Is ServiceNow the Future of CRM?

The CRM market is on track to hit nearly $100 billion in global revenue this year. Traditionally, customer relationship management (CRM) platforms have focused on managing front-office activity, like sales pipelines, marketing touchpoints, and service tickets. Several major entities have dominated this category for years, offering expansive suites to track interactions and relationships across the customer lifecycle.

ServiceNow is approaching CRM from a different angle. With Customer Service Management (CSM), Field Service Management (FSM), and Sales and Order Management (SOM), it’s building a fully integrated system designed to improve customer experiences across departments, not just log them.

This model is gaining traction. As of 2024, CRM is ServiceNow’s fastest-growing workflow business, generating $1.4 billion in annual contract value with 30% year-over-year growth. Customers using ServiceNow’s AI to orchestrate customer journeys have reported a 40% decrease in the cost of business model transformation and significantly faster time-to-value for digital initiatives.

Why CRM Is a Priority Now

Periods of economic uncertainty tend to expose weaknesses in customer-facing systems. In the early days of the pandemic, companies turned to platforms like Workday to solve problems related to remote work and outdated operations. The same dynamic is playing out now across CRM.

Disconnected tools, legacy databases, and manual processes slow down service, create inconsistent experiences, and reduce customer loyalty. Companies focused on long-term resilience are investing in CRM modernization to maintain visibility, tighten operations, and position themselves for growth.

Typically, in a downturn, organizations that invest in customer resilience tend to outpace competitors when growth returns. That starts with modern CRM.

ServiceNow’s Strengths as a CRM

What’s interesting is that ServiceNow may already outpace traditional CRMs in some use cases, and it’s light years ahead on bringing AI to the party with a centralized user experience that doesn’t require endless integrations and plugins.

Just ask our own CEO, Rick Wright, who says, “ServiceNow is the only vendor to truly provide a unified customer journey and 360-degree view.” 

To that point, ServiceNow brings several advantages that traditional CRM systems struggle to match.

• Unified Architecture: The Now Platform supports a single data model across departments. Customer information from sales or service is directly connected to IT, HR, or operations, which simplifies escalation and resolution.
  
  
• Built-in CSM Capabilities: ServiceNow is recognized as a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Engagement. Its CSM tools include omnichannel support, knowledge bases, case tracking, and self-service experiences.
  
  
• AI-Powered Workflow Automation: Machine learning automates triage, resolution, and follow-ups. Predictive analytics provide early indicators, while AI agents resolve issues or escalate intelligently.
  
  
• Full Operational Integration: ServiceNow connects customer touchpoints with core systems like ERP, billing, and inventory. This extends CRM beyond the front office into fulfillment and operations.
  
  
• Industry-Specific Packages: Solutions tailored to manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, and technology help organizations comply with regulations and address industry-specific processes.

A Different Kind of CRM Experience

The CSM Configurable Workspace brings customer operations together across the front, middle, and back office. It improves efficiency and ensures that requests and issues are handled by the right team with the right context. This unified approach solves a major problem common to legacy CRM platforms: siloed information.

• No More Disconnected Data: Sales might have a customer’s deal history, but be unaware of open service cases or missed field visits. ServiceNow creates a single source of info that spans departments.
  
  
• Customer Context at Every Touchpoint: Service agents can see order history, past tickets, current contracts, and upcoming field appointments in one interface—improving speed and personalization.
  
  
• Proactive Response: If an order is delayed, ServiceNow can automatically notify the service team to reach out, update the customer, and dispatch a field technician if needed.

By combining CSM, FSM, and SOM, ServiceNow delivers an operationally integrated customer view that traditional CRM systems were never designed to handle.

AI as a Differentiator

At Knowledge 2025, ServiceNow outlined a clear goal: redesign CRM for a world where AI drives outcomes. That includes replacing manual handoffs, inbox backlogs, and spreadsheet trackers with AI-driven orchestration.

To this, Wright added, “ServiceNow uses AI to transform reactive customer service into proactive experiences, automating issue resolution and providing intelligent insights across sales, service, and field operations.”

AI agents in ServiceNow already automate 37% of its internal customer support workflows. These agents can carry a conversation, initiate tasks, and involve humans when needed. They handle fulfillment, ticket resolution, scheduling, and case routing, all from a single interaction.

To quote one ServiceNow CRM success story, “Traditional CRMs can’t keep up with the ever‑increasing customer demands for highest‑quality service,” said Paolo Juvara, chief digital transformation officer at Pure Storage. “With ServiceNow CRM, we’re putting AI to work to drive customer loyalty through faster resolutions, lower case volumes, accurate configurations, while also reducing costs.”

Future enhancements will expand AI into revenue-generating tasks as well, such as recommending upsells in SOM or dynamically scheduling field technicians in FSM.

“ServiceNow is making significant strides in leveraging generative AI across its platform,” Wright adds.  “Particularly to enhance its CRM solutions in the coming months and years. Their strategy goes beyond simple chatbots, focusing on Agentic AI and autonomous AI agents that can understand context, make decisions, and complete complex tasks across workflows.”

A CRM for Evolving Needs

The role of CRM in the enterprise is changing. It’s no longer enough to manage sales pipelines or service queues. Modern customer experience requires operational coordination, intelligent automation, and always-on visibility across the lifecycle.

The traditional CRM may be a firmly established piece of the enterprise tech stack, but ServiceNow is charting a forward-thinking path with its AI-centric suite of CRM applications that do more than serve as a system of record that ends at the front office. ServiceNow is addressing customer acquisition and retention with an emphasis on experiences across the entire customer lifecycle enhanced by AI-driven personalization and proactivity.

For organizations rethinking how they serve, retain, and grow their customer base, ServiceNow offers a compelling new option for what CRM could (and maybe should) be.