Implementation readiness checklist:

Customer Service Management

Modernize customer service
Customer Service Management implementation readiness
checklist
Introduction
ServiceNow® Customer Service Management elevates customer service from request to resolution. Customer Service Management allows you to identify issues earlier with event
monitoring and automate processes across departments to resolve issues faster. Along with personalized self-service, this can increase customer satisfaction and enhance your operational
efficiencies.

The benefits of using a readiness checklist are:

 You’ll implement and see value faster.
 You’ll be aware of the key implementation risks and how to avoid them.
 You’ll have a superior, more efficient design (part of the Prepare phase below) so you get the most value from your Customer Service Management implementation.

The Now Create methodology described below is a proven methodology developed from thousands of ServiceNow implementations. It’s the recommended approach to implementation.
This checklist provides actions for the Initiate phase and for planning for the Prepare phase. It does not provide activities to execute the Prepare, Create, Transition, or Close phases*
but these phases are improved and expedited by this checklist.

5. Close 1. Initiate
The implementation team hands off to the platform Define your objectives, collect prerequisite information,
maintenance team. and define the key processes for implementation success.
4. Transition Now
Gain UAT, training, go-live, and post go-live support. Create 2. Prepare (design for configuration)
Hold workshops to understand your process and platform
needs, finalize the engagement timeline, and refine your
3. Create configuration requirements.
Perform configuration and unit testing.

*Include the activities for the Prepare, Create, Transition, and Close phases in your implementation project plan.

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Customer Service Management implementation readiness
checklist
Key risks to implementation success
Common problem (risks)
Lack of adoption leadership
Lack of organizational sponsorship
Unmanaged scope of capability
Over-engineered processes
Impact
Poor communication; misaligned expectations; poor adoption;
organizational dissent; conflicting priorities; scope creep;
requirements churn; and comprised results
Poor communication; moving expectations; missed expectation;
organizational opt out; conflicting priorities; scope creep;
requirements churn; comprised results
Project is seen as a technology project that doesn’t require process
change; capabilities are introduced without a clear link to value—
sometimes for capability’s sake; conflicting priorities; scope creep;
requirements churn; compromised results; long implementation
timelines
Processes are adopted for process’s sake or to a level of granularity
that impacts usability; the trade-off between process rigor and value is
not kept in balance; user opts out; compromised results
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Correction
Make sure you have a structured and active implementation
leadership framework in place. 
Make sure that all affected organizations are onboarded at the
start of the implementation, understand the goals, and share the
vision.   
Develop a clear value strategy that all stakeholders adhere to
and that delivers clear, measurable value incrementally.
Executives and stakeholders must keep a close eye on the
scope to make sure it’s balanced with the organization’s
capacity to change.
Only follow processes if they demonstrate value and your
organization can adopt them. When your approach allows for
processes to be refined and tightened, your organization is
more likely to adopt the changes and see the impact they
make. 
Customer Service Management implementation readiness
checklist
Intended use
The status of your Customer Service Management implementation project plan impacts how you should use this checklist:

1. If you have a scoped project plan from ServiceNow Expert Services or a ServiceNow certified partner – This checklist helps you align with the ServiceNow best practices that
will expedite readiness and enhance the design phase. Use it in addition to the recommendations provided by ServiceNow Expert Services or the ServiceNow certified partner who
created your project plan.
2. If you don’t have an implementation project plan yet but are interested in what you need to prepare – This checklist highlights the standard steps to prepare for implementation,
outlines the design phase homework, and gives you insight into some of the major decisions you’ll make during implementation design. It also supports estimating the implementation
effort and timeline (with a ServiceNow expert). If you’re in the process of scoping an implementation with an external services provider, use this checklist to make sure you’ve
considered the best practices.
3. If you’re self-implementing – This checklist is for readiness only and doesn’t provide design, configuration, or testing activities. Work with ServiceNow experts with advanced
knowledge of Customer Service Management processes and technical properties, including Virtual Agent, Community, and Knowledge Management, to plan and manage your
implementation. If you don’t have this expertise internally, we recommend a ServiceNow certified partner or ServiceNow Expert Services for planning and assistance with execution.

Who should read this?

The action items in this checklist are intended for the implementation owner, who can be a primary business stakeholder, project manager, or other stakeholder who manages the project
management and decision-making processes on the customer side. They don’t have to be a decision-maker but are responsible for making sure decisions are made and executed. 

Note: If you’ve already completed some of the activities in this checklist (such as defining your business objectives), skip those activities but document them.

