Customer self-service for Sales Customer Relationship Management
Summarize
Summary of Customer self-service for Sales Customer Relationship Management
The Business Portal in Sales Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a secure, web-based self-service interface designed for business-to-business (B2B) customers. It allows customers to independently discover products, configure offerings, place orders, request quotes, and manage invoices. This portal complements internal sales workflows by integrating directly with core CRM data and processes, streamlining order placement, reducing reliance on manual sales interactions, and accelerating revenue generation. It also offers integrated access to knowledge articles, community forums, service catalogs, and chatbots.
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Key Features
- Order Management: Customers can create and track orders, request updates for orders or order items, and submit order-related cases using natural language or voice.
- Quote Management: Customers can request quotes within the portal and view quotes generated either from those requests or by sales agents.
- Invoice Management: Customers have access to detailed invoice and invoice line information to monitor billing and identify discrepancies. They can dispute individual line items or multiple invoices through a direct self-service channel.
- AI-powered Self-Service: The portal leverages ServiceNow Otto for Order Management AI applications to enable autonomous case submissions for orders and invoices via conversational natural language or voice interactions. This includes AI agents for managing order operations and invoice disputes, along with guided workflows for finance agents to resolve disputes efficiently.
- Sales Agent Collaboration: Sales agents manage and resolve orders, quotes, and invoice cases submitted through the portal using the CSM Configurable Workspace, facilitating tasks such as quote review, price adjustments, and customer communication.
Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
- Reduced Sales Cycle: Empowering customers to place orders and request quotes independently accelerates pricing and proposal turnaround, leading to faster revenue realization.
- Lower Support Load: Self-service capabilities reduce dependency on customer service agents for routine inquiries and issue resolution.
- Enhanced Transparency: Providing direct access to invoice details and dispute mechanisms improves customer satisfaction and simplifies billing inquiries.
- Improved Efficiency: AI-powered conversational and voice agents streamline customer interactions, enhancing self-service experience while enabling internal teams to focus on higher-value activities.
- Seamless Integration: The portal integrates with existing CRM workflows, ensuring consistent data and process alignment between customers and sales agents.
Support your business-to-business (B2B) customers by enabling self-service capabilities through the Business Portal to create and manage orders, invoices, and requests for quotes.
Business Portal overview
The Business Portal is a self‑service, customer‑facing web interface in Sales Customer Relationship Management that enables B2B customers to discover products, configure offerings, and place orders directly through a secure, web‑based experience. The portal complements internal sales workflows, enabling your customers to engage with the sales process independently while remaining fully integrated with core CRM data and processes. The Business Portal, which is based on Customer Service Management, streamlines order placement, reduces dependency on manual sales interactions, and accelerates revenue generation. It also provides integrated access to knowledge articles, community forums, service catalogs, and chatbots.
Business Portal benefits
The Business Portal provides benefits for administrators and B2B customers. Administrators can easily manage and administer the portal and install plugins to enable new features. The following table lists the benefits for B2B customers.
| Benefit | Feature |
|---|---|
| Enable customers to place orders independently, reducing sales cycle time and accelerating revenue realization. | Create orders from the Business Portal |
| Accelerate pricing and proposal turnaround by enabling customers to request quotes directly within the portal. | Submit a request for quote from the Business Portal |
| Enable customers to view quotes generated from requests for quotes (RFQs) or quotes created offline by a sales agent. | View quotes from the Business Portal |
| Reduce customer dependency on customer service agents for routine order inquiries or raising order issues such as quantity or address disputes. | |
| Provide customers access to their invoice and invoice line details so they can track billing information and identify discrepancies. | View invoices on the Business Portal |
| Simplify invoice inquiries and dispute management through a direct, trackable self‑service support channel. |
Dispute a specific line item on an invoice against your account using the Business Portal Dispute multiple invoices against your account using the Business Portal |
Generative and agentic AI applications for enabling customer self-service
The ServiceNow Otto for Order Management includes the following applications that enable business-to-business (B2B) customers to submit order and invoice cases autonomously in simple conversational format from the Business Portal.
- Manage Order Operations
- The Manage Order Operations application (com.sn_ord_ops_aias) includes the following AI agents:
- Manage order operations AI agent: Enables B2B customers to submit order cases autonomously from the Business Portal using natural language.
- Order exception AI voice agent: Enables B2B customers to submit order cases using voice calls.
- Manage Invoice Operations
- The Manage Invoice Operations application (com.sn_inv_ops_aias) includes the following AI agents and agentic workflow:
- Invoice dispute intake assistant AI agent: Enables B2B customers to submit invoice dispute cases autonomously from the Business Portal using natural language.
- Invoice dispute AI voice agent: Enables customers to submit invoice dispute cases using voice calls.
- Invoice dispute assist agentic workflow: Enables finance agents to validate and resolve invoice disputes using a guided experience from the Now Assist panel in the CSM/FSM Configurable Workspace. Internally, it uses the invoice dispute support assistant AI agent to validate invoice information, trigger API calls to check quantity discrepancies and provide resolutions.
Business Portal and sales agents
Sales agents don’t directly use the Business Portal, but work on orders, order cases, invoice cases, and RFQs submitted through the Business Portal from the CSM Configurable Workspace. Depending on the process for orders, order cases, invoice cases, and RFQs, the agents work on their assignments and work with the customers to provide resolution. For example, reviewing RFQs, converting RFQs to quotes, applying price adjustments, and returning the quote to the customer for approval.