What's new in Customer Service Management in the Quebec release
Welcome to Quebec, the latest release of the Now Platform®! With it comes several new capabilities in Customer Service Management, a Customer Workflows product. This blog summarizes the most notable, so be sure to read the release notes to get all the details. (See also the Field Service Management and Connected Operations release blogs to learn about additions in those products.)
Note that Quebec adds a new license package for Customer Service Management: Enterprise. This brings the total number of packages to three: Standard, Professional, and Enterprise. Each new feature highlighted here will indicate which package includes it. You can compare the major features available in each by visiting the “Packages” section of the Customer Service Management product page.
And finally, we categorize customer service activities as being part of the customer experience, the agent experience (both of these part of the larger customer engagement picture), or customer operations (where customer-oriented work takes place both within customer service as well as in other departments). The capabilities mentioned here been organized in that manner.
Let’s dive in!
Customer experience
Companies make large investments in their web presence. Providing service options across that landscape is critical to improving customer experience yet requires time-consuming and expensive customization. Enter Engagement Messenger. It solves this problem by offering the ability to embed customer self-service directly into other desktop or mobile web pages. This includes Virtual Agent, intelligent AI search, knowledge, service catalog, case management, and appointment booking as well as live chat and asynchronous messaging. With its fast deployment and lower total cost of ownership, Engagement Messenger’s embedded service experience helps reduce inbound case volume and improve customer satisfaction. Engagement Messenger is included in the Standard, Professional, and Enterprise packages.
On the topic of asynchronous messaging, today’s customers want a convenient means of interacting with customer service. In Quebec, Customer Service Management will continue to extend Mobile Messaging by adding support for three popular messaging platforms: Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and LINE. Conversations can be customer-initiated, agent-initiated, and–new in Quebec–notification-initiated. Note that some limitations exist, depending on the messaging platform (refer to the documentation for details). It all adds up to fast issue resolution and a better customer experience. Mobile Messaging is included in the Professional and Enterprise packages. Supported apps can be downloaded from the ServiceNow Store. WhatsApp integration requires a separate Twilio contract.
A few other customer experience enhancements are also included in this release. The Walk-up Experience (introduced in the Paris release) has improved the consumer/contact details available to employees serving customers and guest names can now be displayed on queue screen. The Knowledge Management dashboard has been updated to track guest user activity (such as searches, article views, click ranks, and click-thru rates). These enhancements are included in the Standard, Professional, and Enterprise packages.
Agent Experience
Agent efficiency and how quickly they can resolve customer issues is tied closely to how tailored the tools are to their work. In Quebec, it’s now easier to build custom pages with Customer Service Management Configurable Workspace. Page layouts and components can be configured using the drag and drop capabilities of UI Builder. Layouts can now be optimized to fit the needs of the agent and organization. Customer Service Management Configurable Workspace and UI Builder are included in the Standard, Professional, and Enterprise packages.
Customer Central is now available on Case, Contact, Account and Consumer records. From within CSM Configurable Workspace, Customer Central now allows agents to view sold products, install base items, installed products, work orders, SMS and walk-up interactions, and households. Customer Central is included in the Standard, Professional, and Enterprise packages.
Workforce Optimization, first available in Paris in Limited Access, is now generally available. The value it brings can be broken down into four areas:
- Channel management - customer service managers can monitor real-time queue status, agent status and productivity, workload, and KPIs such as Number of Customers Waiting, Agent Availability, and Average Handle Time across multiple channels. They can take action to reallocate work and can monitor and assist agents in real-time.
- Scheduling - managers can set agents’ schedules, manage time off requests, and respond to shift swap requests between agents.
- Team performance - by specifying each agent’s primary assignment group in their user record, custom reports that track KPIs relevant to individual teams can be monitored.
- Coaching - coaching opportunities can be created by creating triggers that identify work for managers to review. Training can then be assigned to the employee to improve the skill. Machine learning can also be used to predict and recommend agent skills.
Workforce Optimization provides clear visibility into performance, makes customer service operations more efficient, and gives managers actionable tools to manage their most important resource–people. Workforce Management is included in the Enterprise package.
When using Workforce Optimization, Shift-based Assignment can also be activated in Advanced Work Assignment. It automates the flow of work to match agent schedules across shifts. This limits customer issues not being reviewed or resolved before an agent’s shift ends and helps reduce overtime. It also supports a “follow the sun” approach to customer service for global organizations. Shift-based Assignment is included in the Enterprise package.
Some additional agent experience features in this release bear mentioning. A fixed/floating email editor makes composing email from the Activity Stream easier. Conversations (emails and comments) in the Activity Stream can now be filtered and sorted. Enhanced work item tracking of each event in the work item lifecycle (e.g., queued, assigned, etc.) has been added to Advanced Work Assignment for better visibility and troubleshooting. These enhancements are included in the Standard, Professional, and Enterprise packages.
