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Virtual Agent for Employee Self-Service

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In this lesson, you will learn:

  • What Virtual Agent is
  • The ready-made ITSM topics
  • How Sam uses the chat
  • How to turn it on and test it

🔁 Quick look back: Last time: Now Assist for ITSM. You learned how Now Assist summarizes incidents and drafts resolution notes for agents.

1 “I just want to know if it’s fixed”

Sam calls the Service Desk to ask about his VPN incident.

  • Abel looks it up and reads out the last comment.
  • The call takes 4 minutes.
  • The Service Desk gets 60 calls like this a week.

🎯 The problem: Simple status questions keep agents on the phone.

👉 The fix: let Sam ask the chat, any time, and get the answer himself.

2 Virtual Agent and topics

Key term: Virtual Agent

ServiceNow’s chatbot. It talks with employees in Employee Center, Teams or Slack.

Key term: Topic

One conversation the chatbot can have, like “Check IT ticket status”.

Sam chats with Virtual Agent in Employee Center. Sam: What's happening with my VPN ticket? Virtual Agent: You have one open incident, INC0010101, VPN keeps disconnecting. State: On Hold, Awaiting Change. Last update: a fix is planned for Sunday. Buttons: Add a comment, Talk to an agent.
Figure 1. Sam gets his answer without a call.

3 SNWR’s starting topics

Topic Sam can…
Open IT ticket Report a problem in chat
Check IT ticket status See his open incidents and requests
Order something Find and order a catalog item

💡 Good to know: Start with the ready-made ITSM topics. Build your own only when you see what people ask.

📦 Entitlement check: Virtual Agent is part of ITSM. More advanced chat, like Now Assist in Virtual Agent, depends on your package.

4 Let’s try it: turn on and test the chat

  1. Open Conversational Interfaces › Virtual Agent › Designer. Find the ITSM topics.
  2. Activate Open IT ticket and Check IT ticket status.
  3. Check the chat is turned on for Employee Center.
  4. Impersonate Sam. Open the chat and ask about your ticket.
  5. Open a new ticket through the chat. Check the incident is created, with Sam as caller.

5 Quick recap

  • Virtual Agent is ServiceNow’s chatbot
  • A topic is one conversation it can have
  • Start with the ready-made ITSM topics
  • Sam can open and check tickets by chat
  • Offer a hand-off to a person

6 Check yourself

Think of your answer first. Then tap to check.

1 What is a Virtual Agent topic? Show answer

One conversation the chatbot can have.

2 Name one ready-made ITSM topic. Show answer

Open IT ticket, or Check IT ticket status.

3 Why start with ready-made topics? Show answer

They cover common needs; build your own once you see what people ask.

4 The chat can’t help Sam. What then? Show answer

He picks Talk to an agent.

Nice work! Sam can now help himself through chat. 🎉
Next up: AI Agents for ITSM

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