Using Email Interaction for Customer Service Management
Summarize
Summary of Using Email Interaction for Customer Service Management
The Email Interaction for Customer Service Management (CSM) application enables agents to efficiently manage customer emails by converting them into interactions rather than immediately creating cases. This approach helps agents resolve simple queries directly through interactions and escalate to cases only when further investigation is necessary. It enhances operational clarity by distinguishing effort spent on initial query intake from the effort required for in-depth resolution.
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Key Features
- Interaction Creation and Routing: Incoming customer emails are converted into inbound interactions routed via Advanced Work Assignment (AWA) or external Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) systems. Routing source determines agent capabilities such as wrap-up and transfer functions.
- Inbound Email Handling: Agents respond to emails within interactions, preserving conversation history. Cases are created from interactions only when deeper investigation is needed.
- Email Replies on Closed Interactions: Customer replies to closed email threads are automatically linked to the correct open case or interaction, maintaining context continuity and ensuring the assigned agent receives the response. AI-based keyword matching assists when multiple cases exist.
- Outbound Email Interactions: Agents can initiate outbound emails directly from contact or consumer records, which automatically create a Work-In-Progress interaction. Features include draft preservation, configurable reminders for customer follow-up, and automatic closure of inactive interactions.
- Handling Multiple Agents: By default, outbound email drafts from multiple agents to the same customer consolidate into a single interaction, with configurable options to assign separate interactions per agent if desired.
- Wrap-up Codes: Agents categorize interaction outcomes using wrap-up codes, which support both AWA and CCaaS routing. Codes improve reporting accuracy and conformance tracking. The system can also assign wrap-up codes automatically based on interaction closure scenarios.
- AI Summarization: Agents can generate AI-based summaries of email threads on demand to quickly grasp key context without reading all messages (entitlement required).
- Transfer Capabilities: For CCaaS-routed interactions, agents can transfer emails to authorized queues or agents, updating records in both the ServiceNow instance and CCaaS system.
Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
- Reduces duplicate or unnecessary case creation by modeling emails as interactions first.
- Provides a unified agent experience across channels like voice, chat, and messaging by treating emails as interactions.
- Improves workload transparency by distinguishing intake effort (interactions) from resolution effort (cases).
- Ensures seamless conversation continuity through intelligent routing of email replies to existing cases or interactions.
- Enables efficient outbound email management with draft consolidation, reminders, and automatic interaction lifecycle handling.
- Supports enhanced reporting and compliance through standardized wrap-up codes and automatic assignment.
- Facilitates quicker understanding of email conversations via AI-generated summaries (where available).
Configuration and Extensibility
ServiceNow customers can customize interaction behaviors using system properties, such as controlling whether multiple agents share a single outbound interaction or each have separate ones. Wrap-up codes and routing configurations can also be tailored to match organizational processes. Integration with CCaaS platforms supports advanced routing and transfer features.
Next Steps
- Review entitlement status for AI summarization and advanced email reply linking features.
- Configure wrap-up codes and routing preferences to align with your support workflows.
- Train agents on managing inbound and outbound email interactions within the CSM Configurable Workspace.
- Leverage reporting capabilities to monitor interaction handling efficiency and case escalation trends.
Email Interaction for CSM application enables agents to create interactions from customer emails, helping them resolve simple customer queries through these interactions. They can create a case from an interaction when further investigation is needed for resolving the customer query. This process provides clarity of the effort needed for customer query intake and actual investigation needed for query resolution.
- Streamlines operations by helping to prevent the creation of duplicate or unnecessary cases.
- Provides a consistent experience for agents across channels by modeling emails as an interaction, alongside voice, chat, and messaging channels.
- Clarity of effort needed for customer problem intake, represented by interactions.
- Clarity of effort needed for investigation and resolution, represented by cases.
- Enables agents to initiate outbound email interactions directly from contact or consumer records.