Service Operations
Organizations are often challenged to visualize end-to-end processes and uncover bottlenecks. They typically resort to looking at reports, hiring consultants, and holding workshops with stakeholders to map out processes manually. This is time consuming, costly, and error-prone. And even when successful, there’s no easy way to connect KPI trends to underlying processes. Process Optimization changes that by enabling companies to visually analyze and improve customer service processes using ServiceNow audit log data to automatically create process maps tied to KPIs. Process owners and analysts can now quickly visualize customer service process flows; perform in-depth root cause analysis; and view the most-traveled paths, path volume, and elapsed time through each path. In this manner, hidden delays and opportunities for automation can be uncovered. Process Optimization is included in the Enterprise package.
Case management is central to customer service. Prior to the Quebec release, some case management use cases were not easily supported:
- There was no easy way to support shared services teams: consider customer service at an insurance company serving both company-employed insurance agents and independent agents.
- Creating cases requires a customer yet sometimes branch or retail store employees need to raise a case for the branch itself; for instance, to indicate an error in a promotional email sent to customers.
- Middle- and back-office workers who support customer service might only work on specific case tasks assigned to them, such as an employee in the credit department performing credit checks.
The new Contributor User roles and enhanced case capabilities addresses each of these scenarios. Contributor User requires special licensing. Please contact your account executive for details.
Guided Decisions debuted in the Paris release and has been enhanced. In Quebec, the Agent Workspace allows relevant decision trees to be recommended to agents as next-best actions based on context and conditions, helping them resolve complex issues fast. The authoring experience now permits decision trees to be nested. Guidance outputs enable triggering further actions when a guidance is reached. For example, a guidance node may suggest an agent run a connectivity test. If the test returns a “failed” status, this triggers additional guidance such as checking if a device is accessible. Warning, use of Guided Decisions may lead to fewer case reassignments and escalations, faster agent onboarding, better policy adherence, and increased up-sell and cross-sell! Guided Decisions is included in the Professional and Enterprise packages.
Playbooks, also introduced in Paris, gains several improvements. An enhanced visual design helps improve agent productivity. Multiple playbooks per record is now supported, and they can be triggered manually or via automation. Playbooks can be canceled when no longer valid. Pre-packaged playbooks for Complaints, Onboarding, and Product Support are available on the ServiceNow Store. Playbooks is included in the Professional and Enterprise packages.
Customers want to know when their problem will be resolved, making Estimated Time To Resolve (or ETTR) such an important metric to get correct; however, ask most customer service teams and they’ll tell you it can be challenging. ETTR in Customer Service Management uses machine learning to predict the estimated time to resolve a case based on previous data of the same or similar cases. Now, by activating the Time to Resolve ribbon component, ETTR will always be at the agent’s fingertips. Estimated Time To Resolve is included in the Professional and Enterprise packages.
Deliver more effective and efficient service by integrating Customer Service Management with systems of record. Integration Spokes and IntegrationHub make this possible, permitting complex processes to be completely digitized and enabling customer service agents to quickly view full customer profiles and initiate actions in third-party systems. Spokes are available on the ServiceNow Store and currently include Oracle Financial Cloud, SAP Ariba, SAP ECC (RFC/IDOC), Workday Financials, Salesforce, and SAP Fieldglass. Visit the store for the latest. Integration Spokes require a license to IntegrationHub. Please contact your account executive for details.
Cloud Call Center for CSM, previously released on the ServiceNow Store, is now part of Customer Service Management. It provides a framework for delivering a modern voice experience by integrating with multiple vendors. Imagine integrating voice calls with digital workflows–the IVR for the modern era is here! In addition, phone queues can be monitored in Workforce Optimization by incorporating voice channel data. Get up-and-running quickly with pre-built components for common call flows. Learn more about Cloud Call Center for CSM here. Cloud Call Center for CSM is included in the Professional and Enterprise packages. Workforce Optimization features require the Enterprise package. Separate licensing for third party phone systems such as Amazon Connect is also required.
Learn more
These are just a few of the many new features coming to Customer Service Management in the Quebec release. You can read more about these and other new capabilities in the Product Documentation. Attend the Release Broadcast on March 18th at 8:00 AM Pacific / 11:00 AM Eastern to see some of the features demonstrated. Follow these actions up with a conversation and catered demo with your account team (and explore which package will deliver the most value to your company) or contact us here. Also be sure to visit the Customer Success Center to review essential resources to assist you in planning your upgrade. Welcome to Quebec!
Please note: other company names, product names, and logos may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
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Join us for the The Now Platform Quebec event.
Register below to attend the Now Platform® Quebec release broadcast and hear about more capabilities to deliver cross-enterprise digital workflows that connect people, functions, and systems to accelerate innovation, increase agility and enhance productivity
Your event time will be automatically set based the country selected during registration.
AMS/EMEA: March 18 at 8 am PT/11 am ET/3 pm GMT
APJ: March 23 at 2 pm AEDT/12 pm JST KST
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