ServiceNow Inc. is part of a breed of companies seeking to capitalize on the third stage of what has been a steady evolution in software-driven enterprise customer management.

Starting as an element of customer relationship management software and then becoming a more robust tool for managing client accounts and data, customer service has moved into a third stage where engagement and experience become connected throughout an entire organization on a single platform.

And the customer service division is now a thing of the past, according to Venki Subramanian (pictured), head of product management and customer service management at ServiceNow.

“Customer service is not an island; it’s not just the responsibility of a single department within the company,” Subramanian said. “It’s a mindset that needs to get percolated down to every part of the organization. It’s about reducing call volumes, it’s about eliminating the root cause of the issue so that the next customer does not have to face that and then have to call you again.”

Subramanian spoke with Lisa Martin (@LisaMartinTV) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Enterprise Connect event in Kissimmee, Florida. They discussed the company’s most recent platform release and work with its customers to improve customer relationship efficiency (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

Leveraging AI in latest release

ServiceNow announced its latest release, dubbed Madrid, earlier this month. The platform update includes new features that leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide customer-service agents with important context.

“We don’t want an AI initiative inside a company to be a science project,” Subramanian explained. “When a customer service agent is working on a case, we’re able to identify similar issues that other people might have already reported. The way we are doing that is by embedding AI capabilities directly into the experience.”

ServiceNow’s focus on AI and the customer relationship experience has also helped some of its own clients achieve bottom-line benefits. Nice Ltd., a provider of cloud and on-premises enterprise software solutions, worked with ServiceNow to reduce backend case volume. The initiative resulted in a 72-percent drop in case volume and an annual savings of $450,000, according to a ServiceNow case study.

“They were able to reduce the effort for customers with great self-service experiences that are contextualized and personalized,” Subramanian said. “They’re able to identify issues and drive all the way to root cause resolution.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Enterprise Connect event. (* Disclosure: Five9 Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Five9 nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE