Generative AI use cases: From hype to implementation

I’ve always believed technology drives business results. Over the past year, I’ve watched closely as generative AI (GenAI) has rapidly transitioned from a buzzword to an essential business tool. I believe we’re entering an era where GenAI hype meets practicality, value is realised, and potential is fulfilled.

At ServiceNow, we’re seeing enterprises transform their methods of operation and customer engagement with three primary generative AI use cases. Our digital technology (DT) team has also benefited from applying these use cases internally through our Now on Now program. We’re seeing real, tangible results from using our GenAI solution 120 days in.

Empowering self-service

AI-powered self-service is saving valuable time for employees, customers, and agents. It accelerates resolution times and minimises direct human intervention. This enables users to find solutions swiftly using AI search, AI conversations, and AI interventions, leading to higher self-service rates.
By providing this self-service path, these groups can intuitively—and easily—get the answers, direction, or resolution they need through technology without any human involvement.

When cases don’t make their way to the help desk or customer service centre, everyone wins. Agents get to work on more interesting cases. Employees and customers appreciate the autonomy and immediacy that comes with self-service. They can find answers at their own pace, anytime, from anywhere.

Through case and incident avoidance, the ServiceNow DT team is registering significant savings: an impressive annualised $5.5 million. Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM) achieved a deflection rate of 54% on our Report an issue form. Through search results on Now Support powered by Now Assist, we achieved a case avoidance rate of nearly 20%.
These examples demonstrate that troubleshooting and resolving common issues independently reduces customer and employee dependency on support agents. This high level of self-sufficiency not only reduces costs, but also helps ensure quick and efficient problem resolution, thereby enhancing customer satisfaction. In fact, 56% of customers report positive sentiments about Now Assist-summarised results.

Boosting agent productivity

GenAI is bridging the gap between companies and customers. It’s also improving the productivity of support agents. A large portion of customer service work or support is repetitive, such as searching the knowledge base for information that would help resolve a case or incident. An agent repeats this activity every time a similar scenario arises.

GenAI helps automate tedious tasks, freeing agents to focus on the unique, complex cases that require human empathy and judgment. This leads to increased job satisfaction among agents, which in turn leads to improved service for customers and employees.

Another task that takes up valuable time is reading case notes when an agent receives a new or transferred case. With Now Assist for Customer Service Management (CSM) providing case summarisation, 54% of summaries were helpful to agents.

By generating resolution notes with Now Assist for ITSM, our DT team is seeing agents close incidents in half the time it used to take. In addition to helping increase agent productivity and satisfaction, this helps the organisation improve.

Enhancing developer productivity

GenAI is reshaping the landscape of software development as we know it. The ability to generate code and create operational flows is streamlining the development process.

With GenAI, developers can execute tasks more efficiently and accomplish more in less time. This increased productivity enables businesses to innovate faster. In the race for digital transformation, an optimised development process can be a key differentiator.

It also offers training value. Automated development capabilities can help admins advance their development skills by learning from GenAI.

Within our ServiceNow development team for Surf, the environment in which we house most of our shared services, developers are showing a 52% acceptance rate for generated code (text-to-code).

The narrative around GenAI is changing. The focus is no longer on the promise, but on the delivery of tangible, measurable results. As GenAI permeates every layer of business operations, enterprises are already witnessing its transformative power. This is only the beginning.

Find out more about how ServiceNow is helping enterprises increase productivity and transform experiences using GenAI.