1. #16: Design an optimal agent and rep experience
Success Pillar: Create excitement, drive adoption

2. Success Pillars – Structure
State and measure your business goals
Actively lead the transformation
Get your ServiceNow foundations right
Create excitement, drive adoption 1
State your transformation vision and outcomes 5
Engage executive sponsor to drive change and remove roadblocks 11
Manage to
“Out-of-the Box” 15
Design an engaging self-service employee & customer experience 2
Build your business case 6
Find, manage, and coordinate capable, certified partners 12
Discover and map your service assets 16
Design an optimal agent and rep experience 3
Build a phased
program plan, identify quick win 7
Build dedicated, dynamic governance process, policies & team 13
Plan your architecture, instances, integrations and data flows 17
Create change management plan 4
Baseline and track performance, usage KPIs and metrics 8
Reimagine how you want work processes to flow 14
Plan for upgrades at least once a year 18
Build internal team of ServiceNow experts & train users 9
Define and map out your business services 19
Build a community of champions 10
Manage platform demand

3. Design an optimal agent and rep experience
Service fulfillers— customer support agents, service desk staff, and service representatives—rely on the Now Platform to execute and manage their fulfillment work processes, tasks, records, and reports. They are the key users of the Now Platform. 
If the Now Platform is not effectively configured to optimize agent and rep experience, they will be less likely to adopt it for their day-to-day work or promote end-user adoption. Designing an optimal agent and rep experience will not just scale Now Platform deployment across the organization, but will also increase fulfiller satisfaction and retention.
Insight: Design an optimal agent and rep experience
To design an optimal agent and rep experience, ensure your organization:
Understands fulfillers’ responsibilities and the challenges associated with their day-to-day activities
Deploys and provides access to the right Now Platform functionality that help resolves fulfiller challenges
Configures the user interface to make it easier for fulfillers to capture the information they need and to navigate across the applications and tools they use to fulfill requests
Fulfillers’ experience on the Now Platform highly depends on their ability to use the platform effectively. Educate fulfillers and train them on relevant Now platform functionality, with emphasis on how fulfillers can personalize the Now Platform user interface. Proactively identify design gaps and new opportunities to enhance agent and rep experience.
Key Implementation Steps
Start
Improve
Optimize
1. Evaluate current fulfiller experience
2. Identify opportunities to improve fulfiller experience
3. Configure the platform for optimal fulfiller experience
4. Help fulfillers adopt and use the platform effectively
5. Continuously improve fulfiller experience

4. Step 1a: Identify and engage with fulfillers
Identify the different types of ServiceNow fulfillers—agents and representatives who use (or will use) the Now platform to execute and manage their fulfillment work processes, records, and reports. Identify their responsibilities and primary activities to understand their operating context within your organization. 
Identify fulfillers—service agents and reps—in your organization
Identify the different categories of fulfillers (across different functions such as IT, HR, facilities, and customer service) that use ServiceNow for their daily activities. Include:
Front-end support agents (walk-in service desk, on-call support, and call center agents)
Agent and rep supervisors
Request dispatchers, if any (one who looks at incoming requests and dispatches them to the right team)
Agents and reps working on escalated issues or requests (tier 2 and above)
Identify a sample set of fulfillers (at least two) of each type who are interested in helping design a better agent and rep experience with ServiceNow for each of the above categories. Consider picking the most vocal agents across business-units and functions. Ensure to explain:
Their role in identifying fulfiller experience pain-points
How their input will help choose the right Servicenow modules and configurations that make their job easier
Engage and observe fulfillers to understand their activities and needs
Observe selected fulfillers and interview them, assuming you know nothing about them, to understand their “a day-in-the-life” experiences, needs, and barriers in getting their job done. Use the questions below:
What do you do when you need to __(e.g., answer a customer inquiry)? Where do you look for alternatives, if you can’t find an answer?
I saw that you did ___. What you were trying to accomplish?
What do you do when you get stuck on a screen or a step in the process?
What challenges do you bump into while trying to complete ________? What frustrates you most about your current process?
Design and conduct surveys to gather feedback on the current experience of using existing applications and tools for their day-to-day activities. Consider using the Survey Management module in Now Platform. Focus on:
Effort: How much effort they have to put in to resolve their needs on the platform
Satisfaction: How satisfied are they with the services offered
Practitioner Insight: If you have a community of champions for ServiceNow, engage with them to identify fulfiller experience needs and pain-points. 
Steps
1. Evaluate current fulfiller experience
2. Identify opportunities to improve fulfiller experience
3. Configure the platform for optimal fulfiller experience
4. Help fulfillers adopt and use the platform effectively
5. Continuously improve fulfiller experience

