Getting your user experience right delivers big business benefits. Here's how ServiceNow can help.

[Kelvin Yip]

ServiceNow is designed to deliver great user experiences. That’s one of the key reasons why so many organizations use ServiceNow. When you get the user experience right, you make your workflows more efficient, increase user engagement, and drive adoption—you get more value out of your ServiceNow investment, and you achieve that value faster. It’s why ServiceNow takes user experience (UX) so seriously, and it’s why we have an army of product design experts working on UX every day.

However, just because ServiceNow is designed for great UX, that doesn’t mean you’re just going to press a button and deliver a wonderful experience. It takes thought, effort, and expertise. Why? Think about ServiceNow as a high-quality, off-the-rack suit. It’s a great suit, but it isn’t made specifically for you. To get the perfect fit, you need an expert tailor to adjust it for your organization. 

The ServiceNow platform is incredibly configurable, so it’s easy to adjust. That’s part of its power. But that configurability also makes it easy to get your UX wrong, which can have serious business consequences—poor adoption, dissatisfied users, and disappointing ROI. That’s why ServiceNow Expert Services has a dedicated UX team to help customers deliver the optimal UX for their business and avoid UX pitfalls.

What can go wrong with UX?

When people hear the term UX, the first thing they think about is well-designed screens that are easy to use. That’s an important part of UX, but it’s much more than that. It’s about all of the things that affect the user experience. That includes data and workflows, not just presentation. Here are some examples based on what our UX team has seen with customers who got their UX wrong.

• Poorly designed workflows. We can’t stress enough how getting your workflows right is critical for UX. They need to be efficient and reflect how people actually work. ServiceNow delivers well-designed workflows out of the box, but these often need to be customized—and, of course, you can also build your own ServiceNow workflows. It’s a terrible idea to automate existing bad processes, or to radically change processes without understanding the user impact. To deliver great UX, you need to map out your processes through the eyes of your users, making sure you get their input and feedback.
• Badly structured or inconsistent data. Data hierarchies are incredibly important, especially when it comes to navigation. No one wants to scroll through a list of 500 items to find what they want, or—at the other extreme—drill down through six layers of options to arrive at a single item. Information also needs to be presented clearly and consistently. For example, if you don’t have a consistent, streamlined format for your knowledge articles, you’ll just confuse your users and create a bad impression. Unless you get this right, users will just stop using the platform.
• Cognitive overload. This one is about screen design. It’s easy to do things that break human cognition and make it hard for people to use the system. For instance, one ServiceNow customer used huge amounts of red in their screen designs because red was their brand color. Unfortunately, excessive amounts of red cause significant eye strain, which creates an awful user experience. Gigantic forms with dozens of fields are another example. There’s just too much to take in, which slows people down, increases mistakes, and—ultimately—prevents adoption.
• Not supporting business goals. You can deliver a wonderful user experience, but unless that experience supports what you’re trying to achieve, things can go terribly wrong. Here’s a simple case in point. One ServiceNow customer launched self-service to empower their end users and reduce calls to their service desk. However, they got very low self-service adoption, which left their service desk still buried in calls. Why? Because they put the service desk phone number in big numbers right at the top of the self-service page. And, of course, their users did what they were being prompted to do and picked up the phone.
• Accessibility. For many ServiceNow customers, accessibility is a top priority. But, because they aren’t familiar with the principles of accessible design, they end up making design mistakes that adversely affect both employees and customers. In some cases, this is as simple as not taking into account conditions such as red-green blindness, but in other cases more subtle issues come into play, such as insufficient contrast.

This isn’t a comprehensive list. For instance, system performance can be a major UX issue—nobody wants to wait five minutes for a report because of a poorly written report script. But it does illustrate the breadth of topics that UX needs to include and the importance of getting these right.

How can ServiceNow help?

Our Expert Services UX team works with ServiceNow customers to create outstanding user experiences that drive better business outcomes. Whether you’re just starting on your ServiceNow journey or need help with your existing UX, our UX experts will partner with you to understand your goals and challenges, analyze your UX strategy and implementation, and provide actionable recommendations on how to optimize and enhance your UX.

Why work with ServiceNow?

What sets us apart is our people. Unlike other UX consultants, our Expert Services team combines unmatched UX expertise with a deep technical knowledge of the ServiceNow platform—knowledge that’s amplified by a deep relationship with ServiceNow product teams. That means we can provide UX guidance that leverages the full power of the platform while adhering to platform best practices and minimizing technical debt. Not only do you get a better UX that’s tailored for your organization, but you also get a more sustainable UX with a lower cost of ownership. 

Our UX team is also totally committed to your success. We’re not just driven by billable hours. In fact, customer satisfaction is right at the top of every team member’s yearly objectives. That makes us a true partner—our north star is to enable customers to become self-sufficient, unlike some consulting organizations that are just interested in repeat services engagements.

To find out more about how ServiceNow can help you deliver better user experiences and business outcomes, talk to your ServiceNow Account Executive and the Expert Services team.

Ready for more?

• Get involved in the UX Special Interest Group, a community for all UX topics, including resources, methods, and tips and tricks.

[anubhavkapoor76]

You nailed it to the core @Kelvin Yip 

[chriss1331a]

ServiceNow is designed for great user experiences, but achieving this requires thoughtful customization. Poorly designed workflows, inconsistent data, cognitive overload, and accessibility issues can hinder UX. ServiceNow's Expert Services UX team helps optimize these aspects, ensuring efficient workflows, clear data, and user-friendly designs for better business outcomes.

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