ServiceNow hit the headlines in 2024 for its high-profile partnerships with stalwart contact center providers, including Five9, Genesys, and Zoom.
These collaborations go beyond integrating technologies. Instead, they involve co-innovation between ServiceNow and its CCaaS partners.
Take its Five9 announcement as an example. Here, ServiceNow is pulling Five9’s unified routing and real-time transcription solutions into its Customer Service Management (CSM) platform.
With Genesys, it goes further, embedding its voice, journey orchestration, and workforce engagement management (WEM) capabilities into CSM.
Yet, ServiceNow started its CCaaS co-innovation journey with Zoom, launching the Zoom Contact Center for ServiceNow, which allows CSM customers to embed Zoom voice. There’s also a ServiceNow ticket collaboration feature within Team Chat.
In October, that partnership expanded, with the vendors enabling mutual customers to action workflows in ServiceNow through the Zoom AI Companion.
Nonetheless, without honing in on one particular partnership, all these announcements serve end-users. How? By bringing more data into ServiceNow CSM, lowering management burden, and improving agent experiences, as they switch between fewer platforms.
Beyond these immediate benefits, however, ServiceNow is also thinking about the bigger picture.
ServiceNow Is Pulling the Contact Center Into the Enterprise Ecosystem
Some may consider ServiceNow’s blossoming partnerships with contact center vendors as a step forward in unifying CRM and CCaaS solutions.
However, the vendor doesn’t classify CSM as a CRM solution. Why? Because it’s thinking beyond what most consider “CRM” today. “We see ourselves as a platform of action and work,” confirmed Simon Morris, VP of Solution Consulting at ServiceNow, in conversation with CX Today.
As such, ServiceNow is developing workflows for complex service delivery, where a lot of ERP data and other enterprise systems are at play.
Yet, through its CCaaS collaborations, ServiceNow is now pulling the contact center closer to that enterprise ecosystem and enabling new workflows.
“Our view of customer service experiences goes beyond the initial interaction,” explained Morris. “It extends into customer care teams, contract management, fulfillment, and other areas where the experience often breaks down.
These partnerships are exciting because they create a more seamless and joined-up experience for customers and the businesses that serve them.
Soon, businesses may apply agentic AI to these joined-up experiences and automate more of their enterprise operations, making ServiceNow even more attractive to enterprise buyers.
ServiceNow Is Benefiting from the Rise of Contact Center AI
The growing significance of AI across the contact center industry has resulted in IT teams often taking more of a lead on CCaaS buying decisions.
That IT involvement changes how organizations approach governance, create RFPs, and integrate contact center solutions. It’s a more complex conversation.
As Keith Dawson, Director of Research for Customer Experience at ISG, recently told CX Today:
Traditional CCaaS vendors will face challenges in having these deeper, enterprise-wide conversations during purchasing periods compared to vendors with broader capabilities or legacy foundations.
Yet, by co-innovating with ServiceNow, which also offers a widely utilized IT service management (ITSM) platform, the likes of Five9, Genesys, and Zoom can better engage in these discussions.
Meanwhile, ServiceNow benefits as IT teams actively prioritize integrating contact center solutions with its ecosystem.
ServiceNow Is Making CCaaS Friends, Not Enemies
Many predict that CRM – and CSM – platforms will eventually swallow up CCaaS providers or reduce them to voice plug-in providers.
However, ServiceNow doesn’t make such prophecies. Instead, it promotes deeper partnerships.
“We believe customers are better served when you can seamlessly connect the entire journey, from the point of contact to resolution,” stressed Morris.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the end of a customer-agent interaction. “Resolution might mean having the right person with the right parts at someone’s doorstep, for example,” he continued.
Our goal is not to replace existing systems but to connect them and ensure they deliver on customer needs effectively.
Yet, it’s not all about customers; it’s about employees, too. ServiceNow is diving deeper into skills management and extending its CSM offering.
In doing so, ServiceNow hopes to elevate service agents – understanding their skills and aspirations and connecting them to the right work – to enable more engaging experiences.
“For instance, our talent development tools in call centers help agents map out career paths while improving day-to-day operations,” Morris noted.
“We’re passionate about advocating for the people working on service desks and in contact centers. They do tough jobs, and supporting them is vital for businesses to succeed.”
ServiceNow Is Getting More Attention Across the CX Space
ServiceNow is a booming business on track to secure $10BN in annual earnings, with its stock price up 55+ percent year-over-year (YoY).
Customer experience – through applications like CSM and Sales and Order Management (SOM) – offers a significant lever for further growth.
The rising AI ambitions of CX teams will help here, and expect ServiceNow to be in many more conversations in 2025.
Yet, to drive itself further into the CX space, ServiceNow must get its champions – both internal and external – to articulate the business value beyond ITSM.
Of course, its high-level marketing focuses on business needs like customer service, employee experience, finance, and procurement.
However, as Rebecca Wetteman, CEO & Principal Analyst at Valoir, emphasized in a recent conversation with CX Today:
It’s crucial for their field teams and partners to convey that message effectively to non-IT stakeholders in sales, marketing, and service.
These CCaaS partnerships will help here, initiating ServiceNow with a new audience, and Morris implies an intent to build on these and more closely work with other vendors, name dropping NICE.
Lastly, as more of these announcements come to light, ServiceNow will make IT teams more aware of what they can offer across the customer service space.
To keep up with the latest announcements coming out of ServiceNow and other influential CX providers, sign up for the CX Today Newsletter.