5. Step 1b: Document fulfiller experience pain-points
To design an optimal fulfiller experience, build empathy with fulfillers by observing their day-to-day activities and understanding their needs and pain-points.
Identify fulfiller experience pain-points
Based on your observations in Step 1a, identify and document key set of activities fulfillers perform to achieve a defined objective (call these fulfiller “use cases”). Common fulfiller use cases include:
Create new and track open cases, incidents, or requests for incoming service consumer inquirers and complaints
Coordinate across teams and navigate across tools and knowledge base(s) to resolve cases, incidents, or requests assigned to them or the team
Create, edit, and tag knowledge base articles
Respond to cases, incidents, or requests assigned to them
Track performance and satisfaction ratings on cases, incidents, or requests resolved by them or the team
Work with the selected fulfillers (from step 1a) to ensure the fulfiller use cases documented are accurate and comprehensive of their primary activities.
Based on your observations in step 1a, map out the current state of the experience for each use case. Include:
Steps: What are the key steps involved in each activity type?
Description: What is happening at each step
Channel: Are they using , phone, chat messages, or another medium?
Pain points: Is anything particularly annoying, missing, or broken?
Emotions: How are they feeling?
Identify the top 10, most important use cases for experience improvement based on volume of activity per month, ability to make proper assessments/decisions (even when volume is low), or include adoption blockers caused by frustration (e.g. double entry)
Practitioner Insight: Always conduct user (fulfiller in this case) research studies, including interviews and focus group discussions, with the help of UX design and user research experts—identifying experience design needs requires specific expertise that doesn’t always reside with internal facing groups like IT.
Steps
1. Evaluate current fulfiller experience
2. Identify opportunities to improve fulfiller experience
3. Configure the platform for optimal fulfiller experience
4. Help fulfillers adopt and use the platform effectively
5. Continuously improve fulfiller experience

6. Step 2: Identify opportunities to improve fulfiller experience
Based on your findings on fulfiller needs and pain-points, define design requirements for Now Platform applications and features (that fulfillers use) to improve agent and rep experience. Identify processes that don’t meet these requirements and need improvement.
Define fulfiller experience requirements
Define design requirements that can improve fulfiller experience based on challenges identified in step 1. Consider:
Simple request management process across channels: Fulfillers work on multiple requests (often coming from different channels such as walk-up desk, call support, etc.) and are continuously being assigned more
Integrated tools and applications: Fulfillers have to access multiple tools (e.g. knowledge base, customer directory, remote-desktop, browser, incident tool) to resolve the customer requests
Effective search: Fulfillers are often time-pressed. Instead of having them go through a large terminology, make search effective
Effective self-service: Automate repetitive tasks that don’t require human intervention
Effortless coordination and visibility across teams: Fulfillers often receive requests that require input from other teams.
Identify inefficiencies in fulfillment processes that impact fulfiller experience
Work with process owners to identify existing processes that need improvement based on the above fulfiller experience design attributes. Use the below questions: 
Where can we consolidate and streamline handoffs between teams, individuals, and systems? – Review handoffs to identify points where handoffs are creating unnecessary bottlenecks in existing processes
Where are we collecting unnecessary data? – Identify where forms and requirements collect data that aren’t used or needed for the process to work.
Where are we seeing the longest cycle times? Why? – Identify process steps with consistently long cycle times and diagnose why.
Where do we have gaps in standards adherence? – Document process steps that do not consistently adhere to standards
Steps
1. Evaluate current fulfiller experience
2. Identify opportunities to improve fulfiller experience
3. Configure the platform for optimal fulfiller experience
4. Help fulfillers adopt and use the platform effectively
5. Continuously improve fulfiller experience

