Generative AI in ServiceNow: Create Tangible Business Impact

Is your business constantly battling repetitive tasks? Do you envision a future where mundane tasks disappear, and every enterprise interaction feels intuitively intelligent? Well, congratulations on stepping into the future!

No, we are not talking about some far-off sci-fi fantasy, but a tangible reality that generative AI in ServiceNow is actively creating for businesses like yours today.

Most successful companies aren’t just dabbling here anymore. With the global AI market size projected to reach USD 1.85 trillion by 2030, organizations worldwide are steering their bets towards intelligence.

ServiceNow is a recognized leader in digital workflow with smoothly woven, powerful GenAI capabilities directly into its core platform. It is a game-changing transformation for how businesses operate, promising unprecedented levels of innovation, efficiency, and an entirely new way of working.

Let’s explore the changing face of generative AI in ServiceNow, from predictive analytics and AI Search to the disruptive AI Agents. It is shaping the future of enterprise service delivery.

TL;DR
• ServiceNow integrates powerful Generative AI and machine learning directly into the Now Platform for intelligent automation.

• The building blocks of GenAI in ServiceNow include large language models (LLMs), a Generative AI Controller, Predictive Intelligence, Now Assist, Virtual Agents, AI Search, and AI Agent Studio.

• Now Assist is the platform’s key GenAI experience. It boosts agent productivity with features such as real-time assistance, summarization, and quick-response drafting.

• Common use cases of Generative AI include automatically summarizing incidents, creating knowledge articles, and enhancing the Virtual Agent’s capabilities.

• AI capabilities are redefining efficiency across multiple departments, including IT Operations (predicting outages), Customer Service (automating inquiries), HR (streamlining requests), and Security (predicting threats).

Building Blocks of Generative AI in ServiceNow

Generative AI is all that we hear about these days. Most businesses imagine it as a singular, all-knowing ‘magic’ brain. But that’s not all-encompassing knowledge. 

If we peel back the layers to see how something truly transformative like Gen AI in ServiceNow actually functions, you will discover that it’s far more intricate.

No one component does all the heavy lifting. It’s a sophisticated orchestration of several robust ‘building blocks’ that work seamlessly on the powerful Now Platform to deliver intelligent automation. The enhanced user experience you’re witnessing is formed over some pivotal blocks.

Let’s take a closer look at key intelligent components that form the backbone of its AI-powered transformation:

1. Large Language Models (LLMs)

ServiceNow's Generative AI strategy: hybrid LLMs for accuracy and privacy.

These powerful AI models are at the core and are responsible for understanding context, performing complex reasoning, and generating human-like text. The platform adopts a hybrid approach, using proprietary Now LLM models—its text-to-text LLM and the 3-billion-parameter StarCoder2 model.

2. Generative AI Controller

Generative AI Controller's process: Anonymization, guardrails, and blocking for safe AI interactions.

The Generative AI Controller works like an intelligent brain. It organizes how you invoke, manage, and ground different gen AI models (both internal and third-party) in your enterprise data. It’s a central controller that injects back AI-generated insights into your workflows to make every AI interaction secure and efficient.

3. Predictive Intelligence

Predictive intelligence is its foundational ML capability, allowing it to learn from historical data for intelligent predictions and classifications. It helps automate tasks, including intelligent routing, incident categorization, and identifying potential service issues.

4. Generative AI

Generative AI is its core capability of producing new content and understanding complex prompts. Powered by LLMs, it enables this platform to summarize complex documents, draft emails, provide conversational answers, and generate code snippets. In short, it powers many new, highly intelligent features.

5. Now Assist

Now Assist's Generative AI features (search, summarize, create) improve deflection, productivity, and processes.

Now Assist is this platform’s flagship generative AI experience, designed to boost employee and agent productivity. It directly leverages GenAI for real-time assistance via its capabilities. The list includes drafting quick responses, summarizing incidents or cases, providing contextual information instantly, or suggesting actions for agents, making workflows more intuitive and efficient.

6. Virtual Agent

ServiceNow’s Virtual Agent is a conversational chatbot platform that works as a primary interface for self-service. Gen AI enhances its capabilities by allowing it to understand complex natural language queries more accurately. It can engage in more fluid and human-like conversations for more personalized solutions without human intervention.

AI Search transforms the way you find information within the enterprise by using ML to deliver highly relevant search results from service catalogs, knowledge bases, and other data sources. It provides links and offers conversational answers and summaries to complex queries.

8. ServiceNow AI Agents

A depiction of how ServiceNow AI agents can solve real problems, accelerate decisions & deliver outcomes.

These are intelligent, autonomous entities, also called digital workers. These are prebuilt, autonomous digital agents that combine generative AI, workflow automation, governance, and machine learning. They perform specific tasks or even execute entire workflows with little to no human oversight.

It leverages advanced AI capabilities to manage approvals, execute complex multi-step processes, or handle routine requests. It has certain key examples that we’ll take up later in this blog.

