Last month, ServiceNow announced its entry into the CRM space.
The move left some scratching their heads, as they had already considered ServiceNow a CRM provider.
However, it had previously swerved the CRM label.
So, why has it suddenly decided to embrace the term?
In a conversation with CX Today, Michael Ramsey, GVP of Product Management for Customer Workflows at ServiceNow, spilled the tea.
ServiceNow’s CRM Platform
In 2016, ServiceNow launched its Customer Service Management (CSM) solution.
Since then, the vendor has sunk significant funds into the platform, adding features such as case management, knowledge management, a single customer view, proactive outreach, conversational analytics, etc.
“We have aggressively invested in it and seen a lot of market validation,” confirmed Ramsey.
While making this point, Ramsey spotlighted various analyst reports, including the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Engagement Center (CEC).
That study underscores how ServiceNow has achieved significant “market momentum” in customer service and tags the vendor as one of four leaders.
As it has developed this momentum, ServiceNow has also put forward a field service management product, which falls under the CRM umbrella.
Yet, the prelude to its CRM announcement came with the launch of ServiceNow’s Sales and Order Management products in Q1, 2024.
By pulling all these solutions together, Ramsey states:
This makes us the only platform that handles sales, fulfillment, and service on a single, unified platform.
“This moment feels like the right time to align our terminology with what the market and our customers already call it, including buyer personas,” he concluded.
ServiceNow’s CRM Differentiator
Many competitors have focused on enabling customer engagement through front-office functionality.
However, ServiceNow aims to differentiate with an end-to-end solution, claims Ramsey. He noted:
It’s not just about handling commercial requests – buying, returning, or seeking service – but also about ensuring we can fulfill those requests effectively to drive a superior customer experience.
In large enterprises, the necessary insight to handle many of these queries effectively sprawls across back-end systems.
ServiceNow connects its CRM application with invoicing, inventory, order management, and various other workflows. That end-to-end approach enables a more data-rich CRM experience.
Moreover, the vendor layers AI over those workflows to derive more insight.
As such, ServiceNow customers may benefit from a firehouse of new data that feeds AI deployments across customer-facing functions and beyond.
Now, as it releases AI agents, Ramsey believes CX teams leveraging its CRM applications have an unprecedented opportunity to put this data to work.
ServiceNow’s CRM Challenges
The central challenge ServiceNow will face in the CRM space is cost. Its CRM solutions aren’t cheap, nor are they simple to implement.
Unlike Salesforce, which scales easily across small businesses and enterprises, ServiceNow falls into a more complex category.
However, that complexity does allow for deeper connections across service, engagement, and enterprise operations.
Moreover, Ramsey stressed how ServiceNow is proving time to value, particularly through its industry-specific innovation. He noted:
We now offer eight industry-specific solutions, each designed to raise the floor by providing more out-of-the-box capabilities.
“Customers can configure these for their unique requirements, but the pre-configuration significantly reduces effort and accelerates time to value,” summarized Ramsey.
An excellent example is its “Now Assist” for Telecom Service Management solution, built in collaboration with NVIDIA.
Such innovations will heighten ServiceNow’s appeal amongst IT teams, which are – in many cases – already advocates for the brand, thanks to its market-leading ITSM product.
Now, these IT teams are playing an increasingly significant role in CRM buying decisions as AI comes to the fore. That benefits ServiceNow significantly and is likely a critical driver of its market momentum.
The key for ServiceNow, as it moves forward, is to connect with CX function leaders and showcase the value of its end-to-end vision – which it’s beginning to do more and more.
A Final Takeaway: CRM Is One Part of an End-to-End Platform
ServiceNow is creating a centralized hub where service, sales, ERP, finance, and other processes intersect.
From this hub, businesses can go beyond engagement to orchestrating and automating workflows. These aim to ensure customers get what they want faster, more accurately, and with less friction.
Businesses embracing a similar vision for an end-to-end platform should consider ServiceNow’s CRM portfolio, which may lay the foundation for deeper, more personalized customer relationships.
“We’re not trying to build just another, slightly better CRM based on what’s existed for the past ten or 20 years,” summarized Ramsey.
Instead, we’re working closely with customers to understand their desired outcomes and identify how our platform can help achieve them.
To dive deeper into the current CRM landscape, check out CX Today’s article: The Top CRM Vendors to Consider in 2025
