ITV keeps Brits entertained during lockdown with Freshworks

 Like all businesses, ITV had to quickly adapt to the disruption caused by COVID-19. Providing support during live programming means there’s no room for error and remote working took on a new and sudden importance. The crew required the right equipment in the right place at a moment’s notice to support ITV Daytime’s 7.5 hrs of live weekday programming and production schedule. Freshworks’ IT service desk software, Freshservice offers searchable tickets and asset management capabilities which enabled the Broadcast Support team to shave two hours off their average response time while increasing their ticket resolution rate to 98%.

 

Meticulously documenting service requests

ITV implemented Freshservice as its asset management and ticketing system three years ago and a lot has changed in that time. The number of agents operating from Freshservice has increased significantly - initially there were eight agents working in the London region to service ITV Daytime’s output. Now there are roughly 100 agents in total across the organisation that support regional news and different areas of production. Not only is production equipment being inventoried, but Freshservice now functions as a full-blown Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) compliant ITSM system. For the past three years, all service requests have been meticulously documented in Freshservice.

 

The amount of tickets managed by the tech support team has drastically increased. On average, ITV handles 300-400 broadcast support tickets per month. Each year since install, ticket volume has increased by approximately 1000+ tickets. Users are increasingly reporting issues via the preferred, tracked, ticket channel, as opposed to by phone or in-person.

 

ITV also takes full advantage of the Freshservice reporting and analytics features. “We now have metrics and a view around what's fixed, how long it took, average resolution time, amongst other stats,” says Tim Guilder, Tech Manager at ITV Studios. “Just having visibility of these statistics is a huge win. We can illustrate our team’s success in operational meetings and offer metrics on exactly how the team is doing a great job. It validates what we do and also gives us all performance targets to work towards - and hopefully beat!”

 

Managing daytime TV’s resurgence through lockdown

Live daytime TV saw a big resurgence due to self-isolation and lockdown. Although Daytime’s broadcasting has continued on schedule, ITV wasn’t exempt from the challenges of the pandemic. The production teams were suddenly thrust into the world of remote working, remote editing and adapting to home/domestic connectivity, while the support team began receiving a surge in tickets related to VPN & broadband connectivity and take-home equipment requests. Freshservice was an enabler in helping to answer the spike in support requests and also allowed some of the support team to work effectively from home themselves.

 

Despite the lockdown, the ITV Broadcast Support team successfully cut an impressive two hours off the average response time. Financial savings were also made as the ITV team operate in siloed internal departments but now have visibility of the entire tech estate and all ITV-owned assets. This resulted in the lending of equipment between team members and money was saved on duplicate purchases.

 

“TV was more essential through lockdown than ever before”, says Simon Johnson, General Manager UK and Ireland, Freshworks. “ITV is providing news and entertainment to the general public, who rely on it being delivered to an expected standard. If the team isn’t able to fix a fault quickly and provide the right tools to production, there is a knock-on effect. This is something we are delighted to help ITV minimise – with our Freshservice software assisting and elevating productivity.”