Customer Service Management (CSM) Fundamentals

Lokesh C1 · ‎04-21-2022

Customer Service Management (CSM) Fundamentals - On-Demand (Course)

Introduction to Customer Service Management

Customer service is all about providing services to customers before, during, and after the purchase of a product and/or service. As customers are income and revenue-generating, how we service our customers has a direct impact on our organization’s bottom line, and its overall success. Existing customers who are happy with the service provided are more likely to try new products and services, they are also more likely to recommend an organization. Conversely, a customer who has a negative customer service experience will have no hesitation in sharing their views, regardless of how well a product performs.

Given these basics of CSM, it is understandable that the first rule of any business is to retain customers and build a loyal relationship with them. Research shows that not only is customer retention more profitable, but it is also cheaper to retain a customer than to acquire a new one.

Customers reach out to customer service support to report an issue or problem, ask a question, make a request or complaint, etc. in relation to products they have purchased.

Customer service support is responsible for streamlining customer interactions while acting as the intermediary between the customer and the service operations teams resolving product issues or defects. When communicating with customers, customer service teams should use terms that are clear and easily understood.

Customer Service Concerns

Delivering proactive customer service helps an organization stay ahead of the competition.

ServiceNow's Customer Service Management Application

ServiceNow's Customer Service Management (CSM) application is a way for service providers to manage relationships between themselves and the customers who use and/or purchase their services and products. The process itself should not be confused with an application designed to help manage and improve the process. The latter is where ServiceNow's Customer Service Management application plays a part, a very large part!

ServiceNow's CSM application not only manages customer engagements but connects customer service with the rest of the organization, enabling a business to scale and deliver superior customer service.

CSM provides an end-to-end service management solution with an integrated problem, change, configuration, work order management, and a structured service catalog. It helps break down the classic silos and automate processes across middle office teams to resolve issues faster, by connecting customer service with engineering, field service, finance, and other teams to drive accountability for resolution.

Industry Verticals

Many different industries use ServiceNow’s CSM application. While they share the same core requirements such as accounts, contacts, partners, contracts, entitlements, etc. each industry type also has specific needs. CSM is able to meet these needs by creating industry-specific data models that are built on top of the out-of-the-box base processes and data models. In addition, case types can be created that are more suited to that particular industry. Case types will be discussed later in the course and are covered more in-depth in the Customer Service Management Implementation course.

Customer Service Plugins

The Customer Service Plugin

The main Customer Service plugin has dependencies on many other plugins, which will be activated at the same time if they are not already enabled within the platform. Further plugins can be activated to support your Customer Service Management activities.

Business Models

Customer Service Management provides different business models that can be used to support business needs. These may be Business-to-Business (B2B) use cases, Business-to-Consumer (B2C) use cases, internal use cases, or a mixture of these.

Definitions

Foundation Data

Foundation data includes all of the data crucial to support customers as efficiently as possible. Most of the foundation data can be imported and configured using the Customer Service Management Guided Setup. The Guided Setup feature takes you as an administrator through the entire setup and configuration process. Guided Setup was covered earlier in this course.

B2B and B2C

Business-to-business (B2B) is a business model where commercial transactions are conducted between two or more companies.

Business-to-consumer (B2C) is a business model where companies sell products and or services directly to consumers.

Customer Portfolio: B2C

This section introduces B2C customer service terminology and basic concepts in ServiceNow Customer Service Management.

Objectives:

Get familiar with B2C customer service terminology.
Learn how the B2C model is managed by Customer Service Management.
Describe the various aspects of the customer portfolio B2C foundational data.
Gain hands-on experience configuring customer portfolio B2C foundational data.

B2C Business model

The B2C business model represents consumers or in other words individuals who can be directly supported.

Consumer Table

The consumers [csm_consumer] table stores Consumer records that contain information about a consumer, including the name, addresses, and phone numbers.

In the platform UI, use the application navigator, and go to Customer Service > Customer > Consumers

To create a consumer record in the platform UI, a user must have one of the following required roles:

Consumer Agent [consumer_agent]
Customer Service Manager [sn_customerservice_manager]
System Administrator [admin]

Important facts about consumer records

1
1. A consumer can have multiple addresses but only one primary address. The primary address is added to the Addressesrelated list and the Primary field is set to true.
2. Other addresses, such as billing or shipping addresses, can be created and stored in the Addressesrelated list. All addresses for a consumer are stored in the Addresses-related list.
3. The Consumer [csm_consumer_user] stores consumer registration records that are created when consumers complete the self-registration process from the Consumer Service Portal. This table extends the Users [sys_user] table.

Customer (Accounts)

B2B Model

With the B2B model, both accounts and contacts can be supported. Customer relationships, especially primary contacts, and account teams must be set up to ensure the account can be managed and supported as formally agreed with the customer.

