Vox’s customisable business solutions and skilled customer management help to keep Jacaranda FM on top of their game in an ever-changing media landscape.
The Industry
The commercial broadcast radio industry has come a long way since Jacaranda FM first went private in 1997. Relying on a single medium – like radio – to reach your audience is no longer enough if you want to remain relevant in the 21st century. In addition to broadcast radio, Jacaranda FM also forms part of South Africa’s burgeoning multi-channel media industry, streaming nationally via DStv, offering audiences everything from music to podcasts and online shopping through its various portals, while competing for attention with TV, video-on-demand and streaming services.
The Company
Broadcasting at 94.2 FM from Midrand, Gauteng, with a staff of about 65 employees, Jacaranda FM has the only bilingual commercial radio licence in the country – broadcasting in English and Afrikaans across Gauteng, the North West province, Limpopo and Mpumalanga to approximately 1.3 million listeners per week. With an additional audience of almost two million consuming the brand’s audio streams, podcasts, videos, social media and online posts per week.
The Challenge
As Jacaranda FM’s technical and IT manager, Andrew Pike, explains, to keep pace in a highly competitive multi-channel media market, Jacaranda FM requires high levels of uptime.
“Our online presence is critically important, so we need a stable data connection. Being taken seriously as a mid-size business has also been a challenge. We previously used a larger IT services provider, but we felt their solutions were tailored to large business and were inflexible.”
The Solution
“Not only is Vox a large enough player in the industry to be trustworthy and relevant, they also offer solutions that exactly or closely match our needs and budget. Having a dedicated Vox customer manager who took the time to understand our business helped immensely,” says Pike, before adding, “The Vox Fibre to the Business (FTTB) line has proven extremely reliable, with a very small unavailability percentage.”
Employees at Jacaranda FM were also able to make a near seamless transition to a work from home (WFH) environment last year thanks to Vox’s Access Point Name (APN). As Pike reveals, “The APN SIM cards provide many of our WFH staff with a reliable Internet connection while out and about, or if their home Internet connection is non-existent or down. The management of these cards and the setting-up and updating of data limits is a simple process via the Vox portal.”
Additional Benefits
WFH is made even easier for Jacaranda’s staff thanks to Vox’s Uncapped Voice solution and Hardware as a Service (HaaS) offering. As Pike reveals, “Vox uncapped Voice and HaaS were introduced to me by our customer manager even though I wasn’t looking for solutions in those fields. The fact that we decided to adopt them both is testimony to Vox’s commitment to introducing new and relevant services based on their customer knowledge.”
Says Pike, “We tried Vox HaaS as an experiment, renting five Windows laptops for some of our office staff. The process was very simple, the hardware is of a good standard and swap-outs when repairs are needed are very prompt.”
Overall Experience with Vox
Ultimately, Pike couldn’t be happier with Vox’s customised business solutions and prompt service. “I’d describe our relationship with Vox as good-to-excellent,” he says, before adding, “Thanks to the advanced Service Level Agreement (SLA), I always get a response to a ticket within the hour, and most tickets have been resolved the same day. When escalation has been necessary, I’m usually kept in the loop and well-informed.”
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