7. Step 3a: Deploy relevant Now Platform capabilities
The Now Platform offers multiple different features and capabilities that can easily help you improve agent and rep experience and remove process inefficiencies, identified in step 2. Selectively deploy Now Platform capabilities (preferably out-of-box) that are most helpful to resolve the challenges and pain-points fulfillers face in their day-to-day activities.
Identify and deploy Now Platform capabilities that can help improve fulfiller experience
Work with ServiceNow account team and your implementation partner to identify Now Platform capabilities that will help address the challenges and process improvement opportunities identified in step 2. Consider the below capabilities:
ServiceNow Connect
Dependency Views
Notify
Interaction Management
Knowledge management
Work with process owners and application owners to decide whether “out of the box” (OOB) ServiceNow processes will deliver the process improvements you want, or if you will require configurations to OOB. Use the below questions to do a value-to-cost comparison:
Does the out-of-box functionality solve for the desired process improvement objective?
Where can additional configuration or customization help improve process workflow or adoption?
Is the desired configuration or customization too complex? Would it impact platform upgrades, performance, or technical debt?
Practitioner Insight: Consider evaluating and deploying ServiceNow’s out-of-box applications, such as ITSM walk-up experience, and integrations, such as with Workday, as relevant to your fulfiller needs and ServiceNow transformation goals. For a more sophisticated fulfiller experience design, evaluate ServiceNow’s upcoming Agent Workspace and new Agent intelligence modules.
Response Templates
Virtual Agents
Visual Task Boards
Workflow
Task Communications Management
Practitioner Insight: Limit configuration and customization where possible to avoid complexity and technical debt. For the configurations or customizations you make, be sure to integrate and test them properly during the upgrade process. 
Steps
1. Evaluate current fulfiller experience
2. Identify opportunities to improve fulfiller experience
3. Configure the platform for optimal fulfiller experience
4. Help fulfillers adopt and use the platform effectively
5. Continuously improve fulfiller experience

8. Step 3b: Ensure fulfillers have the required access
To use the Platform effectively, fulfillers must be authorized or given the right level of access within the platform. Ensure your Now Platform instances are properly configured to provide the right level of access to fulfillers based on their role and job requirements.
Provide the right access and permissions to fulfillers
Work with process and application owners to determine which fulfillers (individuals or groups) require access to which Now Platform applications, features and modules. For example: would they need to read, create, edit knowledge articles? Or should they be allowed to edit, create, or delete catalog items? Think about:
Which use cases defined in Step 1 are most applicable for the fulfiller?
To act on the use case considered, which Now Platform applications, features and modules are required?
Work with your implementation partner to design a Now Platform user administration strategy (for both fulfillers and end-users) with clearly defined user roles, which control access to features and capabilities in Now Platform applications and modules. Ensure to:
Use out-of-box user roles (for example Azure users in Cloud Management) where applicable
Provide edit rights carefully, only to those who are in position to make informed changes on the platform
As applicable, ensure the edit rights are local to the user or the user group
Educate process and application owners on user roles and groups to ensure transparency and visibility into the platform configuration.
During implementation, ensure all fulfillers are given access and permission to use features, applications, and capabilities relevant to them. Consider using the Impersonate a user feature for testing purposes. 
Practitioner Insight: If you define new roles (outside of the ones available out-of-box) test their functionality during upgrades and maintain comprehensive test cases for future upgrades. 
Practitioner Insight: Regularly monitor and manage user sessions to remove or inactivate users who no longer require access to Now Platform features or capabilities.
Steps
1. Evaluate current fulfiller experience
2. Identify opportunities to improve fulfiller experience
3. Configure the platform for optimal fulfiller experience
4. Help fulfillers adopt and use the platform effectively
5. Continuously improve fulfiller experience

