Effective customer service goes beyond just case resolution. A well-designed workflow ensures that every participant (requester, agent, support teams, etc.) knows what needs to happen and when. Case management workflows bring order and transparency to complex service processes, while AI-driven capabilities elevate them by automating routine steps, surfacing insights, and keeping every case on track.
Playbooks for Case Management
When working on cases, both agents and customers often wonder:
“Where am I in the process? What’s next? How do I get there?”
Playbooks in Customer Service Management address this by providing contextual outlines and guidance to the user on what stage they’re in and what steps are required to move the case forward. A user can be one of various personas: agents, customers or requestor personas, partners, etc.
Where Playbooks commonly appear
In the CSM Configurable Workspace: Agents use playbooks on the workspace as they are easily configured to appear directly on the case record, displaying progress across stages (for example case intake, case processing, resolution etc.), with related tasks, interactions, and knowledge visible in one view.
Know more about playbooks in CSM Configurable Workspace (docs).
Through the customer portal: Customers or consumers can also use playbooks, through the Customer/Consumer Portal. The portal playbook allows transparency regarding next actions while simultaneously preserving the ability to modify only certain stages or activities (often those that require input from them), and not more.
To learn more, visit the community article on playbooks on portal
Via API: In other ServiceNow applications, playbooks can be generated through APIs
Out-of-the-box Playbooks
CSM provides pre-built playbooks that help you start faster:
- Case Playbook for Onboarding
- Case Playbook for Complaints
- Case Playbook for Product Support
Playbook Authoring
Behind the scenes, admins and/or process owners use Workflow Studio to build playbooks and any associated workflows in a diagram or task-board interface. Playbooks offer a lot of process flexibility with ease: for example, they can be triggered only when certain conditions are met, pre-existing flows and sub-flows can be linked to activities and can be tested on records to tweak on the go.
Explore configuration guidance documentation.
Guided Decisions in Case Management
Guided Decisions are a way to improve the case experience for both agents and customers, by suggesting the agent’s next best action either based on context or through a set of questions. These recommendations appear directly(docs) on the Configurable Workspace, reducing the agent’s need for swivel chairing.
Process owners can use the Workflow Studio to build multi-level, nested guided decision trees. Read the blog on guided decision trees for customer service to know more.
Further, Guided Decisions can also be embedded in playbooks(docs) to resolve cases.
Agentic Workflows in Case Management
While playbooks guide what happens next, agentic workflows enable how things get done, combining generative AI and agentic AI to deliver value across the customer, agent, and admin experience. With Now Assist for CSM, you bridge manual work and intelligent automation.
Now Assist for CSM supports various skills categories:
- Customer self-service
- Agent productivity (summarization, recommendation, content generation)
- Agentic workflows
- Admin efficiency
Learn more about Now Assist for CSM:
Visit the community article series to explore practical use cases and setup examples for AI-driven case workflows.
What’s next
Explore additional CSM Case Management capabilities on our community:
- Getting started with Case Management
- Revisit core case features: Review the data structures and workspace elements that make up each case
- Case operations: Learn about the daily flow of work such as case creation, assignment, and many more
Bookmarks: Join the ServiceNow CSM Community. Explore best practices, how-to guides, and upcoming events. Sign up for our CSM Live on ServiceNow webinars.