9. AI Agent Studio

AI Agent Studio is a dedicated development environment that empowers your organization to build, train, configure, and deploy your own custom AI Agents. Its multiple interfaces and tools help define agent behaviors and orchestrate complex tasks. You can thus tailor AI-driven automation precisely to your unique operational needs.

Our ServiceNow development services can help you unlock the true power of GenAI for an intelligent and automated human-centric service experience for your organization.

Key Generative AI Use Cases in ServiceNow

A virtual depiction of the key generative AI use cases in ServiceNow

Generative AI is not limited to being an abstract concept within ServiceNow. It actively drives tangible improvements across various enterprise functions. It has some impactful applications that genuinely transform the way your enterprise operates.

Let’s dive into a few practical scenarios where GenAI is already making a significant difference across the platform’s ecosystem.

1. Incident Summarization

Gen AI automatically reads all unstructured data to generate concise, clear summaries in seconds. In short, your IT agents no longer have to sift through lengthy incident logs, email chains, or chat transcripts. It saves time during incident reviews since everyone can quickly grasp the core issue.

2. Case & Change Notes Generation

Manual documentation can slow down productivity. However, GenAI steps in to streamline documentation by intelligently drafting updates for customer service cases or comprehensive change plans for IT.

It analyzes historical data, conversation logs, or related records to generate accurate and consistent notes. Consequently, all stakeholders stay well-informed even with minimal effort from agents.

3. Knowledge Article Creation

Your knowledge base should stay current and comprehensive. It is the only way to ensure effective self-service and agent efficiency.

Generative AI transforms successful customer interactions or unstructured resolutions from closed incidents into highly formatted and searchable knowledge articles. It automates a traditionally labor-intensive process, ultimately reducing content gaps and ensuring the quick capture of valuable solutions.

4. Virtual Agent Enhancement

The Virtual Agent serves as a frontline for employee and customer self-service, whose capabilities are enhanced with generative AI. GenAI, thus, allows the Virtual Agent to move beyond rigid scripts. It can consequently understand free-form text, respond conversationally, and handle complex questions with more nuance.

By offering a more intuitive and satisfying self-service experience, it boosts deflection rates and frees up human agents for more intricate issues.

Curious to understand how generative artificial intelligence can impact your business operations through integration with existing data storage platforms or ERP solutions?
Check out our generative AI integration services and connect with us to know how Aegis Softtech can help.

How to Enable AI Search in ServiceNow?

Diagram illustrating AI Search unifying user intent from various channels to deliver actionable results.

Whether you’re optimizing agent workflows or enhancing self-service experiences, AI Search brings contextual relevance and ML to every query. To realize the full potential of your ServiceNow instance, you must first enable AI Search.

Control and change how users find information across your platform by enabling this intelligent search engine. Here’s how to enable AI Search in ServiceNow. 

1. Activate the Plugin

  • Navigate to System Definition > Plugins
  • Search for and activate AI Search (Plugin ID: com.snc.search.ai)

2. Configure Search Sources

  • Go to AI Search > Search Sources
  • Define and activate sources such as: Knowledge Base, Catalog Items, Records

3. Assign Search Application

  • Navigate to AI Search > Applications
  • Assign your portal or workspace to the application with AI Search enabled

4. Enable in Service Portal (if applicable )

  • Go to Service Portal > Portals
  • Select your portal and ensure AI Search Enabled is checked

5. Review Search Analytics (Optional)

  • Navigate to AI Search > Search Analytics
  • Use analytics to monitor performance and optimize search relevance

AI Search is supported in Employee Center, Service Portal, and Next Experience Agent Workspaces. It makes AI Search a versatile solution for enhancing both agent-facing and user-facing experiences.

Top Examples of ServiceNow AI Agents

ServiceNow AI Agents are flipping over business operations for good. They’re not merely chatbots but intelligent systems that learn and adapt to make decisions. They proactively automate tasks across your different operations, including IT, HR, and customer service.

It ultimately frees up human teams for complex work, leading to smarter and more efficient processes. Let’s explore some top examples!

1. AI Agent for ITSM

It automates ticket handling across request, incident, and problem management. It intelligently categorizes and resolves issues using natural language and historical patterns understanding, reducing MTTR and boosting user satisfaction. Organizations that work with high volumes will enjoy fast and consistent service delivery without burdening human teams.

2. Autonomous Change Management AI Agent

It predicts change risks, automates approvals, and flags anomalies to streamline the change management lifecycle. It leverages contextual data to assess potential impacts, ensuring better stability during deployments. If your organization manages frequent changes, this agent can reduce bottlenecks and improve governance.

3. SecOps Expert AI Agent

The SecOps (security + operations) AI Agent improves threat response by correlating alerts and recommending remediation steps. It automates triage and investigation to help security teams focus on high-risk events. Businesses that face complex threat landscapes benefit from this agent’s additional speed, 24/7 vigilance, and precision.

