Customer self-service for Sales Customer Relationship Management release notes
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Summary of Customer self-service for Sales Customer Relationship Management release notes
The ServiceNow® Business Portal application empowers B2B customers to independently place orders, request quotes, and manage support for orders and invoices via a self-service web portal. The Australia release introduces significant enhancements focused on AI-powered chat and voice assistants, seamless case management, and improved transparency into invoice and order processes to enhance customer experience and operational efficiency.
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Key Features
- AI-Powered Assistance: Customers can create and manage invoice dispute cases through conversational AI chat and voice assistants that guide them naturally through dispute intake, validate data instantly, autonomously resolve eligible disputes, or escalate seamlessly to human agents with full context transfer.
- Invoice and Order Transparency: Customers gain direct access to view invoices, invoice line details, order statuses, and dispute progress on the Business Portal, improving visibility and reducing support inquiries.
- Order Exception Management: Customers can request quantity changes, shipping location updates, and expedited delivery for existing orders via chat and voice assistants, with automated creation of order cases for efficient handling by agents.
- Enhanced Case Handling: Customers can resume editing draft invoice cases, review context-aware invoice line details, and receive automated email notifications throughout the case lifecycle to stay informed.
- Agent Productivity Enhancements: Live agents benefit from AI-generated chat summaries during handoffs, chat recommendations with quick actions, and Now Assist panels providing similar case insights to accelerate dispute resolution.
- Extensibility: Administrators can integrate chat assistants with inventory, ERP, and quote systems using scripted extension points to validate delivery, quantity, shipping, and pricing thresholds dynamically.
Activation and Plugins
The Business Portal (snb2bportal) is included with the Customer Service Portal (sncsmportal), which customers can install via the ServiceNow Store. New plugins introduced in this release provide AI-powered invoice operations management, invoice self-service, invoice case management, and a secure guided playbook for invoice cases, enhancing B2B customer self-service capabilities.
Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
- Enable B2B customers to independently manage complex order and invoice processes with AI-driven assistance, reducing dependency on human agents.
- Improve customer satisfaction through increased transparency, faster dispute resolution, and proactive notifications.
- Streamline agent workflows with AI tools that summarize conversations, recommend responses, and provide contextual insights, boosting productivity and consistency.
- Customize and extend order exception validations to align with existing backend systems for accurate, real-time fulfillment checks.
The ServiceNow® Business Portal application enables your B2B customers to place orders, request quotes, and get support for orders and invoices through a self-service web portal. Business Portal was enhanced and updated in the Australia release.
Business Portal highlights for the Australia release
Australia Patch 3
- Enable business-to-business (B2B) customers to request quantity changes and shipping location updates for their existing orders, in addition to expedited delivery, through AI-powered chat and voice assistants.
- Provide customers with an automatically generated quote when a quantity-change request exceeds the configured price threshold.
- Provide customers an option to upload a delivery note during invoice case creation so that the invoice dispute intake assistant AI agent can instantly validate quantity disputes.
Australia Patch 2
- Enable customers to resume and submit invoice cases in draft state.
- Review invoice case line details that are relevant to how your case was created.
Australia Patch 1
- Enable customers to create invoice dispute cases through AI-powered chat and voice assistants that guide them through conversational dispute intake on the Business Portal.
- Provide uninterrupted handoff to human agents to support complex use cases, with full conversation context transferred to the CSM/FSM Configurable Workspace.
Australia Early Availability
- Enable customers to create invoice dispute cases for quantity, pricing, or date discrepancies through an intuitive playbook experience.
- Enable customers to view invoices and invoice details directly from the Business Portal, providing transparency into billing information.
- Provide customers with visibility into invoice case status, resolution steps, and associated invoice lines to track dispute progress.
See Customer self-service for Sales Customer Relationship Management for more information.
Important:
Business Portal is included with Customer Service Portal, which is available in the ServiceNow Store. For details, see the "Activation information" section of these release notes.
New in the Australia release
Australia Patch 3
- Delivery note upload for quantity dispute validation
- Provide customers an option to upload a delivery note during invoice case creation so that the invoice dispute intake assistant AI agent can instantly validate quantity disputes and resolve the issue without human intervention.
- Automated email notifications for order cases
- Keep your customers informed by sending automated emails when the manage order operations AI agent opens an order case from a Business Portal chat conversation and when the case is closed with a successful resolution. The closure email includes the resolution details, and the quote details when a quote was generated for the case. Order cases that are created through the voice channel don't trigger email notifications.
- Resume and submit invoice cases in draft state
- Enable customers to resume working on an invoice case that they couldn't finish submitting in a previous session. They can use the Process tab on the Standard Ticket page to continue editing invoice case and invoice case line disputes, then submit for further processing.
- Context-aware invoice case line list view
- Enable customers to review invoice case line details that are relevant to how their case was created. The Business Portal displays request source-aware columns in the invoice case line list view, showing specific details when a case is raised for a single invoice or when it spans multiple invoices.
- AI-powered invoice case management for customers
- Enable customers to report invoice disputes through an AI-powered virtual assistant on the Business Portal. Customers can describe quantity-related discrepancies through natural conversation. The assistant validates details, creates cases, and autonomously resolves eligible disputes by issuing credit notes or replacement orders or connecting customers with a human agent when needed. Interaction channels include chat and voice options.
