Reap the Benefits of Generative AI powered ServiceNow Now Assist

Enterprises have already dipped their toes into generative AI for a frictionless and easy-to-use experience. But how exactly are enterprises responding and adapting to generative AI? What’s their take on this disruptive technology? Have you heard about generative AI Now Assist?  

Many organizations are on a journey to integrate generative AI across departments fully. They understand the immense potential AI holds but often struggle to see how it fits seamlessly into their existing tech stack. It’s not just about the technology; the challenge also lies in identifying the right business use cases for generative AI.  

Through this blog, we will talk about generative AI-powered Now Assist, its advanced capabilities, and use cases in the ServiceNow ecosystem. 

ServiceNow Introduced Generative AI-powered Now Assist

Last year, ServiceNow introduced new generative AI capabilities for the Now platform, marking a significant shift in the AI scenario. With these new capabilities, enterprises can access tools to help them navigate the complexities of AI adoption. Now Assist, a key component of these capabilities, is designed to enhance productivity, reduce incidents, and improve efficiency. It also ensures better code quality, faster deployment, and adherence to security and compliance standards.

Evolution of AI Within ServiceNow

ServiceNow has been using AI functionality for a long ago with a vision to transform enterprise workflows. Let’s dive in ServiceNow’s approach for AI-enabled digital transformation:

1. ServiceNow AI

ServiceNow AI refers to the suite of artificial intelligence capabilities AI is directly infused into ServiceNow on Now Platform, reducing the need for complex integrations. This includes a range of technologies like machine learning, natural language processing, and automation that are designed to streamline workflows, improve decision-making, and enhance the overall user experience. The built-in native AI capabilities include Now Assist, AI Agents, and Virtual Agent.

2. Predictive Intelligence

Earlier Predictive Intelligence and Task Intelligence suggesting solutions, predicting major incidents, and identifying knowledge gaps. Predictive intelligence understands, analyze, automates, and identify incidents, through categorization, pattern detection, and NLU.

3. Generative AI

ServiceNow’s Generative AI comes from Now LLM family which is a powered assistant with skills such as summarizing, an incident/case, generating a Knowledge Base, and generating flow/code. These Gen AI skills are out across all ServiceNow workflows (ITSM, HRSD, CSM, FSM, TSM, SPM) and help users get answers faster, improve agent efficiency, enhance chatbot and search, and turbo charges developer productivity. It is configurable within ServiceNow’s low-code development suite, empowering even citizen developers like us in the enterprise to apply generative AI to automate applications. This allows companies to optimize workflows and innovate at scale on the Now Platform, regardless of technical expertise.

Now Assist: The collaboration of Now Platform with Now Assist

Now Assist is an integration between generative AI capabilities with the ServiceNow platform to deliver faster, more intelligent workflow automation. You can leverage generative AI in the platform through Now Assist. With powerful AI functionality, Now Assist is helpful in multitude of enterprise use cases, keeping your data safe. It uses ServiceNow’s family of LLMs running in data centers. You can even check the model cards of ServiceNow on how it builds, trains, and tests models. Some of the features are: 

• Summarization: Generate summaries of data or tasks within the ServiceNow platform.
• Conversational Exchange: Enable more natural and efficient communication through AI-powered chatbots or virtual assistants.
• Content Creation: Assist users in composing emails, reports, or knowledge-based articles.
• Code and Flow Generation: Help developers write code or automate workflows.

How ServiceNow Gen AI Transforms Work for Employees, Customers, and Developers

The Technologies Powering ServiceNow Gen AI: Generative AI Controller and Now LLMs

ServiceNow Gen AI leverages two key technologies: generative AI controller and Now LLMs (Large Language Models). These work together to understand and respond to user requests in natural language.

1. Generative AI controller

The Generative AI controller is the foundation of the intelligence connection layer to the LLMs to create customized AI-generated content. You can leverage it within Flow Designer, Virtual Agent Designer, and general platform scripting. Some of the use cases provided by the generative AI controller enabled in Now Assist are:

• Generate content to respond faster in the form of text usually.
• Give agents time to find the answers to customer’s questions through AI search.
• Summarizing, and translating complicated and long conversations with customers.
• Gen AI allows you to find ideas, brainstorm, and research in an easy and simpler way to increase engagement.
• The Gen AI controller lets you perform sentiment analysis of messages and define the tone whether it is positive, negative, or neutral.

2. Now LLM (Large language Models)

LLM is made for language understanding for specific enterprise use cases allowing multiple interactions delivered through a conversational interface. It improves the quality of LLM-generated responses from human feedback. With Now LLM within Now Assist you can expand the platform’s capabilities.

