What's new in Customer Service Management, Field Service Management, Knowledge Management, and Communities in the New York release

[Paul Selby]

The New York release of the Now Platform® delivers new functionality for all Customer Workflows: Customer Service Management, Field Service Management, Knowledge Management, and Communities. Some features are only available in the Customer Service Management Professional version and have been noted. Read on to learn what’s new!

Customer Service Management 

Improvements here are in the areas of customer experience, agent experience, and service operations. 

Proactive Customer Service Operations 

Visibility into problems and better transparency into service availability are challenges many companies struggle with today. One cause is increasingly complex products and services, with multi-level hierarchies of components and sub-components; customer service agents wrestle to trace the information provided in a case to the right component that is part of a larger product or service sold to or deployed by the customer. Down the chain, network or service operations teams can’t precisely identify customers impacted by service disruptions due to silos between fault monitoring and customer service systems. Meanwhile, customers can’t review current service status (including alerts for planned and unplanned disruptions) for services they have deployed. 

To address these challenges, Customer Service Management Professional expands its data model with Service-aware Install Base. Complex products with components and sub-components can be modeled, including cloud-based services. Agents can quickly find products purchased or installed by a customer and pinpoint product components causing problems.

Integration with ServiceNow® IT Operations Management (ITOM) has been improved, and by linking ITOM alerts to Install Base items, it’s now easier to identify customers affected by a proactive alert. Proactive Cases can be created from alerts. Existing features Service Management for Issue Resolution and Major Issue Management are also leveraged to create a more proactive service posture.  

Note: Proactive Customer Service Operations is available in Customer Service Management Professional only. 

Agent Workspace third party integration 

Information needed to support customers often resides in more than one system, forcing customer service agents to inefficiently alt-tab their way across multiple applications to answer even routine questions. Understandably, companies don’t want to duplicate data within the Now Platform, especially transactional data–orders, invoices, contracts, etc.– that belong in other systems of record.

In the New York release, Remote Tables expands Agent Workspace’s abilities with APIs to  retrieve external data and present this information in context to the customer record. The data stays in the external systems and agents enjoy one-click navigation: for example, to open an opportunity in the CRM system or an order in the ERP system. Agent Workspace will also support iFrames and URL links to 3rd party applications. Agents will experience improved efficiency and job satisfaction while driving better service experiences. 

Omni-channel experience enhancements 

How customers and customer service communicate continues to evolve. This release includes several enhancements to improve channel experiences for both customers and agents. 

Virtual Agent now supports natural language interactions, so customers are more likely to use a conversational self-service channel to find solutions. Email Flows leverages Flow Designer to make it possible for anyone to configure or modify email actions to meet business needs without custom development. Quick Actions (sometimes also called chat snippets) are now available to quickly provide standard replies in chat conversations. Email Templates have been enhanced to speed email composition of signatures, greetings, and common responses. Skill Determination improves Advanced Work Assignment to apply skills to new work items, routing work to the best-skilled user. Similar Articles is a widget that can be added to knowledge article detail pages which uses Predictive Intelligence to show other potentially relevant articles to customers to help them find the correct solution. With Service Management Self-Service, customers to can now create and manage Requests, Changes, and Problems using the customer portal.  

Note: Virtual Agent and Similar Articles (which requires Predictive Intelligence) are available in Customer Service Management Professional only.

Case management enhancements

Central to work in customer service is case management: it’s how issues are tracked and resolved and serve to keep customers informed. The New York release increases transparency for customers and allows agents to monitor and work cases while away from their desk.

With the new Customer Service Management mobile app, agents can track important case updates in the new native mobile experience. They’ll also be more productive since they can update cases on-the-go. 

Case Digests offer two ways to keep customers up-to-date on activities: 

• Post Case Reviews allow customer service to proactively communicate root cause analysis, resolution details, and preventive measures of resolved cases. 
• A Case Summary is a brief containing useful and relevant updates about how a case is progressing that can be shared internally with leadership as well as with the customer. 