Key readiness steps

2. Define vision, 4. Create a 6. Plan for
1. Confirm the 3. Assess your team 5. Plan for OCM
objectives, and structure for implementation
prerequisites readiness activities
success governance design

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Checklist: Prepare to implement Customer Service
Management
Step 1: Confirm the prerequisites Step 5: Plan for OCM activities
See slides 6–7 to complete this step. See slide 11 to complete this step.
⎕ Review Customer Service Management features and functionality. ⎕ Build an OCM plan.
⎕ Consider what capabilities you need to ensure value from Customer Service Management. ⎕ Plan for a pilot.
⎕ Learn about ServiceNow security options.
⎕ Gather your regulatory and compliance requirements. Step 6: Plan for implementation design
See slide 12 to complete this step.
Step 2: Define your vision, objectives, and success ⎕ Document your customer service processes and capabilities.
See slide 8 to complete this step. ⎕ Determine your integration needs.
⎕ Define your vision, business objectives, and measures of success.
⎕ Agree on the scope of your Customer Service Management implementation.
Step 3: Assess your team’s readiness
See slide 9 to complete this step.
⎕ Identify and prepare your implementation and maintenance resources.
⎕ Identify Customer Service Management training requirements.
Step 4: Create a structure for governance
See slide 10 to complete this step.
⎕ Create an implementation governance committee.
⎕ Establish a technical governance subcommittee.

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 Step 1a: Review the features and functionality
Take the time to understand Customer Service Management capabilities and features and consider what other capabilities you will need to get the expected value from your implementation.
Review Customer Service Management features and functionality
• Read the Customer Service Management overview on the ServiceNow
website. Take note of the features, functionality, and benefits of Customer
Service Management. Work with your ServiceNow account team to learn
what features and functionalities your existing licenses entitle you to and
identify any additional capabilities you will need to add.
• Review the Customer Service Management product docs. These resources
are more technical and provide additional functionality detail.
• Read the The Road To Transforming The Customer Service Experience
ebook to better understand how Customer Service Management can help
your organization achieve its goals.
• Consider taking the Customer Service Management Fundamentals course to
better understand feature configuration and administration.
• Explore the Customer Service Management Community forum for direct
access to experts and peers.
Practitioner insight: Integration of IT Service Management with Customer Service
Management enables users to create requests, incidents, problems, and change
records from a customer service case and to resolve reported issues and fulfill
submitted requests. Review our white paper and Quick Answer for guidance on
successfully using ITSM with Customer Service Management.
Confirm what capabilities you need to ensure value from Customer Service Management
• Consider your use cases for Customer Service Management (if you haven’t already determined
them). You don’t have to confirm all use cases until the design or Prepare phase (Now Create, see
slide 2) but you should get an idea of how you want to use Customer Service Management and the
capabilities you’ll want to implement.
• The Customer Service Management application includes a broad range of customer service
capabilities, including case management for agents and managers and support for external customers
with omni-channel communication and self-service. Additional capabilities can further enhance
customer service:
• The Communities application provides customers and employees with online forums to share ideas,
experiences, and solutions.
• Field Service Management integrates with Customer Service Management to create work orders for
customer service cases and add case information to work order forms.
• IT Operations Management (ITOM) integrates with Customer Service Management to improve issue
monitoring, including faster identification and remediation, and auto-creating cases for customers
even before they are aware of the issue.
• Confirm that you’re currently using the Now Platform ® on the Paris release (or later) or that you’ll be
on the Paris release when you begin implementation. The Paris release is required for capabilities
such as playbooks, used to automate complex customer service processes, and guided decisions to
path customer service agents through a structure troubleshooting process. Review the Customer
Service Management release notes for a full list of new capabilities in the Paris release.
Here are resources for upgrading, if needed.
6 © 2020 ServiceNow, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Step 1b: Identify security requirements
It is important to gather and understand your security and data privacy requirements before starting your implementation because of the sensitivity of customer data and varying data
privacy regulatory and compliance requirements by geography. Take time to learn about how ServiceNow handles security within Customer Service Management and determine what
your requirements are for each geography where you’ll use Customer Service Management.

Learn about security functionality within Customer Service Management
• Explore the various ways that ServiceNow addresses security:
• Platform access with user authentication or instance restriction
• Role- and group-based security
• Contextual security (ACLs)
• Encryption Support
• Understand the Customer Service Management security model and differences between internal
and external roles.
• Determine if you’ll need auditing capabilities.
• Read our Cloud security FAQ to learn more about how ServiceNow handles data.
Determine your industry and geographical requirements
Customer data security and regulatory requirements are determined by your
industry and operational geography. Data privacy and protection processes need
to be kept up to date with relevant laws and regulations to ensure they remain
compliant.
Gather the following before starting your implementation:
• Industry-specific data privacy requirements
• National or regional data laws (data sovereignty)
• Company-specific policies (make sure to capture geographical differences if
they exist)
If you intend on integrating ServiceNow with another system, make sure to
capture any security or regulatory requirements from that system as well.

