If you’re working in the Technology, Media, and Telecommunications (TMT) space, you’ll notice that many organizations outsource portions of their case management operations—whether by region, by account, or using other criteria.
There are several methods available for outsourcing case management. For example, you might use Service Bridge to transfer cases directly to the external service provider handling your outsourced operations or implement another integration solution. One significant challenge emerges when your external Service Providers/Partners don't have their own ServiceNow instances and must use yours instead.
From an architectural perspective, the challenge always lies in onboarding a third-party org to your platform while ensuring the right level of access is granted. One common solution involves leveraging Access Control Lists (ACLs) and business rules to secure case access and create an onboarding process for the outsourced business. Although effective, this approach can be complex , labour-intensive and hard to maintain.
This raises an important question: Does ServiceNow natively support an outsourced customer service process and data model?
The answer is Yes. The Outsourced Customer Service plugin supports outsourced customer service processes and data model through an external service organization structure.
Here’s all you need to know to start using the Outsourced Customer Service plugin:
- Enable the Outsourced Customer Service plugin.
- Define your external service provider:
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Navigate to Customer Service > Administrator > Outsourced Service Providers.
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Create a new record and specify your external service provider.
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Set the Service Provider Type to "Customer Service".
- Define an internal manager responsible for overseeing this external service provider. Ensure the manager has the
sn_csm_ocs.managerrole.
- Define the default assignment group for case transfers:
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Under the Case Transfer tab, specify the default internal assignment group. Cases that external agents cannot resolve will be transferred to this internal group.
- Set outsourcing criteria:
Determine clearly what you intend to outsource. For instance, if you decide to outsource all cases related to the Boxeo account, navigate to the Outsourcing Criteria related list and create new criteria specifying this rule.
- Create dedicated groups for external provider teams:
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Navigate to the Groups module to create the necessary groups for your external service provider teams. Assign these groups clearly to manage outsourced cases efficiently.
- Onboard your external agents:
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To onboard external fulfillers who will handle your cases, you have two options:
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Use the Onboard Staff UI action (recommended) to automatically assign appropriate roles to new users.
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Alternatively, navigate to the Service Organization related list and manually create new records.
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- Assign external agents to their groups:
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Finally, ensure you add the newly created external staff members to their respective external service provider groups.
