ServiceNow Integration

note

This feature is in Preview and its behavior is likely to change based on user feedback. The feature also may have lower availability and have more maintenance windows.

You can connect multiple ServiceNow instances to a single Salted CX account and mix data in Salted CX with other data sources.

Integration between ServiceNow and Salted CX

There are only two required items to connect to Salted CX:

1. ServiceNow API credentials (username and password)
2. ServiceNow instance URL — for example https://yourcompany.service-now.com/

tip

Salted CX currently supports ServiceNow Incidents only. We will add other types of activity such as requests, problems, changes, etc. based on demand. However incidents are the only

ServiceNow Data in Logical Model

We translate data from all platforms into our unified Logical Model that enables you to report on data from multiple platforms in the same way. We use unified concepts with unified naming and the same meaning in every platform.

As each platform has its own vocabulary and concepts we cannot adopt any single platform vocabulary. Platforms have different names for the same concepts (for example ticket, case, issue, or task for a single customer-related request). Or different platforms use the same name for different concepts (for example "Contact" means a single conversation with a customer in one platform, but it means a customer email/phone in another platform).

This article covers how ServiceNow concepts translate into Salted CX concepts and vocabulary.

tip

To understand ServiceNow data in the Logical Model it is recommended to have a basic understanding of our Customer Journey and Logical Model. You can also check our Glossary to understand the naming and meaning of our concepts.

Customers

Salted CX creates individual customers that correspond to ServiceNow users. ServiceNow creates users for both agents and the customers contacting the company. Every incident or request associated with a user representing a customer becomes part of the given customer's customer journey. So you see all those tickets chronologically one after another in our customer journey.

The customer email becomes the contact identifier in Salted CX, with fallback to phone number or ServiceNow sys_id if email is not available. The customer name from ServiceNow is stored as the customer name in Salted CX.

Conversations

Each ServiceNow incident or request translates to one conversation in Salted CX.

Engagements

ServiceNow does not have a built-in concept similar to engagements in Salted CX. We define engagement as the participation of a single agent or a service in a conversation with a customer. We use heuristics to extract a similar concept from ServiceNow data.

We create engagements based on actual agent activity on the incident or request. An engagement starts when an agent responds to a ticket for the first time or when a ticket is reopened. The engagement ends when another agent starts to engage with the customer or the ticket is resolved. The start time of an engagement is when an agent sends their first message. The end time of an engagement is when an agent sends their last message. This heuristic tries to best approximate the engagement time.

For example, if an agent Alice replies to a customer at 8:00 AM with one message, then Alice asks Bob for help with the customer. Bob starts to chat with the customer at 8:15 AM until 8:30 AM. Bob returns the ticket to Alice who chats with the customer from 8:45 AM to 9:00 AM and marks the ticket as resolved. Customer reaches back and Alice chats again with the customer from 10:00 AM to 10:30 AM. We create 4 engagements:

• Engagement with Alice with start time and end time 8:00 AM
• Engagement with Bob with start time 8:15 AM and end time 8:30 AM
• Engagement with Alice with start time 8:45 AM and end time 9:00 AM
• Engagement with Alice with start time 10:00 AM and end time 10:30 AM

tip

Depending on your exact process and setup in ServiceNow our metric Engagement Time and metrics based on it may not be reliable indicator of an agent performance. Unlike many other contact center platforms, ServiceNow does not have a concept of an agent actively working on a ticket by accepting it. This means the agent can spend some time by looking at the ticket before engagement start time starts.

You can use metrics such as Engagements per Hour to get glimpse of the agent performance. More engagements per hour typically means agents are faster in handling them.

We map the following attributes from ServiceNow tickets to the Salted CX model:

Salted CX	ServiceNow Attribute
Case	Problem number
Channel Vendor	"ServiceNow"
Channel Type	Mapped from contact_type: empty → "Email", "self-service" → "Web", "phone" → "Voice"
Conversation	Ticket number
Conversation Start Time	Ticket created timestamp (sys_created_on)
Direction	'Inbound'
Engagement Type	"Agent"
Engagement Link	Link to the ticket in ServiceNow
Engagement Priority	Ticket priority
Engagement State	"Completed" if state is 6 or 7, else "In Progress"
Start Time	Engagement start time (first comment timestamp)
End Time	Engagement end time (last comment timestamp)

Turns

Each individual comment or message from an agent or from a customer creates a new message turn associated with an engagement of the currently engaged agent.

Data not Available from ServiceNow

Different customer care platforms provide different granularity of data and have different concepts. These features may prevent us from reporting on certain metrics or impose other restrictions.

This typically prevents use of certain attributes and/or metrics in reporting for the given platform. This section covers the key limitations based on ServiceNow data. Remember that when one metric is affected also metrics based on that one are affected (such as average of the missing metric).

Queue Engagements

ServiceNow does not have a concept of queues similar to many other contact center platforms. Thus we do not create any queue engagements that typically represent waiting customers in a specific queue and enable visibility into customer movement between queues.

Affected attributes: Queue

Affected metrics: Wait Time, Queue Engagements

Invitation Engagements

ServiceNow does not have a concept of inviting agents to conversations (showing agents that they can engage with the customer by joining conversation) similar to many other contact center platforms. Thus we do not create any invitation engagements in case the agent misses or rejects the invitation to join conversations.

Affected metrics: Invitation Time, Rejected Invitations, Missed Invitations

Wrap Up Time

ServiceNow does not have a concept of wrap up that agent has to perform after an engagement with a customer. Although agent can perform additional actions in ServiceNow after they resolve the customer ticket this time is not tracked by ServiceNow.

Affected metrics: Wrap Up Time

Agent Status

We do not import agent activity (agent status, AUX code) from ServiceNow. These status codes are typically used for routing decisions and WFM purposes. When using ServiceNow we recommend you have another source for this data such as WFM or a contact center platform that you connect with Salted CX.

Affected metrics: Activity Time, Available Time, Unavailable Time