Capabilities and Enterprise Use Cases of ServiceNow Now Assist

Every department within an organization faces unique challenges that hinder productivity and operational efficiency. Now Assist provides tailored solutions to address these challenges, enhancing performance and effectiveness across departments. Many of these capabilities are best understood through real-world ServiceNow AI use cases, which showcase how AI-driven tools transform workflows. But first, let me take you through some of the use cases of Now Assist:

1. Now Assist with IT Service Management

Often the increasing number of digital services leads to high incidents from employees as well as customers impacts, leaving a huge impact on infrastructure. Now Assist for ITSM enables you to improve your ability to understand user intent, synthesize knowledge from the data on the Now Platform, and generate contextualized responses. Now Assist resolves use cases across IT from enhanced self-service search to incident summaries and resolution notes generation.

Benefits of Now Assist for ITSM:

• AI Search Summarization: Allows employees to find the answers they need and not create requests or incidents for agents.
• Chat and Incident Summarization: Helpful for agents who need to pick up where the last agent left off and quickly respond to the incident. This reduces MTTR (mean time to repair).
• Knowledge Generation: Agents are able to quickly share their knowledge management system with agents or employees. This closes the gap in knowledge sharing.

2. Now Assist with Customer Service Management

Now Assist for Customer Service Management (CSM) refines the customer experience by improving agent productivity. It can easily access solutions without searching extensively, all while reducing manual efforts with summaries and context to better serve customers.

Benefits of Now Assist for CSM:

• Now Assist in AI Search: A completely new perspective of enterprise search for generating actionable answers, and resolutions from knowledge articles via Global Search, Service Portal, or Virtual Agent. It gives the most useful answers to act on information faster and reduce case volumes.
• Case Summarization: With the help of Now Assist agents you can provide feedback on the summary for continuous improvement. After resolving the case, Now Assist generates notes, saving time from manual work while staying relevant.
• Now Assist Panel: Agents leverage a conversational interface embedded within their workspace to ask questions, request summaries, and get insights about cases using natural language. This saves time and allows agents to focus on helping customers.
• Now Assist Admin: The console provides easy access to the important information that admins need to set up, configure, and monitor Now Assist applications and features.

3. Now Assist for Human Resource Service Delivery (HRSD)

Organizations face challenges while optimizing employee performance and implementing strategies to drive increased productivity. The new Generative AI functionalities enable you to augment employee experiences faster across the enterprise.

Benefits of Now Assist for HRSD

• Provide personalized experiences to help resolve inquiries faster with Gen AI-enabled Q&A for knowledge articles.
• Quickly view a summary of a case topic, action items, and resolutions.
• Through seamless intelligent assistance through multiturn conversations within Virtual Agent (VA). Service delivery becomes easier and faster.

4. Now Assist for Creator

To reduce app development lifecycle Now Assist for Creator proves to be a powerful tool. Now Assist enhances productivity through the app, playbook, flow, and code generation capabilities. Eliminating syntax errors, enabling faster completion of app development.

Benefits of Now Assist for Creator:

• NLP allows to auto-generate a playbook skeleton and streamline service.
• Automatically generates catalog item content and questions.
• Code generation becomes easy with NLP reducing time enabling developers of all skill levels to create top-notch apps.

5. Now Assist with Field Service Management (FSM)

Field services face challenges in updating daily job statuses, managing schedules, and accessing information. With Now Assist organizations can lift the productivity of their field teams, reducing manual effort and giving them more time to work on higher-impact tasks, resolving customer issues quickly.

Benefits of Now Assist for Creators:

• Provides you with an estimation of time required for a particular task.
• Helps you in identifying parts needed to complete a work order, ensuring technicians have full resources.
• Prioritize maintenance of equipment on cost of repair and value to the business.

6. Now Assist for IT operations management (ITOM)

Monitoring systems typically generate cryptic descriptions that are difficult to decode, slowing down responses and increasing MTTR, resulting in poor service quality and elevated operational costs. Now Assist for ITOM replaces cryptic alert descriptions with simplified, plain-language summaries that let operators quickly understand what an alert indicates.

Benefits of Now Assist for ServiceNow ITOM

• Quickly understand what an alert means, by replacing cryptic alert descriptions with simplified, plain-language summaries.
• Reduces the search need through knowledge articles, accelerating response time.
• There is a lower alert analysis time, and issues are identified quickly that may have caused an alert and see possible next steps.
• Reduces skills gaps for less experienced operators with insights that let triage alerts quickly and accurately.

7. Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management

There is a need to fill the gap between strategy and delivery with the help of technology for creating internal and external customer value. Tech people waste their time mostly on unprioritized work, resulting in missing innovation opportunities.

Benefits of Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management:

• Now Assist generative AI capabilities respond faster to business and customer needs with simplified, streamlined demand and product feedback intake processes.
• Provides an intuitive conversational interface that streamlines demand creation and transforms business experience.

8. Now Assist Guardian

Now Assist Guardian is a built-in safety feature that protects users from AI risks. It assesses AI models, monitors for harmful behavior, and implements safeguards to ensure responsible AI usage. This enhances trust, reduces risks, and improves the overall user experience.

