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yesterday - edited yesterday
In customer support, the customer case or ‘case management’ is the primary, most essential entity that can be applied to essentially any industry. You could think of a case as a means to capture details of a service, transaction, or a response to customer requests.
When a customer reaches out to a business with a question or issue in need of resolution, a new case may be created for an agent to look at. The case assists the agent in tracking all activities, communications, and channels used in resolving the issue and this case can move through different states e.g., open, in-progress, completed, or closed corresponding to what is happening in real time.
CSM Case Management helps organizations capture customer requests, investigate issues, and coordinate resolution work across departments, while maintaining full context on the customer, the product/service they use, and the status of the progress.
CSM Data Models at a glance
CSM supports several business models through the customer and product data models. These businesses may support private consumers (B2C), other businesses (B2B), or both (B2B2C).
At the center of the customer data model is the Case record. Cases can connect to:
- Who the request is for and who is involved: Explore customer data management (docs)
- Consumer: Individuals or a group of related individuals (a household)
- Account and Contact: Customer (in a B2B setting) account and its associated employee contact
- Account Consumer: A customer account’s consumer or employee (in a B2B2C/B2B2E setting)
- What’s deployed where: Explore product data management(docs)
- Sold product: A product or service that has been provided to a customer
- Install base item: An instance of a product that has been installed at a customer, i.e., characteristics like serial number, firmware, etc.
- Installed product: Information about how a sold product is installed, i.e., the association between sold products and install base items
- What service is owed: Customer contracts and entitlements(docs)
- Contracts: Binding agreements between a service provider (i.e., a business) and its customers which often determine SLAs to be met by the service provider, and related terms and conditions.
- Entitlements: Defines what services or resources a customer is entitled to, regarding a sold product or install base item specified in the contract.
- Related Work:
- Tasks associated with a case, knowledge, escalations, collaborations, etc.
Why it matters: tying it all together
Modeling these links early gives agents instant context, enables relevant checks (e.g., a customer’s details or entitlements), and drives the right routing/automation later on. It also provides a framework to establish relationships between agents, customers, businesses, locations, service organizations, etc.
To make this foundation scalable across industries and service models, Service Model Foundation provides prebuilt data frameworks and relationships you can build on. Think of it as a ready-to-use blueprint that standardizes how service data is structured, so your teams can focus on delivering value instead of rebuilding the model for each use case.
Explore the service model foundation(docs)
Learn more about data management for CSM(docs)
Getting started with your implementation
Before implementing, asking the right questions upfront helps ensure your case management setup reflects real-world operations:
- Who are you supporting: business customers (B2B), individual consumers (B2C), or a mix?
- What types of issues or requests will become cases? Are some of them repeatable or industry-specific?
- What level of visibility do agents, managers, or partners need into each case?
- How do you expect to measure success (resolution time, CSAT, first-contact resolution, etc.)?
- Which channels will cases come from — web, chat, email, phone, or integrations?
Documenting these answers helps you make informed configuration choices later, such as defining case types, entitlement rules, and data relationships.
Resources:
Next steps:
Once you have your high-level plan, explore these resources to deepen your understanding.
Check out the following community articles to dive deeper into each area:
- 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
- Case workflows and automation: Learn how playbooks and agentic workflows help guide and automate routine actions
Training modules:
Now create assets
Best Practices to Implement Case Types
Case Types and Playbooks Implementation Guide
Bookmarks: Join the ServiceNow CSM Community. Explore best practices, how-to guides, and upcoming events. Sign up for our CSM Live on ServiceNow webinars.