9. Step 3c: Optimize the user interface design
Once fulfillers have access to the right Now Platform applications and features, design the fulfiller user interface(UI) according to fulfiller workflows to ensure the Now Platform applications are easy to use (both individually and in coordination with other applications).
Optimize the fulfiller user interface design
Understand Now Platform User Interface features and design options. The key components of the user interface include:
Banner frame: Runs across the top of every page and contains a logo, global navigation controls, and tools.
Application navigator: Also called the left-navigation bar. Provides links to all applications and modules.
Content frame: Displays information such as lists, forms, homepages, and wizards.
The Edge (in UI15) or the Favorites tab (in UI16): A toolbar for quick links to commonly used features and applications.
Work with process and application owners to ensure:
The banner frame is properly configured in system properties to display the right company name, product name, and description for individual fulfillers.
The application navigator includes easy access to applications and modules relevant for the individual fulfiller (remove or hide navigation items fulfillers don’t need access to). Consider adding frequently used applications or modules by default in the Favorites tab (for UI16) or as Bookmarks (for UI15).
The flow of the content frame is designed to match fulfiller workflow (i.e. the sequence in which the information is captured on the screen is according to how fulfillers typically capture it based on their working style and process).
Mandatory fields should only include information necessary to complete the task and are clearly highlighted
Use form design visual indicators to group and highlight related information
Prepopulate fields with default data (or data captured from integrated applications or CMDB) as much as possible to minimize effort
Content “views” are optimized based on who is accessing the application or module and from which channel (self-service, mobile, etc.). Use the below questions to evaluate the mobile experience:
Is the length of the content (number of fields in the form, titles, display titles, extras) too long to affect navigation experience?
Is the right information highlighted, without having to navigate across multiple pages, to inform decision-making?
Practitioner Insight: Treat fulfiller UI design similar to any other (end-user or customer facing) UX/UI experience design exercise. Engage fulfillers early in the design process to validate the design mock-ups and provide feedback.
Steps
1. Evaluate current fulfiller experience
2. Identify opportunities to improve fulfiller experience
3. Configure the platform for optimal fulfiller experience
4. Help fulfillers adopt and use the platform effectively
5. Continuously improve fulfiller experience

10. Step 4a: Educate fulfillers on ServiceNow offerings
Moving from legacy tools (and applications) to the Now Platform is often a big change for service fulfillers. To help fulfillers prepare for the change, educate and inform them on the key capabilities of the Now Platform and how it can help resolve their challenges and pain-points. This should be done in conjunction with your organization’s change management* initiative for ServiceNow.
Educate fulfillers on ServiceNow offerings
Introduce ServiceNow early, two to three months before go-live, to your fulfillers. Highlight:
The business value of using ServiceNow Platform (the key problems you wish to address and business outcomes you expect to realize)
“What’s in it for them”—how ServiceNow offerings can help make their job easier and more interesting (for example, spend less time making manual updates, see all your work in one place)
Provide before and after examples of the most important processes (like incident management, or HR case management)
Engage fulfillers in requirements gathering exercises (like we are engaging them in Step 1), design feedback sessions, and pilot testing to make them feel part of the change
Once the solution is live, spread the news (via intranets, workplace social networks, , etc.) to drive excitement on using and learning the Now Platform
Celebrate the launch of ServiceNow (go-live) with activities like cake cutting.
Practitioner Insight: Effective organizational change management is critical to drive success with ServiceNow implementation. Create a comprehensive change management plan to influence all stakeholders impacted toward supporting, becoming involved in, and committing to the Now Platform implementation. 
Steps
1. Evaluate current fulfiller experience
2. Identify opportunities to improve fulfiller experience
3. Configure the platform for optimal fulfiller experience
4. Help fulfillers adopt and use the platform effectively
5. Continuously improve fulfiller experience

11. Step 4b: Train fulfillers to use the platform effectively
The Now Platform is highly flexible and customizable based on individual needs and preferences. However, often fulfillers are not trained to use the Now Platform effectively. This negatively affects their experience with the platform. Provide targeted training to fulfillers, both formally through ServiceNow and informally through peers, to help them better use the platform. 
Train fulfillers to use the platform effectively 
Enroll fulfillers for relevant ServiceNow fulfiller training packages based on the applications and modules they use.
Consider a ‘train the trainer’ approach by having ServiceNow train selected ‘fulfiller trainers’ who will learn from the ServiceNow trainer and then pass that knowledge along to train the rest of your team
Work with ServiceNow experts and your implementation partner to design custom training modules, if required for needs specific to your organization
Ensure fulfillers are trained on Now platform’s user interface personalization features, such as how to personalize a form, mark favorites, create personal lists and personalized dashboards, and fulfiller-specific features such as “User Presence” that can help initiate chat with other agents looking at an incident
Create channels for ongoing training and learning opportunities for fulfillers. Help fulfillers:
Learn from each other through peer-networks enabled through special interest group meetings, on-line discussion forums, and lunch and learns
Engage with a broader group of ServiceNow experts, partners, and users through ServiceNow Community, events like Knowledge, and ServiceNow User Groups (SNUGs)
Document and share their learnings through knowledge base articles and training videos that include comprehensive reference guides (provided by ServiceNow or your implementation partners)
With the help of fulfiller supervisors, analyze individual performance metrics (such as time taken to resolve a request, per request type) to identify targeted training needs.
Ensure the targeted training is not seen negatively as an indicator of poor performance, instead position it as a way to resolve process inefficiencies and bottlenecks.
Practitioner Insight: Position ServiceNow certifications and expertise as a career progression path for fulfillers.
Steps
1. Evaluate current fulfiller experience
2. Identify opportunities to improve fulfiller experience
3. Configure the platform for optimal fulfiller experience
4. Help fulfillers adopt and use the platform effectively
5. Continuously improve fulfiller experience

