Customer Service Virtual Agent conversations

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Customer Service Virtual Agent conversations

    Customer Service Virtual Agent conversations provide predefined chatbot topics that help your customers resolve product-related issues efficiently. By integrating Natural Language Understanding (NLU) models, the virtual agent can interpret customer intents and direct them to the appropriate conversation topic, enhancing the support experience.

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    Activating Virtual Agent Conversations

    To enable these chatbot conversations, administrators must:

    • Activate the Glide Virtual Agent plugin (com.glide.cs.chatbot).
    • Enable the Customer Service Virtual Agent Conversations plugin (com.sncsm.virtualagent).
    • Publish pre-defined, read-only virtual agent topics and topic blocks, which can be duplicated and customized to fit specific needs.

    Key predefined topics include:

    • Check Case Status: Allows users to search and check the status of their existing cases.
    • Get Help with a Product: Helps users troubleshoot product issues, search knowledge articles, or create a case.
    • Get Help: Supports anonymous users to find help via keyword searches, knowledge articles, or live agent transfer; can integrate with Facebook messaging.
    • Get Help with an Order: Assists users with order-related issues, knowledge search, or case creation.
    • Submit Request: Enables users to request catalog items.
    • Create Case: Allows case creation when no relevant topics match the customer’s issue.
    • Update Case: Enables users to update existing cases.

    Integrating NLU with Virtual Agent Conversations

    Enabling the Customer Service Virtual Agent Conversations plugin also activates the Customer Service NLU Model for Virtual Agent Conversations (com.sncsm.nlu), which provides predefined intents that map directly to chatbot topics:

    • CheckCaseStatus
    • GetHelp
    • GetHelpWithProduct
    • GetHelpWithOrder
    • SubmitRequest

    Administrators can customize these intents by importing them into Studio and linking them with corresponding chatbot topics. Enabling ServiceNow NLU in the general settings is necessary for full functionality.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Quickly implement out-of-the-box virtual agent topics to improve self-service and reduce support load.
    • Leverage NLU to provide more accurate, intent-driven navigation within chatbot conversations.
    • Customize and extend predefined topics and intents to align with specific customer service workflows.
    • Support both authenticated and anonymous users, including integration with messaging platforms like Facebook.

    Predefined Customer Service Virtual Agent chatbot conversations enable your customers to get help with the product. Integrating Natural Language Understanding (NLU) models with your virtual agent chatbot topics enables chatbots to analyze, understand, and navigate the user to the right topic based on the inferred intent.

    A conversation topic defines the dialog between the Virtual Agent (chatbot) and the user to accomplish a specific goal.

    Activating Virtual Agent conversations

    The system administrator or a virtual agent admin must do the following to enable the chatbot conversations:
    • Enable the Glide Virtual Agent plugin (com.glide.cs.chatbot).
    • Enable the Customer Service Virtual Agent Conversations plugin (com.sn_csm.virtualagent).
    • Publish the following read-only pre-defined virtual agent chatbot topics and topic blocks:
      Note:
      You can duplicate a topic and then customize it.
      • Check Case Status (Template)

        Users can search cases and check the status of an existing case.

      • Get Help with a Product (Template)

        Users can get help on an issue with a product, search relevant knowledge articles, or create a case for the issue.

      • Get Help (Template)

        This topic is for users who are not logged in and want to chat anonymously. Users can use keywords and search relevant knowledge articles or choose to be transferred to a live agent. You can integrate this topic with the Virtual agent - Facebook messaging integration to enable chat using your messaging application.

      • Get Help with an Order (Template)

        Users can get help on an issue with an existing order, search relevant knowledge articles, or create a case for the issue.

      • Submit Request (Template)

        Users can submit a request for searching and using one of the catalog items.

      • Create Case

        Creates a case from Virtual Agent when no relevant topics for the issue you have are displayed.

      • Update Case

        Users can update a case from Virtual agent.

    Your users can run the published topics in your chat support client.

    Activating Virtual Agent conversations with NLU

    • The Customer Service NLU Model for Virtual Agent Conversations (com.sn_csm.nlu) plugin is automatically enabled when you enable the Customer Service Virtual Agent Conversations plugin (com.sn_csm.virtualagent).
      After you enable the plugin, you can view the following read-only intents for the Customer Service NLU for VA models in Studio:
      • CheckCaseStatus
      • GetHelp
      • GetHelpWithProduct
      • GetHelpWithOrder
      • SubmitRequest

      Each intent corresponds to a chatbot topic. To customize an intent, you can import an existing intent from the Customer Service NLU for Virtual Agent model and then link the NLU model with the associated intent for the topic.

    • Enable ServiceNow NLU in the general settings.