ServiceNow Inc. is enhancing the artificial intelligence features in its service desk offering with Flow, a feature that handles employee requests via a natural language interface with extensive automation.
The company said it’s targeting organizations that want to automate support without undertaking a full information technology service management implementation.
The product lets employees seek help through Slack and Microsoft Teams, receive answers drawn from company information and complete routine requests within those conversations. ServiceNow said teams can get Flow running in a day without an implementation project or additional infrastructure.
Built on an entirely new technology stack, Flow gives ServiceNow an entry point for companies that have avoided buying ITSM software because of its complexity. It also targets departments, remote offices and newly acquired business units within enterprises that already use ServiceNow.
The launch broadens ServiceNow’s reach to buyers seeking a service desk they can activate directly, while keeping connections to its enterprise software portfolio.
New way to work
“Flow is for companies that want to work in a completely new way,” said Jeff Hausman, executive vice president and general manager of technology workflow products at ServiceNow. “It’s automation built for speed and simplicity.”
The service is designed around recurring requests such as password resets, account unlocks, access provisioning, policy questions and basic troubleshooting. Employees describe their problems in natural language, and Flow retrieves relevant information and acts or escalates the request to a support team with the conversation’s context.
Once a support worker resolves an issue, an IT manager can turn that solution into an automated workflow with a single click, ServiceNow said. Subsequent requests can then be handled automatically, without requiring a developer or a newly written knowledge base article.
That approach extends the product beyond answering questions: ServiceNow said Flow can close requests or route them to the right people when needed. More than 100 prebuilt connectors link the service to systems containing knowledge, assets and ticketing information or supporting automated actions.
A demonstration showed an employee asking about company holidays in Slack and receiving an answer linked to a source document. When the employee subsequently reports trouble accessing a human resources system, Flow offers to open a ServiceNow incident and collects details about the problem.
The demonstration also shows an automation that sends virtual private network guidance, checks whether access has been restored, determines whether approval is necessary and requests a manager’s authorization before proceeding. Another workflow illustrates employee onboarding, including joining a workspace and provisioning access credentials.
Quick start
For enterprises, Flor is intended to give smaller teams a faster way to deploy support while retaining access to the company’s wider service management environment. ServiceNow also plans to extend the conversational model beyond IT into areas including customer support and procurement.
“The real value comes when those solutions can be easily automated and repeated at scale,” said Stephen Elliot, group vice president of software development and IT operations at International Data Corp., as quoted in a ServiceNow press release.
Customers cited in the announcement described applications beyond traditional internal IT support. One said it uses shared Slack channels to support clients, while two software companies pointed to simpler proesses for retrieving internal knowledge and reducing repeated questions.
“Someone asks a question in Slack, Flow pulls answers from what we’ve already documented, and if it’s something new, we escalate it and learn from it, and Flow automates it the next time,” said Mitch Stutler, co-founder and chief executive of ServiceNow partner VividCharts Inc.
Flow is free during controlled availability, with North American customers receiving priority access initially. ServiceNow is targeting Oct. 6 for general availability to current customers in North America, with broader availability across North America and Europe, the Middle East and Africa expected by the end of the fourth quarter.
Pricing at general availability will be consumption-based, with a free trial offered before purchase. Existing ServiceNow customers with AI entitlements will draw from their current pool of assists without buying an additional product license. ServiceNow did not disclose specific consumption rates. New customers will be able to purchase Flow with a credit card without an existing ServiceNow relationship.