12. Step 5a: Proactively identify design gaps
Experience design is not a one-time activity. Continuously analyze performance metrics and solicit fulfiller feedback to identify opportunities to enhance the fulfiller experience.
Identify potential platform design and experience gaps
Define measures of success for fulfiller experience design (i.e. lagging indicators that look at past data to indicate performance). Use below metrics, on a 5-point scale:
Fulfiller Satisfaction Score—measured by asking “How satisfied are you with the Now Platform experience?”.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)—measured by asking “how likely are you to recommend Now platform applications and modules to others?”
Conduct quarterly feedback sessions and surveys to identify key challenges fulfillers face while working with the Now Platform. Ensure to:
Include open-ended questions that allows fulfillers to explain their pain-points.
Gather feedback on the most important fulfiller use cases defined in Step 1
Work with process and application owners (at least every quarter) to analyze anomalies and spikes in team performance and adoption metrics* that could indicate platform issues. Consider the following:
Issue or request types that take unusually long to resolve
% of issues and requests that were handed off to another team
Interaction points in the fulfillment process workflow that are most time consuming
% of active users on the most important Now Platform applications
Number of incidents and requests per user per month
Benchmark your Now Platform adoption metrics with peers in the industry (available as part of the Now Platform instance). Low adoption as compared to your peers would indicate potential experience design gaps.
Practitioner Insight: Consider conducting a fulfiller experience evaluation exercise (similar to Step 1) every year, if not earlier, to get an in-depth up-to-date assessment of fulfiller needs and pain-points. Refine fulfiller requirements (step 2) every year according to your findings.  
* Note: Low performance on any of these metrics need not be because of design flaws.
Steps
1. Evaluate current fulfiller experience
2. Identify opportunities to improve fulfiller experience
3. Configure the platform for optimal fulfiller experience
4. Help fulfillers adopt and use the platform effectively
5. Continuously improve fulfiller experience

13. Step 5b: Continuously resolve design gaps
You likely won’t be able to fix everything all at once, so prioritize the most important design gaps and focus on deploying new Now Platform capabilities (as they are made available) that can help improve the fulfiller experience.
Resolve Now Platform design gaps and enhance the experience
Prioritize design issues to resolve based on how serious the issue is (i.e. minor or small frustration vs. major, task failure or delay) and how complex it is to resolve the issue (low, e.g. simple text change, vs. high, e.g. requires new data source or architecture re-design)
For low complexity issues, work with process and application owners to resolve
For high complexity issues, work with the ServiceNow technology governance team* and implementation partner to resolve
Evaluate new Now Platform capabilities made available after every release to look for new features and modules that can help enhance the fulfiller experience.
Work with your strategic implementation governance team to include relevant Now platform capabilities into the implementation roadmap and program plan. 
Steps
1. Evaluate current fulfiller experience
2. Identify opportunities to improve fulfiller experience
3. Configure the platform for optimal fulfiller experience
4. Help fulfillers adopt and use the platform effectively
5. Continuously improve fulfiller experience

14. KPIs and Stakeholders Key Performance Indicators Essential KPIs
% of fulfillers who rate ServiceNow as easy-to-use and meeting their needs
% of fulfillers who actively use key Now Platform applications, such as Request Management
‘Nice to Have’
Number of fulfiller use-cases documented and tracked for optimal experience design
% of fulfillers who actively use Now Platform’s personalization features
Stakeholder Map
Responsible/Accountable
ServiceNow Platform Owner
Service and application Owners
Executive Sponsor
Adoption champions
Consulted/Informed
All IT organization
Business Leaders
Service Fulfillers
Helpdesk and Change management teams