7 © 2020 ServiceNow, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Step 2: Define your vision, business objectives, and measures
of success
Gaining support from leadership and stakeholders requires a vision, business objectives, and measures of success for Customer Service Management. Make sure your implementation
creates value that’s measurable and that you take the present state into account so you have an appropriate implementation plan.

Practitioner insight: If you already have an implementation project plan and you skipped Step
2, be sure you complete Step 2 before you implement. Implementation success and adoption
requires gaining sponsorship from key stakeholders and executives—and aligning with them
on business. Make sure your project plan aligns with all outcomes from Step 2.
Define your vision, business objectives, and measures of success
• Define the vision, business objectives, and measures of success that support your
overall company objectives. Include your executive sponsor in the process to ensure
alignment to those objectives. Use our Success Checklist* to make sure your vision
cascades into clear and measurable business outcomes.
• Confirm that the vision, business goals, and measures of success are defined for the
impact that you can make with Customer Service Management.
• Agree on implementation scope based on your vision. Bear in mind that achieving
your goal may be an iterative process—not accomplished within one project.
This Success Checklist is critical and requires additional action items. Here are some
suggested business outcomes and metrics for Customer Service Management to jump-
start your progress:
Suggested Customer Service Management business outcomes:
• Improved customer experience
• Improved customer service efficiency
• Integrated customer service and service delivery
Suggested Customer Service Management success metrics:
• Customer experience – Net Promoter Score, first contact resolution, self-service
use, customer satisfaction score, customer portal use
• Customer service efficiency – Assignment times, cases resolved per month, inquiry
assignment times, inquiry resolute times

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Step 3: Assess your team readiness
There are multiple teams involved and specific skills required to implement and maintain Customer Service Management. Make sure you have the right teams in place or begin with a
plan to engage them. Don’t finalize your resourcing and project plans until you’ve assessed your teams’ readiness.
Identify and prepare your implementation and maintenance resources
Practitioner insight: If you’re engaging external ServiceNow experts for implementation, make
• Identify a project manager for implementation. This person should be experienced sure your internal maintenance team is involved in the implementation design and configuration
with leading software implementation projects and agile. ServiceNow experience is activities so they can own system maintenance without knowledge transfer once implementation is
highly preferred. complete.

• Confirm your executive sponsor is committed and fully engaged.

• Confirm your technical team has the needed skills for implementation and maintenance:
• Confirm your business-side Now Platform owner is committed and fully engaged
(typically a senior manager to VP).  • ServiceNow systems administrators – Should be experienced in ServiceNow
implementation and should have taken ServiceNow Fundamentals and
• Identify the business process and service owners who will provide input for the Customer Service Management Fundamentals.
process design (especially the customer service product or process owner who’s
responsible for the overall customer service case management process). • Customer Service Management Process Users, Customer Service Management
Administrators, and Developers – See slide 15 for recommended training.
• Testing resources
Practitioner insight: Designate someone to own customer communications and training.
Customer awareness and education is critical to the success of the Customer Service
• Development resources (JavaScripting skills)
Management implementation so ensure the owner has sufficient seniority and customer- • System administrators and developers – Introduce to Now Learning and Now Creators
facing experience. to encourage skills development.

• Identify the technical owners for the Customer Service Management implementation
and post go-live support.
• Ask all process users and technical team members who will be involved in Practitioner insight: You won’t know the estimated effort or commitment of resources until the
implementation and post go-live maintenance to complete the implementation scope and project plan are confirmed. See Step 4 for design phase planning and
ServiceNow Fundamentals training and the Customer Service Management playlist consult a ServiceNow certified partner or ServiceNow Expert Services if you’re unsure of what your
before design.  resource plan should be.

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Step 4: Create a structure for governance
Governance for your Customer Service Management journey should include implementation governance and post-implementation governance. Implementation governance supports
successful implementation, and post-implementation governance supports the long-term success of Customer Service Management in your environment. Your implementation governance
team should form your post-implementation (maintenance) governance team.

