For a company that makes connected medical devices or industrial manufacturing equipment, handling support tickets takes much more than a help desk team trained in answering frequently asked questions. The troubleshooting process often requires performing complex technical analysis that is normally beyond the ability of the average care representative, an issue ServiceNow Inc. promises to solve with its newest cloud offering.

ServiceNow Customer Service Management is built atop the firm’s popular business automation platform and exploits its collaboration capabilities to let agents call in help when they encounter a tough problem. The application makes it possible to find out the level of support a customer is entitled to, ask the engineering department for their input into the issue at hand and dispatch a technician to fix it, all without leaving the native interface. Support staff is also able to access real-time situation updates to ensure that the troubleshooting effort is carried out as efficiently as possible.

A maker of laboratory fridges, for instance, might configure ServiceNow Customer Service Management to display sensory data from malfunctioning units in a client site. The support agent responsible for the case could then use the information to have the technicians they dispatched to the location repair the faulty systems in order of importance. And they can send regular updates to the lab’s supervisor in the background via the application’s frontend customer portal.

Support may be provided over the phone, via live chat or through a videoconference depending on the situation, according to ServiceNow. For added measure, organizations are able to include self-help guides in the portal to let users who struggle with commonly occurring issues reach a solution  on their own. The feature thereby speeds up resolution times for those users while freeing up contact center staff to focus on more pressing tickets, improving client satisfaction all around.

ServiceNow announced the new offering at its annual Knowledge conference in Las Vegas this morning, where SiliconANGLE’s theCUBE is broadcasting live from the show floor. Check out our live stream for exclusive executive interviews and new insights into the company’s product roadmap.

Image via Pixabay