9. Now Assist Data Kit

Now Assist Data Kit focuses on managing and curating the data used to train and evaluate AI models within the Now Assist platform. It allows users to create, maintain, and evaluate datasets, ensuring data quality and accuracy for optimal AI performance.

10. Now Assist Analytics

Now Assist Analytics provides insights into the usage, performance, and impact of AI within the Now Assist platform. By analyzing data on AI interactions and outcomes, organizations can gain valuable information to optimize their AI strategies, identify areas for improvement, and measure the return on investment of their AI initiatives.

11. Now Assist for Legal Service Delivery

It is a specialized solution that leverages AI to streamline and enhance legal service delivery processes. It can automate tasks such as contract analysis, legal research, and document review, enabling legal teams to work more efficiently and effectively.

12. Now Assist AI Governance

Now Assist AI Governance establishes and maintains responsible AI practices within the organization. It provides tools and frameworks for managing AI risks, ensuring compliance with ethical and regulatory guidelines, and promoting transparency and accountability in AI usage.

Now Assist Industry Use Cases

• Manufacturing – Now Assist can streamline supply chain operations, reduce downtime with predictive insights, and enable smoother collaboration across plants and partners.
• Financial Services – Now Assist can automate compliance workflows, simplify customer onboarding, and deliver secure, personalized banking experiences.
• Healthcare – Now Assist can improve patient care by optimizing clinical workflows, reducing administrative burdens, and ensuring regulatory compliance.
• IT – Now Assist can accelerate service delivery, manage complex infrastructures more efficiently, and boost productivity with AI-driven automation.
• Telecom – Now Assist can enhance customer service, manage large-scale network operations, and enable faster rollout of new services with intelligent workflows.

Now Assist Implementation Checklist

Now Assist offers you an easy and out-of-the-box implementation allowing you to realize value in the first 30 days itself. Before you can install and use any of the Now Assist apps, make sure you meet these requirements:

1. Your ServiceNow instance must be on Vancouver Patch 2 or higher. Some apps might have different needs, so check the Capability section on the store app page.
2. To use the Generative AI Controller, you need a Microsoft Subscription for Azure OpenAI Service or an OpenAI subscription.
3. You need an API key (alias credentials) to connect to the generative AI provider.
4. A Now Assist subscription.
5. You need to request the relevant Now Assist store apps.
6. Meeting these requirements ensures a smooth installation and use of generative AI, helping you streamline content creation and improve workflow efficiency.
7. After Installing the Now Assist Apps admins can use the Now Assist Admin console to access and install apps from the ServiceNow Store.
8. Configure Generative AI Controller with Now Assist.

Benefits of Now Assist for Enterprises

By streamlining workflows and offering extensive customization, Now Assist is becoming an indispensable asset for modern businesses. Let’s dive into some of the major benefits that help organizations:

1. Expanded Internal Use Cases

Now Assist can be integrated into various departments, including HR, IT, legal, finance, and facilities management. This versatility empowers employees across the organization to find answers, resolve issues, and complete tasks more efficiently.

2. Enhanced Productivity

Generative AI streamlines workflows by automating repetitive tasks, reducing the time employees spend searching for information and providing step-by-step guidance. This frees up valuable human resources for higher-level work and innovation.

3. Reduced Incidents and Cases

Now Assist’s proactive nature can help prevent problems before they occur. By anticipating user needs and offering solutions, it can deflect inquiries and minimize the number of incidents and cases that require human intervention.

4. Significant Efficiency Gains

Now Assist replace the workload of employees replacing manual tasks. This translates to substantial cost savings and allows organizations to redeploy personnel to more strategic initiatives.

5. Improved Code Quality and Faster Deployment

Now Assist empowers developers by generating user stories that capture requirements and acceptance criteria, ensuring clarity and consistency. It also helps with code reviews to identify potential bugs and suggest improvements boosting developer productivity.

6. Customization

Now Assist offers extensive customization options, allowing organizations to tailor it to their specific needs and workflows.

7. Scalability

As an enterprise-grade solution, Now Assist is built to scale with the needs of growing businesses.

8. Security and Compliance

ServiceNow prioritizes security and compliance, ensuring that Now Assist meets industry standards and protects sensitive data.

How Aelum Consulting can help you Leverage Now Assist for your ServiceNow Ecosystem?

Now Assist powered by Generative AI capabilities is a game changer for enterprises across industries. Implementing it in your ServiceNow ecosystem accelerates digital transformation, and delivers frictionless customer experiences. and drive revenue.  Our certified AI experts can help you understand the capabilities and use cases of Now Assist and leverage its implementation in the ServiceNow ecosystem. Talk to our ServiceNow AI experts to define your use cases of Now Assist for your business.