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Customer Central

ServiceNow CRM Workspace
Project Details

Company ServiceNow

Role Product Design & Research

Users Customer Support Agents

Timeframe: Apr 2019–Oct 2019

Impact Adopted across multiple industries

Problem
Low adoption — only a dozen of 6K customers adopted Agent Workspace.

Agents struggled to resolve customer issues efficiently because information was fragmented across multiple tools, lacked context, and offered limited customization.
Solution
A single place for customer service agents to access holistic customer information, including their journey and data from third-party apps.

Persona

Amy — Customer Service Agent

Amy provides products/services information and resolve customer issues through various channels such as phone, email and chat.

Jobs and Responsibilities

  • Resolves (external) customer issues and inquiries
  • Escalates and assigns cases to (next level) agents
  • Documents solutions in the KB
  • Collaborates with others

Pain Points (Hypothesis)

  • Swivel chair syndrome
  • Too many apps and resources
  • Missing context
  • Limited customization

Research

Customers

  • 3 customer companies
  • Industries: Telco, Tech & Automotive
  • 2 countries: Sweden & Germany
  • 27 research participants

Research Team

  • 1 Design Lead (me)
  • 1 UX Researcher
  • 4 Product Managers
Shadowing
Observed agents in their work environment to understand real-world workflows, behaviors, and pain points.
Concept Provocation
Engaged customer executives and leadership with early concepts to challenge assumptions, spark discussion, and uncover strategic needs.
Journey Mapping
Mapped the end-to-end agent journey to identify key tasks, challenges, and opportunities for improvement.

Key Findings

"I want us to be able to do more with less!"

— Amy, Customer Service Agent

Pain Points

  • Constant copying and pasting between different apps
  • Reliance on workarounds to access customer information
  • Lack of a clear, holistic view of the customer
  • Continuous decision-making under time pressure
  • Difficulty separating meaningful signals from noise

Ideation

Design Principles

  • Empathy + Context = Contextual empathy
  • Bird's eye view + Worm's eye view = Holistic overview
  • Less [swiveling] is more [done]

Design Direction

  • All customer information in one place
  • Zoom into customer activity to understand what happened and why

Design Ideas

Bird's-Eye View — Customer Information
A unified overview of customer information and the products/services they own, all in one place.
Worm's-Eye View — Customer Journey
A unified timeline of key customer activities, with lenses for self-service, interactions, cases, and products/services.

Old Way

A system of record built to capture data, not optimize the Support Agent experience.

New Way

A true CRM that brings customer context and workflows together to help agents get work done.

Adopted Across Industries

Healthcare, Finance, Telco, and more

Outcomes

  • From system of record to true CRM
  • First research into Support Agent personas
  • More UXs followed: case summary, sentiment analysis, AI recommendations, Playbooks, and Next Best Action
  • Highly customizable UI
  • Adopted across industries: Healthcare, Finance, Telco, and more
  • Helped win deals with Disney, SAP, & AT&T.

Learnings

  • There is no substitute for direct interaction with customers
  • Simplifying complexity goes a long way
  • Involve stakeholders early — the more complex the problem, the earlier the involvement
  • Think both horizontally and vertically to drive greater scale and adoption
 All works