Account Data

The Account [customer_account] table stores the Account’s information, such as name, account number, primary contact, phone number, address, and company website address.

Account [customer_account] extends the Core Company [core_company]table in ServiceNow.
An account can have one or more associated cases, contacts, assets, service contracts, entitlements, relationships, etc.
Associated entities appear in related lists on the account form.

To Create an Account

Use the application navigator, go to Customer Service > Customer > Accounts.

Roles required:

Customer Service Manager [sn_customerservice_manager]
System Administrator [admin]

Important Facts about Account Records

An account can have multiple addresses but only one primary address. The primary address is added to the Addressesrelated list and the Primary field is set to true.
Other addresses, such as billing or shipping addresses, can be created and stored in the Addressesrelated list. All addresses for an account are stored in the Addresses-related list.

Contact Data

The Contact [customer_contact] table stores the customer’s contact information, such as name, phone number, and email.

An external account can have multiple contacts, but a contact can be associated with only one account.
A contact can have one or more associated assets and service contracts.
A contact can also have a user ID and can log in to the Customer Portal.
Contact [customer_contact]extends the User [sys_user] table in ServiceNow.

Creating Contact Records

A contact is a user in the system. If you create a contact, that person is also added to the User [sys_user] table. They may be bulk imported into ServiceNow via integration or another another external source. Contacts can also self-register on the portal using a Registration Code that can be set up by the System Administrator when creating the account. For B2C, Contacts may be unknown and may primarily use self-registration on the portal to engage with Consumer Support.

To create a contact, navigate to Customer Service > Customer > Contacts.

Required role

Customer Service Manager [sn_customerservice_manager]
System Administrator [admin]

Accounts Hierarchy Setup

Lesson 2 of 4

Account Hierarchy

ServiceNow enables the modeling of Parent-Subsidiary relationships between accounts, to represent the legal entity structure and their relationships, and accurately represent the customers, their assets, and service entitlements. The hierarchy provides access to subsidiary information to users from a top-level account.

Account Hierarchy Setup

A System Administrator or Customer Service Manager (user with role sn_customerservice_manager) can create a relationship between contact and account. Once the relationship is established, the contact can access information for the related account and create cases for the account. When defining a new contact relationship for an account, dropdown values of the Contact field will display contacts from related accounts based on the account hierarchy (parent-child relationship) and account relationships.

Account hierarchy (parent-subsidiary relationship) is modeled using a Parent Account field on an Account form. If this field is not filled, the account is the top-level account, otherwise, it is a subsidiary of the parent account. Once the parent-child relationship is established, a Customer admin (any contact with role sn_customerservice.customer_admin) will be able to view assets and users for all the subsidiaries of his or her own account, as well as create and view cases for any of the subsidiaries on the Customer Service Portal.

In some situations, it is required to give a contact access to another company's data. Contact relationships allow adding a contact from a related account (accounts that are part of the same hierarchy, or related accounts based on account relationships). Effectively, this enables the same contact to be associated with multiple accounts.

Contact and Account Relationship

While an account can be a customer account, it can also be a partner account or both.
A partner is a supported external customer that, in turn, sells to and supports one or more customers.
A partner can report and manage cases on behalf of customers.
A partner can also be a customer.

Accounts Relationships Setup

Account relationships are used to define the relationship between two customer accounts or between a partner account and a customer account.

For relationships between a partner account and a customer account, partner account contacts with the partner role or the partner administrator role can create and manage cases for their customer accounts.

Set Up Account Relationship

An Account Relationship is based on a defined account relationship type. Users with the Administrator role (admin) can define two types of relationships:

partner-to-account
account-to-account

There is one default account relationship type provided for partner accounts.

The System Administrator can create additional account relationship types by navigating to Customer Service > Administration > Account Relationship Types.

Once an account relationship type has been defined, users with the Customer Service Manager role can use it to create relationship records between specific accounts or partners. An account relationship record includes:

A source account, is selected in the Account From field.
A target account, is selected in the Account To field.
The account relationship type that this relationship record is based on.
The relationship and the reverse relationship of the selected accounts.

Once a relationship record has been created, you can see the relationship from either account.

The relationship (Account From > Account To) appears in the Account Relationships related list on the source account record. The reverse relationship (Account To > Account From) appears in the Account Relationships related list on the target account record. Select the account relationship record from either account to see the Account Relationship form.

Account and Relationship Hierarchy Example

Below is an account and relationship hierarchy diagram for Shark Hotels.

Learn about the account-to-account relationships and account-contact relationships.

Samiksha2 · ‎07-06-2023

Hi @Lokesh C1 ,

Thank you for this article. It helps a lot.

But I have a problem. If the same contacts I am adding in the parent account, then it is removing from the child account and vise versa

Please check the below screenshots.

Please help in this.

Thanks!

Samiksha