Virtual agents are no longer ‘nice-to-have’ tools; they’re business multipliers. With ServiceNow Virtual Agent, enterprises are speeding up resolution times, reducing operational costs by up to 60%, and uncovering new revenue opportunities.
Yet, many businesses still face the ongoing issue of slow ticket resolution. Too many tickets that could be handled automatically are instead assigned to live agents, overloading them with minor problems. That’s just one of the problems ServiceNow Virtual Agent can solve for your business.
ServiceNow Virtual Agent is built to handle routine interactions quickly, providing customers with the answers they need and enabling your agent to focus on what they do best: solving meaningful problems, building relationships, delivering value, and most importantly, improving customer service.
With ServiceNow Virtual Agent’s personalized and meaningful assistance, you can upend your IT staff and resolve issues faster. Let’s take a real-world example to understand the
How:
A global manufacturing enterprise integrates ServiceNow Virtual Agent with its maintenance and asset systems. Frontline teams interact with the Virtual Agent through conversational interfaces, where they can instantly check machine status, log issues, or trigger repair workflows, all without switching tools or raising manual tickets. What do you get? Reduced downtime, fewer production delays, and higher asset utilization.
This is just the starting point. Ahead in the blog, we’ll be talking about:
- What is Virtual Agent in ServiceNow?
- Business Challenges and How ServiceNow Virtual Agent Solves Them
- Features of ServiceNow Virtual Agent
- How is ServiceNow Virtual Agent Different from Other Chatbots?
- Why ServiceNow Virtual Agent Works for Every Team
- Now Assist and AI Search in ServiceNow Virtual Agent
What is Virtual Agent in ServiceNow?
ServiceNow Virtual Agent is a chatbot and an intelligent conversational platform that uses AI and NLU (Natural Language Understanding) to automate routine tasks, handle requests, and deliver real-time support.
Virtual Agent provides a friendly messaging interface that enhances user experience, reduces agent workload, and expands your company’s operations. It also supports multiple channels, including web, mobile, and other messaging apps.
Virtual Agent comes with a guided setup and pre-built components, making it quick to deploy in your workflows.
Experience How AI Self-Service Transforms Your Business
Business Challenges and How ServiceNow Virtual Agent Solves Them
1. Cut Repetitive Queries with Intelligent Automation
Agents spend their valuable time answering repetitive queries, leaving complex issues unattended. Over time, this erodes service quality and agent morale.
ServiceNow Virtual agent uses generative AI to deliver intelligent, automated exchanges, resolving common issues quickly, freeing agents to focus on complex issues. This reduces handling time from minutes to seconds and allows skilled resources to focus on revenue-impacting work.
2. Reduce Wait Times with 24/7 Customer Self Service
Customers experience long wait times and are restricted by business hours to contact support. Long queues, delayed responses, and the frustration of “we’ll get back to you tomorrow” cause dissatisfaction and, in some industries, direct revenue loss.
ServiceNow Virtual Agent offers 24/7 self-service, allowing users to get resolutions within seconds. Faster response results in higher satisfaction, stronger loyalty, and better customer retention. For customers, it’s a direct driver of repeat business, and for internal teams, it’s a productivity multiplier.
3. Overcome Lengthy Deployments with Prebuilt Conversations
AI adoption is often slowed down by lengthy deployments, high customization costs, and uncertainty of when ROI will arrive.
Guided setup, ready-made conversations, and seamless integrations make ServiceNow Virtual Agent deliver ROI from day one. This means the implementation costs are quickly offset by operational savings and increased productivity.
4. Control Ticket Volumes with Automated Routine Requests
High ticket volumes create a burden on support teams, leading to missed SLAs, reduced efficiency, and lower response quality. Every unresolved ticket is both a cost and a reputational risk.
ServiceNow Virtual Agent automatically routes routine issues to chatbots, deflecting calls and increasing agent productivity. This way, teams can maintain high service quality even during high demands.
5. Fix Poor Engagement with Personalized, Context-Aware Support
Failure in addressing the unique context of each user leads to poor engagement and resolution rates. This drives up costs and undermines confidence in the service desk.
ServiceNow Virtual Agent uses Now Platform data to personalize conversations, catering each interaction to the user’s specific needs. This personalization improves first-contact resolution rates, reduces the need for follow-up interactions, and creates an experience that leads to adoption and trust.
6. Unify Disconnected Systems with Omnichannel Service and Seamless Support
Users expect seamless support across channels, but disconnected systems create inconsistent experiences, which weaken brand trust and frustrate users.
ServiceNow Virtual Agent integrates with multiple channels, enabling omnichannel support so that users can connect wherever they are. This continuity improves user satisfaction and positions the enterprise as digitally mature and service-first.
7. Overcome Security and Compliance Through Unified Systems
Fragmented systems and third-party tools increase security, privacy, and compliance risks, especially in regulated industries.
ServiceNow Virtual Agent runs on a single platform where all conversations and AI training remain under your control. Built-in compliance and audit capabilities mean organizations can innovate with AI without sacrificing security or regulatory adherence.
Features of ServiceNow Virtual Agent
1. Guided Setup
With prebuilt conversations, existing knowledge articles, and catalog items, you can proceed instantly. This reduces the typical implementation timeline from months to days.
2. Conversation Designer
Design custom conversations with an intuitive designer that works for any use case. Customize responses and trigger workflows for both technical and non-technical teams.
3. GenAI
Enable dynamic responses with the ServiceNow Virtual agent that understands user intent and handles nonlinear conversations easily. This increases first-contact resolution and enhances user satisfaction through personalized and accurate responses.
4. User Behaviour Analytics
Get conversational insights and understand user behaviour and trends so admins can make well-informed decisions.
