ServiceNow makes the case to users for AI management

ServiceNow is courting new CRM users from its IT service management stronghold, as it also vies for control of agentic AI management with its AI Control Tower.

This heats up the competitive rivalry between ServiceNow and Salesforce, the CRM stalwart that will introduce a Slack-based ITSM platform at its Dreamforce user conference next month, according to CEO Marc Benioff. Both ServiceNow and Salesforce are contending to manage their own -- and other vendors' -- AI agents.

Salesforce plans to release more details on its product strategy next month. Meanwhile, ServiceNow this week released AI Lens, a data extraction and workflow tool that users can configure to pull unstructured data from sources such as emails, forms and dashboards, derive insights and take action.

AI Lens is part of a suite of AI tools called AI Experience, which also includes other AI tools ServiceNow plans to release by the end of the year: AI Voice Agents, which interact with humans speaking; AI Web Agents, an RPA-like set of capabilities that learns and automates screen behavior across the web and apps; and AI Data Explorer, an analytics tool.

ServiceNow also continues to add features to its AI Control Tower, which aspires to be the management layer for AI agents of all vendors, not just the company's own. The latest release includes features to onboard agents, monitor compliance, and measure the value of agent work and functionality.

Vendors in the CX space are vying for control of the agent management layer as they chase revenue growth, said Keith Kirkpatrick, analyst at The Futurum Group.

"They realize it's increasingly where you're going to see more spend over the coming years," Kirkpatrick said. "It's not going to be in the traditional seat license thing. We've seen that already."

ServiceNow is not only challenging Salesforce in the realm of AI agent management but is also rolling out more of what it calls "AI-first CRM," which incorporates service and fulfillment data into sales processes and a configure price quote system from ServiceNow's Logik.ai acquisition to make CRM more autonomous.

Among ServiceNow customers, AI agents are connecting processes humans previously had to perform by switching between CRM and homegrown apps with AI Agent Orchestrator, said Terence Cheshire, vice president of customer and industry workflows at ServiceNow. The company is seeing more uptake of the tool across vertical industries such as banking and financial services, telecom, manufacturing, retail and insurance.

In the CRM realm, AI can quickly recommend which combinations of a company's products solve a customer's needs. AI can uncover the right tools to address customer needs for large companies with deep product lines that can be combined in millions of different configurations.

"What customers actually want are outcomes and solutions to what they're looking for, and so the AI recommends the best things," Cheshire said.

Don Fluckinger is a senior news writer for Informa TechTarget. He covers customer experience, digital experience management and end-user computing. Got a tip? Email him.