4. Proactive Network Test & Repair Agent

It continuously monitors network health, initiates corrective actions without human intervention, and performs automated diagnostic tests. Disruptive issues are identified before they affect the operations. It’s suitable for hybrid environments, ensuring uptime and performance with minimal manual oversight.

5. Post-Incident Review Generation Agent

Once an incident is resolved, this AI agent automatically compiles root cause insights, timelines, resolution steps, and impacted services into a review-ready report. It thus reduces the manual effort required for documentation, ensuring that every post-incident review is complete and standardized.

6. ITSM Incident Categorization AI Agent

It classifies incoming incidents in real time according to historical data and context. It highly regards accurate routing and tagging to improve SLA adherence and reduce ticket backlog. It delivers clarity and efficiency from the start for IT teams juggling thousands of service requests.

Want to see how ServiceNow's potential AI agents can benefit your business use cases? Our ServiceNow consulting services can tailor solutions to transform your operations and drive efficiency.

Where Can You Use ServiceNow AI Capabilities?

Generative AI is fundamentally changing our approach to work.

But where does this incredible intelligence truly land within your enterprise, beyond just a specific feature?

ServiceNow AI, now meticulously woven into your daily operations, is transforming nearly every department. It not only streamlines IT but also fortifies security and optimizes project delivery.

Here are a few powerful ways in which the AI capabilities of this platform are redefining efficiency and innovation across your organization.

1. IT Operations

Now Assist for ITSM: Showcasing features like summarization, note generation, and AI-powered replies.

ServiceNow AI holds the power to transform your IT operations. It does so by automating incident resolution, intelligently routing tickets to the right teams, and predicting potential outages before they occur.

It analyzes huge amounts of operational data to identify anomalies and offer root cause analysis assistance. The outcome is a self-healing IT infrastructure to help improve your service uptime and efficiency.

2. Customer Service

In customer service, AI enhances every touchpoint by powering intelligent Virtual Agents. These agents handle routine inquiries and equip agents with real-time assistance through AI-driven response generation and summarization. It results in faster case resolution, better customer satisfaction, and lower agent workload.

3. HR Service Delivery

It offers your employees accurate answers to common HR queries instantly via AI-powered chatbots, streamlining HR operations. It also automates routine HR requests, helps teams efficiently manage instances, and personalizes employee experiences by suggesting relevant information.

4. Security Operations

It takes cybersecurity to the next level by boosting detection and response capabilities. It correlates alerts and predicts potential threats based on historical data to identify and prioritize critical security incidents. Consequently, it automates response workflows to help security teams respond faster to threats and strengthen overall security posture.

5. Project Management

The platform efficiently optimizes project delivery through its predictive insights into project timelines and potential risks. Project managers benefit the most in planning by getting suggestions around optimal task sequences. It helps them identify bottlenecks and automate routine project administration tasks for successful project outcomes.

Partnering for Your Generative AI Journey with Aegis Softtech

The question of the hour is—how do you actually make Generative AI work for your ServiceNow environment?

There’s no magic switch to it, but a strategic transformation of your service delivery and operational efficiency. And you don’t have to do any of it alone.

We, at Aegis Softtech, are ready to guide you through this exciting evolution for seamless integration and optimal performance. The outcome? Real, measurable business value.

Let’s work together to build the future of ServiceNow. Connect with us to transform your possibilities into powerful realities.

FAQs

Q1. What level of technical knowledge is needed to use generative AI in ServiceNow?

You need minimal technical knowledge, all thanks to its intuitive features like Now Assist. Administrators and developers, however, require an in-depth technical understanding for effective configuration and integration.

Q2. What are the top ServiceNow AI capabilities?

Top capabilities of the platform encompass better self-service through intelligent Virtual Agents and AI Search, intelligent automation (including content generation and incident summarization), and predictive insights for proactive issue management.

Q3. What is the key benefit of AI in ServiceNow?

A key benefit of AI in ServiceNow lies in its ability to profoundly transform enterprise workflows. It leads to higher efficiency and productivity for your organization.

Q4. What makes generative AI different from traditional AI in ServiceNow?

Generative AI, in this platform, understands context to create new content, including summaries, knowledge articles, and code. On the contrary, traditional AI primarily analyzes existing data to predict outcomes according to predefined rules.

Q5. When did ServiceNow start using AI?

It began using AI within its platform as early as 2017 by introducing features like Predictive Intelligence in the Kingston release.

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Harsh Savani

Harsh Savani is an accomplished Business Analyst with over 15 years of experience bridging the gap between business goals and technical execution. Renowned for his expertise in requirement analysis, process optimization, and stakeholder alignment, Harsh has successfully steered numerous cross-functional projects to drive operational excellence. With a keen eye for data-driven decision-making and a passion for crafting strategic solutions, he is dedicated to transforming complex business needs into clear, actionable outcomes that fuel growth and efficiency.

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