Create an implementation governance committee Establish a technical governance subcommittee

• Assign your designated Now Platform owner, business process owners (customer
service process owner and process managers), IT service desk lead, partner
representative, project manager, and other business stakeholders as required. Your
executive sponsor should chair this committee.
• Define a meeting cadence, standard agenda, and decision process. In addition to
standard project tracking, meetings should include:
• Clearly identified and prioritized project objectives (e.g., improvements to
process performance or technical usability)
• Assign technical stakeholders, including staff responsible for support,
administration, security, and integration. Your designated Now Platform owner
should chair this subcommittee, supported by your project manager.
• Define a meeting cadence, standard agenda, and decision process. In addition to
standard project tracking, meetings should include:
• Identification of technical obstacles and strategies for resolution.
• Review requests for new Virtual Agent conversations or functionality. These
should require a business justification process before you implement them.  

• A review of organizational change management activities. See slide 11 for OCM
plan development.
• Work with your executive sponsor and Now Platform owner to develop a
responsibility assignment matrix (RACI) to establish a common, documented
understanding of the decision rights for the migration project.
• Your technical governance subcommittee should report to your migration
governance committee or steering group. Establish the rights to make decisions
rights between your migration governance committee and technical governance
subcommittee using a RACI.

• Confirm that your governance team is prepared to define measures of success for
enterprise, IT, and operational objectives. These measures of success should come Practitioner insight: The governance structure you establish for implementation should set an
from the goals and metrics discovered in Step 2.  initial baseline for the governance you’ll need for a post go-live operating model, especially to
manage demand. See our resources on governance for additional details.

10 © 2020 ServiceNow, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Step 5: Plan for OCM activities
Consider organizational change management (OCM) activities throughout planning and implementation for successful adoption and long-term success.

Build an OCM plan Plan for a pilot

• Confirm that you have leadership and executive sponsor support for OCM, Initiate a limited-scope pilot after the design phase and before the larger-scale Customer
including budget for an OCM program lead and/or ServiceNow certified partner or Service Management implementation. This is important for showing quick wins for
ServiceNow expert support. With support and budget in place, start by defining what effective OCM—and pilot feedback will enhance the quality of the larger scale Customer
good OCM should look like at your organization. Service Management implementation. Detailed activities for a pilot are outlined in the
OCM Success Checklist and Playbook.
• Conduct an OCM readiness assessment* to measure how ready your stakeholders
are for the organizational change needed to support Customer Service Management. Here are our recommendations for a Customer Service Management pilot: 
This should be conducted before design discussions. Based on your readiness
assessment, use our Success Checklist* to create an OCM plan and develop an • Start discussions with two to four small teams with goals aligned with the Customer
OCM impact analysis and risk assessment.   Service Management outcomes that can commit to a pilot.
*Tailor these resources to your use of Customer Service Management and your business • Confirm the chosen team is willing to share feedback and the value they gained from
environment.  the pilot.
• Put a structure in place to document the lessons learned from the pilot.
• Confirm the scope and dates for the pilot during the design phase.

11 © 2020 ServiceNow, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 Step 6: Plan for implementation design
The implementation design process involves multiple teams, collaborative decision-making, and a thorough understanding of your current processes and technical environment. Due to this, it
can often take weeks or longer to collect necessary information, coordinate the right people, and solidify decisions during the design phase (Prepare phase in SIM). By following the action
items in Step 6, you can proactively collect design-related information and initiate engagement with the required stakeholders. This will enhance and expediate the design process.
If you’re engaging a ServiceNow-certified partner or ServiceNow Expert Services for creating an implementation project plan, provide the items in this section to enhance project planning
conversations. If preferred, complete this section with your services partner.

Document your customer service processes and capabilities
Work with business process owners to document your current customer service workflows,
roles, and responsibilities.
• Capture how your support organization is structured, including organizational chart, a
list of different support groups, their geographic location, and hierarchy.
• Map out the customer experience, detailing the customers and products you’re supporting,
and the services you provide to support your customers (e.g., report issues, submit service
requests, self-service knowledge base).
• Understand your customer communications channels, what channels you have (e.g.,
email, web portal, chat), how you receive most of your inquiries, and how you
communicate with customers to resolve support cases.
• Document case management requirements including standard business processes for
support business units, the types and volumes of cases and request types, how you triage
cases, and the resolution process.
• For service management integration, review your service management capabilities
(incident, problem, change, request) to understand how you manage product/service
configuration, changes, defects, and outages as part of your support process.
Document your technical environment and integration needs
Customer Service Management uses customer account data as well as data for assets,
products, and service contracts. To prepare for implementation:
• Understand your data strategy and what data you will need to migrate and integrate for
customer data (accounts, addresses, contacts) and products, assets and contracts.
• Determine if you will need to migrate existing customer case history or Knowledge articles
from another system into Customer Service Management.
• Identify other enterprise applications you use that impact Customer Service Management
workflows, specifically Sales Management / CRM and ERP.
Many customers integrate with external systems. Common use cases include:
• Using Adobe Experience Manager to extend knowledge management capabilities and
deliver a pre-integrated web experience for external customers.
• Managing workflows via email with the Microsoft Outlook plug-in.
• Visit the Customer Service Management product documents for a full list of integrations.
• Review our Implement integrations with ServiceNow checklist.

