Now Assist for CSM - Getting Started

FernandoCastro · ‎10-04-2024

Your fast, guided path to enable Now Assist for CSM effectively and strategically

This central hub brings together the most relevant guidance across the ServiceNow web universe, from Now Create, the Best Practice Library, ServiceNow University, Product Documentation, Partner Success, to Now Support. It is designed to help you move from activation to measurable outcomes with a clear, intentional approach.

While the interface is intuitive and can be activated quickly, achieving lasting value requires careful detailed configuration, thoughtful sequencing, and knowledge across multiple layers of the platform. This guidance ensures you are not only turning on features but unlocking their full potential in real customer service operations.

Product Overview

Now Assist for Customer Service Management (CSM) combines generative AI and agentic AI to deliver value across the customer, agent, and admin experience.

Customers benefit from faster self-service and more relevant answers through conversational interfaces, smart case deflection, and tailored experiences across portals, embedded web, and voice channels. Generative AI powers accurate, contextual responses, while agentic AI orchestrates more complex interactions that span multiple systems or steps.
Agents work more efficiently with embedded summarization, content generation, contextual recommendations, and sentiment analysis in the CSM Configurable Workspace and Now Assist Panel. Generative AI reduces manual effort for repetitive tasks, while agentic AI plans and executes multi-step actions that accelerate resolution and improve consistency and keeping live agents in the loop yet focused on more complex cases.
Admins can deploy, configure, and monitor AI-driven capabilities with minimal overhead, leveraging out-of-the-box skills, low-code customization, and integrations with existing workflows. Generative AI enables fast configuration and knowledge creation, while agentic AI expands automation into orchestration of complex service processes.

This combined approach increases case deflection, reduces handling times, improves service quality, and accelerates time to value.

Take a look at the product details overview here by yours truly:

Getting Started with our Implementation Blueprint

When implementing AI solutions for customer service and your business units, ask the organizations:

Do you need build or buy AI solutions, or both? Which option will give you the best value for your money and the fastest results?
What problems are you trying to solve with AI? What are the top use cases? What does your business need, and how can AI improve work for your people?
How will you manage the AI you use for your business? Like any technology stack, you want to be consistent in your policies and control them.

Remember to always consider that AI is only as intelligent as the data platform it is built on.

The main outcome of this exercise is to define the unique use cases and impact they will have on your business on day 1 and how Now Assist can help bring these to life quickly and efficiently.

For guidance on what to implement first from a best practice perspective, refer to our implementation blueprint:

implementation blueprint Z.jpg

Please note this may vary per customer environment, value prioritization and business needs.

Implementation Readiness.png

To support your implementation goals, we have designed a variety of self-service assets available across use cases to support your readiness in the AI journey for Now Assist for CSM in a specific order.

Training:
1. AI Essentials
2. Now Assist for CSM Essentials Path
Communities (where you are right now!)
1. Review each skill article as needed in detail per relevant persona:
2. Each article contains definitions, video guides, links, implementation steps, key capabilities, key best practices, how to measure value and FAQs.
Past webinars:
Join us in person to one of our events such as AI Summits, Knowledge, World Forums
Download, review and tailor our Now Create assets for your specific implementation:
Create your own Center of Excellence and Innovation with training and Organizational Change Management that is AI focused

Now Assist for CSM - Skills Matrix

Category	Generative (Green) and Agentic (Purple) Features
Customer Self-Service
Agent Productivity: Summarization
Agent Productivity: Recommendations
Agent Productivity: Content Generation
Agentic Workflows and AI Agents
Admin Efficiency

When to Use Each Type of AI

Select the right approach for each scenario based on complexity, reasoning needs, and automation goals:

Problem Type	Recommended Solution	Why It Works
Single-step tasks	Now Assist Skill	Fast, efficient, pre-built
Slightly adapted actions	Now Assist Skill Kit	Customizable prompts with minimal setup
Multi-step reasoning	AI Agent	Supports planning, contextual decision-making, and human review
Structured automation	Flow Designer	Best for predictable, rule-based processes

Plugin Installation

Before enabling Now Assist for CSM, ensure that your environment and licensing meet the prerequisites and that all required components are properly installed.

1. Verify prerequisites

Licensed for CSM Pro+ or Enterprise+
Best practice foundational data models or features established (for example, Knowledge, Case Management, Configurable Workspace and Customer Data Foundation or Service Model Foundation)

2. Install required plugins

Navigate to System Definition > Plugins in your ServiceNow instance.
Search for and install the following (in order where dependencies apply):
- Customer Service Management
- Now Assist for CSM
- AI Search
- Optional:
  - Group Action Framework for grouping of records and taking smart actions in this data
  - Knowledge Graph for agentic use in semantic indexing
  - Generative AI Controller (optional if using your own LLM models)
Validate that the instance meets version and licensing requirements for each installed feature and you have the latest versions installed per that release.

3. Assign roles and permissions

Before configuring and granting access to skills, make sure you have configured appropriate roles for each user group.
Use configurable availability settings to expose skills only where they will add measurable value.