5. Topic Recommendations
Leverage machine learning to spot important topics and add suggested conversations in a single click. This way, the Virtual Agent remains relevant to changing user needs and ensures your knowledge base grows intelligently.
6. Multiple Language Support
Automatically detect and translate conversations into the user’s preferred language. This expands service accessibility for global teams, ensuring language barriers never delay resolution.
7. Multi-Turn Conversations
Quickly provide requestors with the correct answers through follow-up questions and context recall, without restarting the chat. Eliminating redundant steps reduces frustration and delivers faster resolution.
8. Third-party channel integrations
Connect with users directly through collaboration tools, portals, and apps such as Slack and Microsoft Teams. A consistent experience across all service channels brings in higher engagement rates.
How is ServiceNow Virtual Agent Different from Other Chatbots?
Let’s say: Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean is our ‘other’ chatbot. Witty, entertaining, but not the most reliable problem solver. When the seas get rough, and you need precision, speed, and results… You want a captain who actually follows the map. That’s ServiceNow Virtual Agent for you. Here’s how:
| The ‘Other’ Chatbot | ServiceNow Virtual Agent |
| Requires manual setup of intents and conversation flows, with no automated detection of critical topics. | Pre-built conversation templates and NLU models help with solving the most common IT, HR, and customer service needs. Uses ML to find critical topics in your data and lets you add them quickly. |
| Often operates in isolation, requiring you to duplicate or manually feed content into the bot. | Uses Service Catalog and knowledge base articles to solve common requests instantly without recreating content. |
| Separate systems for chat and IVR, leading to extra setup, maintenance, and inconsistent experiences. | Conversational Interactive Voice Response (IVR) reuses the same topics built for chat, reducing duplication and saving agents’ time. |
| Limited or generic reporting that doesn’t directly link insights to business decisions. | Customizable analytics capabilities give insights into user behaviour and service performance, enabling leaders to make informed improvements. |
Some bots are like Captain Jack Sparrow, charming and quick with a joke, but probably not the one you would trust to dock the ship in a storm. ServiceNow Virtual Agent? Think of it as the calm, capable captain who gets you home every time.
How is ServiceNow Virtual Agent Different from ServiceNow AI Agents?
ServiceNow Virtual Agent is a conversation-first assistant built to resolve issues, automate tasks, and handle requests. While it can be called a chatbot, it goes far beyond answering questions. It acts. It executes workflows automatically, pulls real-time data from the Now Platform, handles transactions and requests, and routes complex issues to human agents.
ServiceNow AI Agents, on the other hand, are goal-oriented digital workers that operate across different departments. They interpret user intent, make autonomous decisions, and execute workflows directly. These are ‘behind-the-scenes’ operators that enable broader, cross-functional outcomes.
Still figuring out what exactly your business needs, Virtual Agent or AI Agent?
Why ServiceNow Virtual Agent Works for Every Team
| ServiceNow Virtual Agent for… | To… |
| IT Teams | Resolve IT issues, track requests |
| Customer Service Teams | Handle common queries and service requests |
| HR Teams | Assist employees with HR policies, onboarding, etc. |
| Workplace & Facilities Teams | Manage room bookings, maintenance, and workplace requests |
| Field Service Teams | Update tasks, log incidents, and access knowledge |
| Project Management Teams | Track project tasks, updates, and approvals |
| Legal Teams | Simplify contract queries, legal requests, and compliance checks. |
Now Assist and AI Search in ServiceNow Virtual Agent
Now Assist: GenAI powered by Now Assist enhances your experience with the ServiceNow Virtual Agent. It helps increase call deflection, reduce wait times, and provide 24/7 support for resolving both common and complex customer issues.
AI Search in Virtual Agent ServiceNow: If no matching topic is found, Virtual Agent activates AI Search Fallback to display results from sources such as catalog items, knowledge base articles, Q&A, or user profiles. It includes index sources, search profiles, and display configurations that specify what results are shown and how.
ServiceNow Virtual Agent: The Business Multiplier Your Enterprise Needs
The strength of ServiceNow Virtual Agent as a business multiplier comes from a mix of smart design and platform features. Pre-built conversations and NLU models, AI search integration, third-party integrations, and conversational IVR deliver what your business needs: fewer repetitive tickets, faster resolutions, and a clear, measurable increase in customer satisfaction.
Every conversation with the ServiceNow Virtual Agent is like a continuous service experience. Maximizing the full potential of its multiplier effect requires expertise. Crafting conversations around your workflows, curating knowledge sources, and designing experiences that align with your business goals.
That’s where Aelum comes in, assisting enterprises in configuring, customizing, and optimizing their Virtual Agent. For organizations ready to go beyond basic automation, it’s the smartest move toward an AI-powered future. Connect with our Virtual Agent experts to learn more.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. Is ServiceNow Virtual Agent a chatbot?
Yes, ServiceNow Virtual Agent is a chatbot built to resolve requests, automate tasks, and use AI search and Now Assist to provide accurate and personalized results for enterprises.
2. What is the difference between ServiceNow Virtual Agent and Now Assist?
ServiceNow Virtual Agent is a conversational interface that interacts with users, helping them find answers, solve issues, or complete tasks. Now Assist is ServiceNow’s generative AI feature that improves Virtual Agent and other parts of the platform. It understands natural language well, summarizes information, and generates responses.
3. Why should I choose ServiceNow Virtual Agent?
ServiceNow Virtual Agent provides 24/7 self-service for all departments: IT, HR, customer service, and other business functions. It handles requests, initiates actions, and adapts to user needs in real time, leading to faster resolutions, reduced agent workload, and an improved experience for employees and customers.