12 © 2020 ServiceNow, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

What’s next?
Now that you’ve completed all preparedness items, your next steps are based on your status when you began this checklist.

1) You have a scoped project plan from ServiceNow Expert Services or a ServiceNow certified partner – Share the outputs from this checklist with ServiceNow Expert Services or
your certified partner to make sure the activities in your project plan reflect your checklist findings. You’ll use the checklist outputs again during implementation execution, when
you confirm your final design and resource plan.
OR
2) You do not yet have a project plan but are interested in what’s required to prepare – Use the outputs from this checklist to inform your decisions when choosing a services
partner and to make sure you get the most value out of Customer Service Management.  
OR 
3) You plan to self-implement – If you have internal ServiceNow experts with advanced knowledge of Customer Service Management processes and technical properties, then use the
checklist outputs to expedite implementation kick-off and to enhance the design phase. If you don’t have this internal expertise, contact a ServiceNow certified partner or
ServiceNow Expert Services to initiate project planning. 
Note: Our experience shows that most organizations do not have sufficient expertise to self-implement and should instead work with ServiceNow Expert Services or a ServiceNow
certified partner to continue.

Related resources
• Explore Customer Service Management (Check the “Resources” section on this page for analyst reports, infographics, ebooks, and webinars.)
• Success Playbook – Using ITSM with Customer Service Management
• Success Quick Answer – How do I use ITSM with Customer Service Management?
• Success Quick Answer – What digital workflows are key to customer service management?
• Now Community – Customer Service Management Forum
• Now Learning – Customer Service Management Fundamentals (Now Learning login required)

13 © 2020 ServiceNow, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Appendix
Customer Service Management product training guidance
This high-level overview shows the training categories and classes for each role to complete prior to an implementation of ServiceNow Customer Service Management. For additional
information on courses, course formats, learning paths, and related certifications, reference the ServiceNow training and certification site. For a playbook on guidance for building an
internal team of ServiceNow experts and training end users, reference this playbook.
End users (customers, customer admins, consumers)
- Knowledge articles with demo videos to show them how to register, log in, and
maintain their information on websites, portals, or any other communication
channels as applicable
- Knowledge articles with demo videos to show them how to use Customer Service
Portal to report issues, ask questions, and search the knowledge base
Developers
- ServiceNow Fundamentals and Customer Service Management Fundamentals
courses to gain familiarity of the application and platform
- For no-code developers, No-Code Application Development
- For low-/pro-code developers, courses in configuration, scripting, and integrations
- Recommended paths in Now Learning: ServiceNow Fundamentals Path,
ServiceNow Implementer Path and Customer Service Management Fundamentals
additionally, Application Development Fundamentals, Flow Designer Fundamentals
and IntegrationHub Fundamentals
- For more developer help, visit our Developer site.
15
Process users and agents
- Custom training developed specifically for their roles from the customer’s
configured instance
- For managerial or team lead roles, training in Performance Analytics and Dashboards
- Recommended Videos: Customer Service Management playlist,
Workspace Agent Chat and Virtual Agent Overview
- Recommended Demos:
Customer Service Management Product Demos (registration required)
- Recommended Paths in Now Learning: ServiceNow Fundamentals Path
Administrators
- Recommended Paths in Now Learning: ServiceNow Fundamentals Path,
Customer Service Management Implementer Path
- Training courses related to system administration, managing, and maintaining the
platform
- Product Documentation for setting up Customer Service Management
- Recommended Videos: Customer Service Management playlist,
Workspace Agent Chat and Virtual Agent Overview
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 Customer Success Best Practices
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maximize the value of your ServiceNow investment.

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Critical and ServiceNow teams
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Practical Actionable
Expert
Management insights Technical Based on thousands of
successful implementations
Common across the globe
pitfalls and
challenges

Tactical Distilled through a

rigorous process to enhance Value- Expert-
Designed for: your success added validated

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sponsors owners and process
and teams owners

Contact your ServiceNow team

Get started today. Visit Customer Success Center. 16 for personalized assistance.
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