ServiceNow : 5 ways to create a memorable customer experience

Mayank A, senior principal inbound product manager for Customer Workflows at ServiceNow, co-authored this blog.

The way customers want to engage with organizations is radically changing. The pandemic and multiple shutdowns brought these changes to the forefront, forcing organizations to rethink their customer experience, both in person and online, and accelerate digital transformation projects to try to better align the customer journey with expectations.

We all have stories about companies getting it right-they're the ones that make it effortless for us to get what we need. But we also have nightmare stories about those that are unable to provide immediate help or relevant information.

What can we take away from the organizations that create an amazing experience for their customers? All are applying a deep understanding of how their customers engage with them and use their sites to create a streamlined, frictionless journey.

The goal is to meet customers where they are, and then help them find the answers they're looking for or request what they need. This takes embedding service everywhere a customer engages on a site. It also takes augmenting what's already working with new digitized service capabilities.

Removing friction from the customer journey

Engagement Messenger in ServiceNow® Customer Service Management can embed service on any third-party website. It brings rich service capabilities together into one solution that can be launched anywhere. Those capabilities include knowledge articles, chat, virtual agent (chatbot), case management, AI search, service catalog items, and appointment and technician scheduling.

Customers can then interact online with organizations and access services without leaving their current web experience or online transaction. By adding Engagement Messenger into the way customers normally engage, organizations can leverage their existing, proven customer service workflows that orchestrate the activities and tasks necessary to fulfill a customer's request.

Organizations can also configure when and where to launch Engagement Messenger to deliver targeted service to customers when they actually need it (see Figure 1). For example, instead of displaying an annoying pop-up, even when it's clear a customer doesn't need assistance, Engagement Messenger will launch a virtual agent or chat at the appropriate time.

Figure 1: Engagement Messenger can deliver targeted service to customers when they actually need it.

Engagement Messenger can launch anywhere in the customer journey, or it can trigger specific actions to provide more targeted engagements. Let's look at five key ways it can help organizations improve the customer experience:

1. Offer rich omni-channel engagement

With Engagement Messenger, customers can chat with either a virtual agent or a live one, depending on what they need or are trying to do. This gives customers immediate service on the channel of their choice.

The ServiceNow Virtual Agent uses an AI-powered chatbot that can answer questions or direct customers to find relevant solutions on their own (via knowledge articles or the Service Catalog) 24 hours, seven days a week.

Customers also have access to existing Virtual Agent conversations, such as how to purchase a new product or service, check the status of an order, return a product, or get assistance during checkout.

At the conclusion of the interaction, customers can provide feedback for future improvement. And, if the customer requests to move the conversation to a live agent, the full transcript will be retained and visible to the agent, so the customer doesn't have to start all over.

2. Provide access to intelligent information

Getting access to the right information at the right time prevents customer frustration and escalation. ServiceNow Knowledge Management offers customers the option to search or browse for answers in knowledge base articles. It's a capability that Engagement Messenger leverages, via AI Search, to help customers get quick answers to their questions without having to go somewhere else or stop what they're doing.

Engagement Messenger can also present featured articles that help anticipate information a customer may need. Customers can provide feedback on whether an article was helpful or not to improve the relevance of future engagements.

3. Deliver personalized service

Being able to access key services on the sites customers visit provides a level of convenience they greatly appreciate. However, to create the value organizations want and customers expect, these services should use known information about the customer to make it as easy as possible for them to do what they want.

Adding Engagement Messenger to websites helps organizations offer the personalized services customers are looking for, such as opening or reviewing the status of their case, making requests through a service catalog, scheduling a walk-up appointment, or requesting a field service technician visit.

These capabilities personalize the service experience, giving customers access to their own personal information from wherever they are on their customer journey. For example, customers can manage, create, and view their case details without having to navigate to the service portal. Or, they can browse a list of available catalog items and submit a request that's automatically routed to the relevant teams that can assist them.

4. Anticipate customer needs

Anticipating what customers need by knowing when and where to provide services makes them feel understood by the organization. In the Now Platform Rome release, we added the ability to launch Engagement Messenger from an icon, button, custom link, or URL on a website. This allows a customer to initiate engagement and immediately get an appropriate response from the organization.

Engagement Messenger is launched at the customer's point of need and displays the relevant service features to best address their request. With chat, for example, this means launching the conversation in the customer's selected language.

This flexibility provides a better engagement experience by allowing organizations to configure what they present based on their understanding of the customer journey. For example, an organization can launch Engagement Messenger with Virtual Agent to help the customer complete an e-commerce purchase, assist with product warranties, or book an in-store appointment.

5. Get up and running fast

Customer satisfaction scores improve when customers no longer need to hunt for support. Instead, they can complete their journey and get the help they need without having to leave their current experience.

With Engagement Messenger, a wizard allows organizations to easily create one or more service modules and configure their behavior, appearance, and styling to suit the online channel in which they'll be embedded (see Figure 2). This gives organizations the ability to configure the appearance and behavior of their modules to align with the company's branding, as well as customers' specific needs.

Figure 2: A wizard in Engagement Messenger lets organizations configure service modules to suit the channel they'll be embedded in.

Once created, the low-code/no-code solution automatically generates a few lines of code that will add the Engagement Messenger to the website. This code can be emailed to a web administrator, making it easy to embed anywhere.

Organizations that have already invested in self-service features-such as virtual agents and robust knowledge bases-can leverage existing capabilities using Engagement Messenger to lower their cost of ownership and deliver service anytime, anywhere.

Engagement Messenger helps organizations create the kinds of experiences customers will remember for all the right reasons.

Learn about more Customer Service Management innovations in the Rome release at Now at Work. Registration is free.

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