Self-service for Customer Service Management
Summarize
Summary of Self-service for Customer Service Management
The Customer Service Management application enables ServiceNow customers to deliver efficient and scalable customer support through self-service portals. These portals integrate key resources such as knowledge articles, community forums, service catalogs, and chatbots, empowering customers to independently resolve issues and submit requests. This approach improves customer satisfaction while reducing agent workload.
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Portal Types and Capabilities
There are three configurable portal types tailored to different customer segments:
- Customer Service Portal: Designed for business-to-business (B2B) customers.
- Business Portal: Also for B2B customers, built with configurable widgets to customize the experience.
- Consumer Service Portal: Targeted at business-to-consumer (B2C) customers.
All portals provide consistent self-service features and Virtual Agent support to guide users efficiently.
Key Self-Service Features
- Service Catalog: Allows customers to browse and request products or services directly from the portal, with the ability to track request statuses.
- Knowledge Base: Provides searchable articles to help customers find troubleshooting information and answers, promoting self-resolution.
- Community Forums: Facilitates engagement and collaboration between customers and agents, enabling access to shared solutions and discussions.
- Chat with Virtual Agent: Offers automated conversational assistance to guide customers through self-service options and enables seamless escalation to live agents via Connect Support when needed.
- Engagement Messenger: Extends access to support and information within third-party web applications outside the ServiceNow environment.
Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
By implementing these portals and features, organizations can streamline customer interactions, increase first-contact resolution rates, and deliver consistent support experiences 24/7. The integration of Virtual Agent and live chat ensures customers receive timely help, while knowledge and community resources empower self-help. Engagement Messenger further broadens reach across external channels.
Getting Started
To implement these capabilities, customers should configure the appropriate portals using the Service Portal application and activate Virtual Agent and related components. Detailed setup guides are available for configuring Customer, Consumer, and Business Portals as well as chat and Engagement Messenger features.
With the Customer Service Management application, you can provide service for your customers through self-service portals that are integrated with knowledge articles, community forums, service catalogs, and chatbots.
Customer and consumer self-service portals
By using the Service Portal application, you can create portals that empower your customers to resolve issues and submit cases and requests for themselves. To help direct customers to the right portal resources, you can also activate the Virtual Agent application for Customer Service Management.
Portal types
You can configure three types of portals to support your customers and consumers:- Customer Service Portal: Supports your business-to-business (B2B) customers
- Business Portal: Supports your business-to-business (B2B) customers and is built using configurable widgets
- Consumer Service Portal: Supports your business-to-consumer (B2C) customers
Both portals offer the same self-service and Virtual Agent assistance features.
Self-service on portals
- Service catalog
- With the Service Catalog application, you can create service catalogs where customers can request items, such as service and product offerings. You can enable customers to request items from the portal by
associating one or more service catalogs with the portal. Customers can also track the status of open requests from the portal.
To learn more about Service catalog, see Service catalog integration with the Customer and Consumer Service Portals.
- Knowledge base
- With the Knowledge Management application, you can create knowledge bases with articles to share information with customers on the portal. Customers can search the knowledge bases for information, such as
troubleshooting or task resolutions, to resolve issues and answer questions.
To learn more about searching the Knowledge base, see Search the knowledge base.
- Community
- With the Communities application, you can create forums for agents and customers to connect, engage, and collaborate with each other. On the portal, customers can search for community content that could provide
the solutions and answers that they need.
To learn more about communities, see Communities.
- Chat
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With the Virtual Agent platform, you can design and build automated conversations that help your customers get the help that they need.
As customers answer questions and select options presented by Virtual Agent, they’re directed to a self-service resource.
If customers want to chat with an agent, Virtual Agent hands them off to a live agent. To provide this resource, use the Connect Support feature.
To learn more about chat, see Configuring the chat channel.
- Engagement Messenger
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With the Engagement Messenger, your customers can easily access the information or services they need from your third-party web applications, even if they’re located outside of the ServiceNow environment.
To learn more about Engagement Messenger, see Set up Engagement Messenger.
To get started with the portals, see Configure the Customer and Consumer Service Portals and Configure Business Portal.