Discover how Now Assist in AI Search is revolutionizing the way we find information in ServiceNow—faster, smarter, and more intuitive than ever. Plus: Is this the end of catalog browsing as we know it?

Redefining AI Search, with Now Assist

👀 Is Knowledge Base browsing a thing of the past? 👀

As someone who’s worked with ServiceNow for years, I’ve seen plenty of updates come and go—some groundbreaking, others less so. But every once in a while, there’s a feature that makes you sit up and think, This could really change things. For me, Now Assist in AI Search is one of those features.

Happy Friday! And Welcome to SN Agents, the ServiceNow AI newsletter bringing you all things…. ServiceNow AI related. (still working on the intro 😬 )

Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

🔎 What’s AI Search, and how does Now Assist take it up a notch?
📈 What are some numbers we can actually move with this?
👌What we love about it.
🔧 How could it be better?
✅ Our take

🔎How does Now Assist Make AI Search Better?

At its core, search is about making it easier to find what you need in ServiceNow. The first evolution of AI search in ServiceNow helped users find your existing content, but didn’t have a very “generative” element to it. It is basically a tool to help you find your content.

Now that we have the ability to power AI search with “Now Assist”, ServiceNow’s Now LLM will actually learn from your knowledge articles, and generate an actual answer, rather than just providing the correct article. Its kind of like when you use Google these days, and you still get your search results, but you also get an AI generated answer. No more browsing, no more clicking through categories - just an answer to your question.

AI generated response

This means you can type a question or phrase—like “Can I expense my New Years Resolution Gym Membership?”—and get a relevant, context-aware “NO!” instead of wading through a sea of irrelevant results.

No complicated keywords. No guessing which team owns the knowledge you need. Just a smarter, more intuitive way to search.

📈The Numbers

There are a lot ways that using AI search with Now Assist will help improve the search for your users. Here’s a few important metrics that we think will be most affected.

Self Service Success Rate / Call Deflection - This, to me, is the biggest one. We all dream of (and probably fear) a “fully autonomous” customer service experience. This is a huge step towards getting there. Not because this replaces something that a human does today, but because it removes the need to even reach out to a human (or robot). This isnt some AI Chat bot pretending to be a human, its just giving you the answer you’re looking for. No fake pleasantries. We will surely see reduction in the total amount of incidents if users are able to get an answer without being tasked with browsing through a knowledge base.
Customer Satisfaction - I’m sure that anyone who’s been around ServiceNow for long enough has heard from your users that its hard to find things in the catalog. Coming up with an intuitive Taxonomy or Category structure is always a challenge. Of course - the goal is always to make things easier for your users to find, but there will always be folks who dont have the patience to browse, and the search just isnt cutting it. This builds frustration and ultimately lowers CSAT. If that problem of having to Browse (at least for the knowledge base) goes away, then it results in higher CSAT.

👌 What I Love About This

The AI Feels… Smart
This isn’t just a gimmicky search bar. It actually understands context and intent in a way that feels natural. It pulls from a mix of sources—knowledge bases, past tickets, and even the catalog—so you get a well-rounded response.
It’s a Time Saver
Whether you’re an agent trying to resolve an issue or an employee looking up a policy, this cuts out the back-and-forth. You don’t realize how much time you’ve been wasting until you stop wasting it.
Continuous Improvement
The AI learns as you use it. Over time, it starts picking up on your organization’s unique language and nuances, which means the results get better and better.

👎What Could be Better?

Its not personalized
Generative AI in Search is a huge deal - but it’s nothing groundbreaking (anymore). Seeing results that are personal to the user searching I think is a unique opportunity for ServiceNow to create something groundbreaking and incredibly helpful. The questions then go from “how many days of PTO does our Policy allow for?” to “How many PTO days do I have left?”. I’m sure we’ll get there, it would just be nice to see more innovation here.
Still such a heavy dependency on humans
Using Gen AI in ServiceNow Search is great, but there is still such a heavy dependency on having quality knowledge articles, that it makes me wonder how limited it all is. I think that in order for this to scale to its fullest capacity, we’ll need to start seeing some tools or functionality that help identify (and fill) knowledge gaps, and create a feedback loop that minimizes hallucinations over time.

Our Take

As someone who despises chat bots - I love the direction this is going. The ability for search to provide you with the correct answer with the least amount of steps possible is the ultimate goal. As someone who used to be very meticulous with the meta tags i’d include in knowledge articles and catalog items, this is something that I know will be a game changer.

The potential benefits in terms of productivity, cost savings, and user satisfaction are huge. However, success depends heavily on well-maintained knowledge bases and ongoing adjustments to ensure the AI remains relevant and accurate over time. I think we’ll need to see heavy investment around the ability to identify and fill gaps in knowledge, because ultimately the goal is provide the right answer, not just any answer.

Thanks for reading. Hit reply and let me know what you think. This newsletter thing is a lonely affair, so I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Until next week! ✌️