Subscribe Home Conversations On AI App Development CRM Enterprise IT Ethics & Governance Futures HR Industries ServiceNow on ServiceNow Platform Foundations Products & Solutions All topics For Leaders In IT & Dev Customer Experience Finance, Operations & Strategy Employee Experience Security & Risk News & Events People & Culture My List Explore All
June 4, 2026 3 min Knowledge 2026 insights for sales and service leaders The announcements, sessions, and stories that are redefining customer relationship management CRM Events
Eric Bensley
Eric Bensley VP, Product Marketing for CRM, ServiceNow
Attendees at ServiceNow Knowledge 2026
Top takeaways Bolting AI onto legacy CRM doesn't solve problems. The foundation has to be right before AI can deliver on its promise.  The conversations at Knowledge were about where to go post-AI pilot with measurable outcomes already in hand.  Attendees were asking how quickly they could make a shift to Autonomous CRM, a whole new way to work. 
Alt text

Coming out of Knowledge 2026, I was struck by the maturity of the conversations surrounding AI. Thousands of people moved through the dedicated customer relationship management (CRM) section of the Knowledge Expo.  

Rather than hearing attendees chat about getting started with AI, I heard them comparing notes on where AI agents should operate autonomously versus where humans should lead. The signal was clear: CRM is no longer about just tracking work; it's about finishing work. Here are key insights from the event for sales and service leaders. 

Setting a new foundation  

The Autonomous CRM: Smarter service, faster sales session on Day 1 set the tone. The core argument was simple: You can't bolt AI onto a broken foundation. Legacy CRM was built to record, not act.  

Take something as straightforward as a customer changing an order. That request touches inventory, billing, fulfillment, and three different teams that don't share a unified system. AI doesn’t solve the manual workarounds and cobbled-together customer data systems that keep things running; it exposes them. 

Terence Chesire, group vice president of CRM and industry workflows at ServiceNow, spoke about the challenge organizations face as they adopt AI within their existing CRM systems. "Conversational AI does not get you to action,” he said. “What we've done is married AI with a system of record and a system of action to perform these end-to-end processes."  
CRM is no longer about just tracking work; it's about finishing work.

"Nobody wakes up and says, 'Gosh, I want to do a CRM implementation transformation,'” added Kevin Abbott, head of global IT for Panasonic Avionics. “Nobody does, ’cause it's hard. It's really hard. But you know what's even harder? Working in a platform year after year after year after year and not making progress."  

Everyone in the room knew exactly what he meant. Many are undertaking similar transformations or have plans to. Their strong desire to move off legacy systems has fueled ServiceNow’s massive growth in the CRM business.  
 

Customers are putting Autonomous CRM to work 

ServiceNow Autonomous CRM is already helping to resolve more than 100 million customer cases, orchestrating over 16 million orders, and configuring more than 7 million quotes every month.

Customers such as ROSSMANN, Europe's largest family-owned drugstore chain, shared their journeys from AI pilot to production. Alexander Blanckarts, head of IT Germany at ROSSMANN, walked attendees through the company’s maturity arc from fragmented to AI-resolved work, with the numbers to back up its claims: 

  • 98% accuracy on AI-driven case resolution 
  • $23 million to $35 million in projected annual savings 
  • 50% of stores live with Retail Service Management

Many other customers (such as Boomi, Bell Canada, and the NHL) arrived with projects already in production, ready to share outcomes: faster quotes, accelerated case resolution, more first-time fixes, and more time with customers.  
You can't bolt AI onto a broken foundation. Legacy CRM was built to record, not act.

The announcements that matter for your team

The week was also packed with product news, including some of the latest innovations for CRM across sales and service. 

AI specialists for customer service resolve, not just respond 

The new CRM Case Management AI Specialist handles the full range of a case, from triage to action to resolution, across voice, chat, and digital channels without requiring a human agent to pick it up. Most AI in service environments today suggests the next step, but this AI specialist can complete it. It delivers a fully automated self-service experience end to end. 

Field service gets a full AI stack  

Three capabilities were introduced at Knowledge for field service organizations: 

  • AI-powered schedule optimization to automate dispatch at scale  
  • The Part Manager AI Agent to help ensure technicians arrive with the right parts 
  • ServiceNow AI Lens to bring real-time operational intelligence to the field 

These advancements will help turn every visit into a first-time fix. 

Agentic quoting builds deals from conversations  

New agentic quoting builds quotes directly from chat and call transcripts and makes smart product recommendations in the process. For revenue operations and sales teams managing complex configurations, the benefits of shifting from manual configure, price, quote to AI-driven quoting show up in heightened deal velocity and deal size.  

Additionally, a new original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partnership with Tenon brings native marketing automation to ServiceNow, connecting lead generation to pipeline in a single operating environment for faster response times and higher conversions. 

One autonomous CRM platform for any industry  

Autonomous CRM for Industries grounds AI in the regulatory requirements, data models, and operational realities of financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, telecom, retail, tech, government, and more. 

Find out how ServiceNow Autonomous CRM takes action on your behalf and executes across sales and service to drive revenue and delight customers. 
Dive into more conversations AI App Development CRM Enterprise IT Ethics & Governance Human Resources Industries ServiceNow on ServiceNow Platform Foundations Products & Solutions All Topics
Stay in the know Join Us
stay in know image
Alt
Your work email puts us to work