- Invoice dispute intake with voice assistant
- Enable customers to report quantity-related invoice disputes using voice commands through an AI-powered voice assistant on the Business Portal. Customers can describe discrepancies through natural speech and the assistant captures dispute details to create invoice cases or connects customers with a human agent.
- Human agent handoff with context transfer
- Help customers to escalate complex disputes seamlessly to a live agent. The full conversation context, including invoice details, dispute reason, and prior AI actions are transferred to the CSM/FSM Configurable Workspace, enabling live agents to continue without asking customers to repeat information.
- Now Assist for invoice case resolution
- Help accelerate invoice dispute resolution by surfacing similar cases and common resolution patterns in the Now Assist panel. Agents can request help with an invoice case to view how similar disputes were resolved, reducing research time and improving consistency.
- Automated email notifications for invoice cases
- Keep customers informed with automated email notifications at key points in the invoice case life cycle, including case creation confirmation, resolution details with credit note or replacement order information, and the next steps for cases requiring human review.
- Invoice management on Business Portal
- Enable your customers to view invoices and invoice line details directly on the Business Portal, providing transparency into quantity, billing location, shipping location, and sold product information.
- Invoice case creation through playbook experience
- Provide self-service capability to your customers to create invoice dispute cases directly from the Business Portal for quantity, pricing, or date discrepancies using a guided self-service experience, supporting both single invoice and multiple invoice scenarios.
- Invoice case management on Business Portal
- Enable your customers to view and track invoice cases on the Business Portal, reducing support inquiries and keeping them informed on dispute resolution progress.
Changed in this release
Australia Patch 3
- Order exception support for quantity and shipping location requests
- Enable customers to request quantity changes and shipping location updates for existing orders, in addition to expedited delivery, through the chat assistant on the Business Portal.
- Voice assistant intake for order exception requests
- Enable customers to submit expedite, quantity, and shipping location requests through the voice assistant. The voice assistant captures the request and creates an order case for the order case agent to resolve it in the CSM Configurable Workspace.
- Scripted extension points for order exception checks and quote thresholds
- Provide administrators pluggable scripted extension points so they can integrate the chat assistant with their inventory, ERP, and quote systems for delivery availability, quantity validation, shipping location validation, and quote threshold evaluation.
- Consolidated extension point for order exception feasibility checks
- Provide a single scripted extension point (sn_ord_ops_aias.orderExceptionCheckEP) for the manage order operations chat assistant to validate delivery availability, quantity, and shipping location feasibility for order exception requests. This extension point replaces sn_ord_ops_aias.orderExpeditionCheckEP, which previously handled only available-to-promise (ATP) checks for expedited delivery.
- Account and contact populated on interaction records for order exception chats
- Provide live agents with the customer's account and contact details on the interaction record when an order exception chat is handed off from the Business Portal. The Account and Contact fields are auto-populated on the interaction record during the virtual assistant conversation, so the live agent immediately sees the customer context, and the chat summarization feature can summarize the conversation by using those details.
- AI-generated chat summary for live agent handoff
- Provide human agents with an AI-generated summary of the customer's prior virtual assistant conversation at the point of live agent handoff, replacing the full conversation history to accelerate context understanding and improve agent productivity.
- Order line quantity validation for invoice disputes
- Provide the invoice dispute support assistant AI with an additional validation source for quantity disputes by checking order line quantities when sold product records are unavailable, supporting scenarios such as new orders, non-serialized products, and consumable services. The assistant auto-approves eligible disputes and escalates to a human agent only when order data is ambiguous or missing.
- Chat recommendations and quick actions in Active Chat
- Enable live agents to generate AI-recommended responses in Active Chat within the CSM/FSM Configurable Workspace, then review, optionally edit, and insert the response into the conversation. Agents can also use quick actions to perform common tasks such as creating cases, searching knowledge articles, summarizing chat conversations, and transferring chats directly from the Active Chat interface.
Activation information
The Business Portal application (sn_b2b_portal) is automatically installed when you install the Customer Service Portal (sn_csm_portal). Install the Customer Service Portal by requesting it from the ServiceNow Store. Visit the ServiceNow Store to view all the available apps, and for information about submitting requests to the store. For cumulative release notes information for all released apps, see the ServiceNow Store version history release notes.
Plugin information
- New plugins
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The following plugins are new in Australia:
- Australia Patch 1
Manage Invoice Operations (com.sn_inv_ops_aias): Delivers AI-powered assistants that handle invoice dispute intake directly from the portal, resolves eligible cases autonomously, and seamlessly escalates to a human agent when needed. In the workspace, it continues to assist human agents by providing relevant insights and actions to accelerate invoice case resolution.
- Invoice Self-Service (com.sn_invoice_ss): Enable an efficient invoice management experience for B2B customers on the Business Portal, helping them to view and manage invoices efficiently and improve financial operations.
- Invoice Case Self-Service (com.sn_invoice_case_ss): Enable B2B customers to monitor and manage invoice-related cases efficiently through the Business Portal.
- Invoice Case Playbook (com.sn_inv_case_pb): Enable a secure, guided playbook experience for B2B customers on the Business Portal to create and manage invoice-related cases.
- Australia Patch 1