Q&A: Transforming customer support to elevate the customer experience

No matter where they are on their digital transformation journey, customers need to accelerate time to value, upskill their teams, and drive innovation to the next level. ServiceNow Impact™, a new value acceleration solution, is designed to do exactly that, helping customers achieve their desired business outcomes.

ServiceNow Impact affects all aspects of how we work with our customers. It helps speed up results by both amplifying customers' ServiceNow expertise and personlizing their digital transformation journey. The goal is to bridge the strategy-execution value gap.

With a wide variety of customer touch points, ServiceNow Impact starts with premium technical support and new digital tools, such as HealthScan and Instance Observer. It provides access to ServiceNow experts, personalized learning and coaching, and real-time value tracking within the Impact Digital Experience.

We chatted with Dean Robison, senior vice president of customer support and product success at ServiceNow, to find out how ServiceNow Impact affects the customer service and support experience—the first line of defense for customers to get help with their issues.

As head of customer service and support, how do you view ServiceNow Impact?

ServiceNow Impact is changing the way we deliver our services, even in support. Our new multitier packages help customers decide what level of support they need to digitally transform and accelerate their return on their ServiceNow investments.

Typically, customer support has been first in line to solve customer questions and issues after self-service. ServiceNow Impact integrates customer support into a unified ecosystem of experts, services, prescribed content, and technology that are aligned to help customers reach their outcomes. Instead of working in what was once a typically reactive support silo, we’re now part of a proactive customer experience aimed at accelerating time to value and boosting return on investment (ROI).

What excites you about ServiceNow Impact?

ServiceNow Impact offers many new capabilities for our customers, especially those depending on ServiceNow for essential parts of their business. One of the most exciting new capabilities is the personalized Impact Digital Experience, which tracks customers' value journey and uses AI and input from the Impact Squad to offer recommendations and insights that meet customers' needs.

The Impact Squad, a ServiceNow team that's formally assigned to help customers with product adoption and strategy, is a big part of that effort. It'ss cross-functional, with support account managers, customer success managers, and platform and success architects.

By bringing together different skill sets, we can deliver a more connected, seamless experience that emphasizes being proactive over reactive. Customers should find it easier to derive value from their investments. Additional experts can be brought in on demand.

The Impact Squad can anticipate and address many of our customers’ questions. The emphasis on proactive action should result in fewer low-priority cases for our core technical support engineers (TSEs). They can focus on the urgent, troublesome issues that require expert knowledge, leading to a better overall customer experience.

Another benefit is that the tiered approach allows us to innovate faster. We can apply differentiated levels of resources and targeted experiences in knowledge sharing and self-service offerings for the right customers at the right time. We can scale more effectively when our efforts are proportional to a ServiceNow Impact tier and the customer’s needs.

In what other ways will the customer support experience change?

The differentiated service model shows up in several ways. First, the self-service experience is going to be much richer. Customers want to get answers to their questions without talking to a support engineer. We want to provide answers quickly and in multiple channels, whether mobile, portal, or chatbot. Think of self-service as the ability for customers to pump their own gas versus waiting in line for an attendant to do it.

Customers paying a premium will see faster responses to cases, as well as proactive recommendations from their Impact Squad in the Impact Digital Experience. If they have an issue or challenging question, they’ll get answers right away. We want to help them innovate faster by quickly removing any blockers they may see when developing on our platform.

Those without critical applications can take advantage of a robust self-service experience, including knowledge articles, training materials, and community forums. They won’t feel shortchanged but will rely on technology to get the answers they need quickly.

We still want to offer an exceptional experience—self-service for common, easily solvable issues, and support engineers for challenging, unique cases. Our overall responsiveness will improve with faster, wider distribution of knowledge.

What innovations will customers see?

One big change is our Virtual Agent as a primary agent for self-service. The chatbot is a conversational platform through which customers can ask questions, search for answers, and even open and track cases. Machine learning enables Virtual Agent to learn from its interactions and get smarter with each interaction. Customers enrolled in our basic support package will depend on Virtual Agent as their primary vehicle for support.

Over time, you should see Virtual Agent handle more personalized conversations, such as the ability to request assistance for your particular environment. Virtual Agent can even process and close requests without human involvement, such as IP address and end-of-life requests. Expect to see a lot of new chatbot features this year.

Will the role of the ServiceNow technical support engineer change?

ServiceNow Impact is designed to deliver a total ownership experience for customers and a great working experience for TSEs.

Improvements in proactive Impact Squad support, self-service capabilities, and knowledge sharing using Knowledge-Centered Services (KCS®) and ServiceNow Knowledge Management should give TSEs more time and energy to identify and address emerging issues popping up around the globe. Recommended solutions can then be quickly shared across the service catalog, knowledge base, and community.

We strive to provide the best training and content to our TSEs so they can answer questions quickly and efficiently. For example, TSEs use a guided decision workflow to retrieve the most urgent case for their skill set, reducing ambiguity on which case is next in the queue. As the types of cases change, teams will be staffed with the right level of talent and capacity to handle issues.

What technology underlies your service delivery?

This initiative is a clear example of our Now on Now commitment to using our own platform to deliver our services. Underlying ServiceNow Impact is the power of the Now Platform, which provides expert guidance and actionable insights in a personalized digital experience. Our TSEs manage cases using Customer Service Management and Predictive Intelligence. We’re drinking our own champagne.

Find out more about how ServiceNow uses its own products.

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