Katz Media Group Enhances ITSM Processes with Freshworks During COVID-19

Katz Media Group is the largest media representation company in the United States. It provides advertisers and agencies one point of access to over 200 million active consumers across the country through the on-air and digital assets of more than 3,000 radio, 700 television stations, 5,000 audio/video streams, and 10,000 podcasts. Katz specializes in providing locally-relevant solutions for national marketers that resonate with consumers where they live. It comprises three divisions: Katz Radio Group, Katz Television Group, and Katz Digital. A subsidiary of iHeartMedia, Katz is based in New York City with 15 regional offices.

Katz Media Group, the largest media representation company in the United States, faced significant challenges with its IT service management (ITSM), service delivery, and IT support. The company's legacy platform was not user-friendly, leading to knowledge silos and a lack of uniform ITSM processes and service SLAs. The incumbent on-premise ITSM solution was becoming a bottleneck, hindering integration, migration, and standardization of IT service and incident management. This situation was part of a broader technology transformation initiative that Katz was undertaking. The company needed to overhaul its existing functionality and improve scalability, which required a new solution to replace their incumbent on-premise solution.

Katz shortlisted solutions from Zendesk, ServiceNow, and Freshworks to replace their incumbent on-premise solution. The solutions were evaluated based on accessibility, UI simplicity and ease-of-use, ITIL framework compliance, scalability in terms of extending to other departments like Facilities Management, HR, and Accounting, and cost-effectiveness. After thorough testing and due diligence, Katz decided to onboard Freshservice, Freshworks' ITSM suite, for efficiently handling both the volume and types of service requests. The decision was based on the platform's ease-of-use, flexibility, and stability. Freshservice was also chosen for its ability to support 70 agents and 1300 end-users a month, and its applicability to other corporate teams such as Facilities Management and Accounting.

• The implementation of Freshservice has brought about significant operational and customer experience improvements for Katz Media Group. The availability of a support portal, enhanced automation, and workflow approvals have significantly improved the company's overall efficiency and productivity levels. Freshservice has also enhanced knowledge management and improved resource management in terms of people's time. The change management module, along with the ease and speed of configuration, is also helping in continuous improvement. The benefits of the cloud-delivery model, such as simple, subscription-based pricing, no local hosting infrastructure to buy and manage, ease of implementation and upgrades, and enterprise-grade scalability and security, have been realized. All these improvements have led to a potentially lower total cost of ownership (TCO) than an on-premise solution, especially during the COVID-19 outbreak, ultimately serving stakeholders more quickly.

• Supports 70 agents and 1300 end-users a month

• Phone call volume has dropped to just 20% of their overall incoming requests

• Real-time metrics such as incident volumes, resolution times, and customer satisfaction are regularly reviewed and published