Field Service Management 

The new mobile experience added in the Madrid release was just the start. Field Service Management continues to add exciting features to drive faster customer resolutions and improve the technician experience. 

Dispatch Map 

Sometimes you just want to see where things are–in this case, the work waiting in the field and the location of technicians working to address it. The Dispatch Map has been revamped in the New York release, adding more detailed information on the map. This makes it easier for dispatchers to assign tasks to the most appropriate technicians. Exceptions can be handled in real-time by viewing agent locations and monitoring work status. Plus, the technician, manager, or dispatcher can now optimize the technician’s route from the map and see the end result. 

Central Dispatch 

Dispatch efficiency is a core requirement for successful field services operations. Companies must ensure technicians’ working time is maximized while being able to account for in-the-moment exceptions. 

In the New York release, technician schedules, skills, and incoming tasks are displayed in real-time, making it even easier to assign tasks to qualified and available technicians. A technician’s distance from their current location to unassigned tasks assists the dispatcher to better determine who to send on a job. Dispatchers can address schedule exceptions as they occur by viewing current agents’ locations and monitoring work status. 

Field service mobile app 

To provide the highest quality service, field service staff must be prepared, efficient, and able to complete jobs on the first visit. The field service mobile app makes this possible, giving them access to all their task information (including calendar and map), track the parts and steps needed to complete jobs, and provide debriefs of all work performed–all while online or offline.  

The New York release adds the ability to lookup assets using barcode scanning and perform work directly against assets. Managers and technicians can also now view team details and collaborate on issues. Finally, many common tasks, such as completing questionnaires, are easier to complete with fewer steps. 

Spare parts management 

Having the right parts on-hand at the right time: it’s a challenge for most organizations. Not having them available when needed means job can’t be completed, while maintaining inventory means paying for storage space and even running the risk of parts becoming obsolete.  

The prior process for replenishing inventory via either spare parts pick-up and drop-off lists has been completely streamlined. This ensures technicians will have what they need, when they need it, and where it’s needed. 

Knowledge Management 

Knowledge management is a valuable tool in customer service, both for customers and agents. But sometimes, in the quest to document everything, unwanted article duplication can occur, creating unnecessary work and potential confusion. For companies with a global customer base, knowledge management loses effectiveness when articles are limited to a single language. 

Similar Articles, mentioned earlier, has another role to play. Using Predictive Intelligence, it reduces the chance of article duplication. During the authoring process, similar articles are displayed based on the content in the new article. 

Knowledge Management in the New York release adds Knowledge Translation Management. It enables trackable translation tasks that can be launched directly from articles. Third-party translation tools can be easily integrated, and trackable update tasks for translated articles can be automatically initiated when the parent article is updated. A side-by-side comparison is also available to facilitate review. 

Note: Similar Articles requires Predictive Intelligence and is available in Customer Service Management Professional only. 

Communities 

A great community problem to have is too much content: great for the interaction, but problematic to prevent important content–new solutions, news, etc.–from getting buried. Forum moderators are further challenged when it’s necessary to move content and communicate with members. All of these problems are addressed in the New York release. 

Featured Content allows content to be “pinned” so that it remains prominently in members’ view. Moderators will appreciate it’s now easier to move content from forum to forum with a new drop-down forum selector menu. And when moderators need to communicate with members over email–be it to recognize an accomplishment or discuss inappropriate behavior–it’s now easier to start the conversation. 

Learn more 

These are just a few of the many new features coming to Customer Service Management, Field Service Management, Knowledge Management, and Communities in the New York release. You can read about these capabilities and more in the Product Documentation or schedule a conversation and demo with your account team (and discuss the value of moving from Customer Service Management Standard to Professional, if appropriate). Also be sure to visit the Customer Success Center to review essential resources to assist you in planning your upgrade.  

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The Now Platform New York release on demand webinar.

The Now Platform New York release delivers breakthrough innovations in enterprise mobile, intelligence, and workspaces. Join the broadcast to see how you can take advantage of these innovations and have an even bigger impact in your organization.

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