member Board of Directors, Center for Customer Driven Quality, Purdue University, past member National Board of Directors, Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals, past Executive Chair Electronics Industries Association Consumer Affairs Counsel, and is a Chicago Regional Coordination team member of the Contact Center Networking Group (CCNG).

Key Competencies

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  • Performance Assessment/Transformation
  • Contact Center Consolidation
  • Organizational Design/Start-up
  • Training/Coaching/Management Development
  • Forecasting/Scheduling
  • Customer Life Cycle Mapping and Managemnt
  • IVR & Call Flow Routing
  • Site Selection/Consolidation/Out Sourcing
  • Customer Service workflow
  • Facilitation

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