Email interaction routing
Email interactions can be routed through Advanced Work Assignment (AWA) or through an external Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solution. The system detects the routing source for each interaction, which determines the available agent actions such as wrap-up and transfer capabilities. For AWA-routed interactions, wrap-up codes are saved in the wrap-up segment table. For CCaaS-routed interactions, wrap-up codes are synced to both instance and the CCaaS system, and agents can transfer the interaction to another queue or agent.
Inbound email interactions
When a customer sends an email, the system creates an inbound interaction instead of a case and routes it to an available agent through Advanced Work Assignment (AWA) or a CCaaS provider. The agent reviews the interaction, responds through the activity stream, and resolves the query directly within the interaction. If the query requires further investigation, the agent creates a case from the interaction while preserving all communication history and context.
- Email-to-interaction conversion with automatic agent routing through AWA or CCaaS.
- Activity stream for viewing email threads and agent responses.
- Case creation from an interaction only when deeper investigation is needed.
- Interaction closure with wrap-up codes for reporting and conformance.
Outbound email interactions
Agents can initiate outbound email interactions directly from contact or consumer records in the CSM Configurable Workspace. When an agent composes and sends an email from a contact or consumer record, the system automatically creates a Work-In-Progress (WIP) outbound interaction and assigns it to the agent.
- Automatic WIP interaction creation when an agent opens the email composition window from a contact or consumer record.
- Draft email preservation with linking to the outbound interaction.
- Consolidation of drafts from multiple agents into a single WIP interaction (configurable).
- Configurable automated reminder emails for customers who haven’t responded.
- Automatic closure of inactive outbound interactions in the On Hold state after a configurable period, with the default set to 30 days.
- Automatic association of customer response emails to the same outbound interaction, with agent notification on the Ongoing tab.
Multiple agents composing email for the same customer
By default, when multiple agents initiate outbound emails for the same customer, the system consolidates all drafts into a single WIP interaction. The outbound interaction is assigned to the agent who initiates the email. If the agent composes the email but doesn’t send it immediately, and another agent composes an email to the same contact or consumer during this period, the second email is linked to the same outbound interaction and ownership is reassigned to the second agent. When the email is sent, the interaction is assigned to the agent who sends it.
This behavior is configurable using the (sn_eaai_core.create_outbound_interaction_per_agent.target_tables) system property. When a table is listed in this property, a new outbound interaction is created for each outbound email initiated by different agents for the same customer. For example, if Agent A and Agent B both compose emails to the same contact, each agent gets a separate outbound interaction instead of sharing one. When a table isn’t listed, all agent drafts are consolidated into a single WIP interaction.
For more information, see System properties for configuring Email Interaction.
Wrap-up codes for email interactions
When closing an email interaction, agents select an internal wrap-up code to categorize the outcome. Wrap-up codes support both AWA-routed and CCaaS-routed email interactions, improving reporting reliability and conformance tracking.
- Issue resolved: Agent resolved the customer query within the interaction.
- Task created: Automatically assigned when a case is created from the interaction.
- Closed due to customer inactivity: Automatically assigned when the system closes an inactive interaction.
Automatic wrap-up code assignment
| Scenario | Wrap-up code | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Agent creates a case from the interaction | Task created | Interaction is automatically closed. If the interaction is routed through CCaaS, the code is synced to CCaaS. |
| System closes inactive interaction (no customer response) | Closed due to customer inactivity | A scheduled job checks for On Hold interactions with no customer response and closes them. |
| Agent doesn’t submit a code within the timeout | Issue resolved (default) | The default code is applied automatically after the configured timeout period. The default timeout is 2 minutes. |
Transfer email interactions (CCaaS-routed)
For CCaaS-routed email interactions, agents can transfer the interaction to another queue or agent using the Transfer Email action. Only CCaaS-authorized queues and agents appear in the transfer options. When a transfer is initiated, the interaction record is updated in both CCaaS and the instance, and the current agent’s ownership and capacity is released.