4. Activate through the Now Assist Admin Console

Open Now Assist Admin Console in your instance.
Enable the product plugin from Settings.
Activate the Now Assist Panel for relevant personas.
Configure individual skills within the Customer workflow as required.
Tip: How to Leverage OOTB ‘Define Availability’ of the Now Assist Skills

5. Validate in a sandbox environment

Confirm configuration, data quality, and expected behavior before enabling in production.
Test skill execution across intended use cases to ensure both generative and agentic AI perform as expected.
We recommend doing this step even when you are trying out the product so you can simulate as close as possible to your actual environment

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the licensing requirements for Now Assist SKUs?
- Licensing requirements depend on the existing entitlements a customer has. For instance, a customer must have the Pro or Enterprise base package to purchase the Pro Plus or Enterprise Plus add-on.
What is the difference between Professional Plus and Enterprise Plus SKUs?
- They contain the same applications and assist entitlements but are added to different base SKUs.
What is an assist?
- An assist is a unit of usage of Generative AI features. Each action performed using Generative AI consumes one or more assists. Assists are tied to the value of an action rather than usage intensity.
- Failed requests due to system errors or Guardian blocking are generally not charged, though third-party LLM providers may have their own billing rules.
- Note that assists are also counted in sub-prod instances
Do customers need a separate Azure Open AI license to use Now Assist features?
- No, the cost is included in the Professional Plus, Enterprise Plus, and Creator Plus SKUs.
Are AI Agents part of Now Assist for CSM?
- Yes if they are part of the CSM Agent Collection or part of the Platform bundle
Can I build my own AI Agents as part of my Now Assist for CSM licensing?
- Yes, you can and also mix and match between selected OOTB CSM AI Agents and yours
Does Now Assist support Regulated Market customers (e.g., FedRAMP, GCC)?
- Yes, on a restricted basis with different SKUs compared to commercial environments. For on-premises or isolated deployments, special configuration or approvals may be required.
Which Now Assist skills require a license?
- All 'agent' skills require a license, but platform skills for requesters do not .
Can I use a different LLM provider with Now Assist?
- Yes. While Now Assist works out of the box with supported model providers, you can also bring your own LLM using the Generative AI Controller. This provides flexibility in model selection based on business, compliance, or performance needs.
How is customer data handled when using Now Assist?
- Data used by Now Assist is securely transmitted to processing centers within your region and is not retained. Sensitive data can be redacted before it leaves your instance using the Sensitive Data Handler plugin.
What safeguards can I configure to manage content risk?
- Now Assist Guardian allows you to set rules to detect offensive language, sensitive topics, and prompt injection attempts. You can choose to block or allow with logging, and monitor results in the Admin Console.
Does Now Assist support languages other than English?
- Yes. Now Assist supports multiple languages natively, and additional ones can be enabled with Dynamic Translation. Language availability may also depend on your chosen LLM provider.
Can I embed Now Assist into custom web or mobile experiences?
- Yes. Engagement Messenger supports embedding Now Assist into branded web and mobile environments, with full control over branding, skill access, and fallback routing.
How do I monitor and measure adoption of Now Assist?
- Use the Now Assist Analytics dashboard and AI Control Tower to track skill usage, adoption trends, and performance over time. These tools also provide insight into data quality, which impacts AI effectiveness
Can I restrict certain skills to specific teams or roles?
- Yes. Skills can be enabled or disabled for specific roles, channels, or availability windows to ensure they are used only where they deliver measurable value.
How do I ensure changes to Now Assist configurations do not impact production users?
- Always validate new skills, role assignments, or configuration changes in a sandbox environment before promoting them to production. This includes testing both generative and agentic AI flows in real scenarios.
Can I enable only certain Now Assist skills instead of all of them?
- Yes. Skills can be selectively activated in the Now Assist Admin Console so you can roll out capabilities in phases or target them to specific workflows.
How do I manage updates to Now Assist skills over time?
- Revisit skill configuration periodically, especially after platform upgrades, to take advantage of new capabilities or improve prompt tuning and contextual data sources
Can Now Assist use my organization’s existing knowledge content?
- Yes. You can connect existing Knowledge Bases, product documentation, or external content sources so that skills can retrieve and generate contextual, relevant outputs.
How should I prepare my data before enabling Now Assist skills?
- Ensure knowledge articles, case fields, and product data (CRM Foundation data models) are accurate and up to date. Skills rely on high-quality content to produce relevant and trustworthy outputs.
How do I identify workflows that are best suited for agentic AI?
- Look for processes that involve multiple steps, require data from several systems, and vary significantly from case to case. Agentic AI is most effective when tasks cannot be fully scripted with deterministic automation.
Can I combine deterministic workflows with agentic AI in the same process?
- Yes. Use agentic AI for adaptive, decision-heavy tasks while keeping predictable, compliance-driven steps in Flow Designer or Orchestration. This hybrid approach balances flexibility with control.
Can you get the Generative AI Controller or AI Agents without Now Assist forCSM?
- No. There is no SKU for those features themselves, you need Pro Plus or Enterprise Plus for them
How are Assists different than Integration Hub transactions?
- Transactions are the “unit of currency” used to measure callouts to 3rd party systems usingspokes. Assists are the unit of currency for measuring calls to private ServiceNow’s LLMs. If a customer configures connections to public LLM provider (Open AI andAzure Open AI) using the Generative AI controller callouts will also consume Assists.