Guided Self-Service (GSS) introduces a smarter way to self-serve. It empowers employees by providing an in-context, visual way to navigate complex scenarios, thus employees can easily access information, resolve issues, and improve their day-to-day efficiency.
Enhanced Employee Experience with Guided Self-Service
Navigating ServiceNow solutions through numerous self-help knowledge articles makes it difficult for employees to find accurate answers on topics like benefits, HR policies etc., Guided Self-Service provides an enhanced user experience, increased accuracy, and faster problem resolution for common issues.
The Guided Self-Service in the Employee Center works similarly to a virtual guide or an order guide but offers much more. Introduced as a new application (plugin) within the Employee Center, Guided Self-Service (sn_ex_sp_gd_help) enables employees with an intuitive Question-and-Answer (QnA) powered self-service experience. The plugin must be installed separately as it doesn’t come bundled with the Employee Center.
Prerequisites:
– The Employee Center application should be version 35.0.2 or later.
– The instance version must be Xanadu Patch 3 or later.
The best part? Guided Self-Service is included with the Employee Center Standard license.
Key Features of ServiceNow’s Guided Self-Service
While the output of an order guide usually results in RITM creation, guided services offer more options to end users. Unlike virtual agents, which are ideal for answering quick questions, Guided Self-Service is better suited for complex, multi-step processes. Key outputs include:
- Displaying relevant knowledge articles to employees at the end of a guided decision on the portal.
- Redirecting end users to a catalog item based on their decisions.
- Additional outputs such as creating or updating records, requesting approvals, or sending emails.
The entire QnA logic for Guided Self-Service is powered by Playbook—a low-code, easy-to-configure tool with a visual workflow builder inside Workflow Studio. Different types of clickable questions and respective decisions can be designed under the Playbook, enabling a seamless and intuitive process flow.
The Guided Self-Service plugin comes with two demo guided services: **Know Your Benefits** and **Time Off Requests**. These demos serve as valuable examples to analyze and understand while configuring a new guided service.
This is how a typical process flow for a guided service looks like…
Guided self-service Accessibility in Employee centre:
Guided Self-Service can be displayed as a widget on the home page, as a quick link, or as a widget on topic pages. Its visibility can be controlled by criteria.
It can be linked to multiple topics, enhancing its accessibility and utility.
Process contexts are stored in the Guided Self-Service process execution table (sn_ex_sp_gd_help_execution). Every transaction is logged whenever a user opens the guided service, aiding in audits and troubleshooting. Note that incomplete selections are canceled daily by a scheduled job.
Conclusion
Identify high volume IT & HR complex processes in the organization, where guided services can be leveraged (expense reimbursement or employee benefits and other policies can be good examples).
Whether it’s accessing a knowledge base article, information, external links or interacting with a catalog, the Guided self-services makes every step intuitive and effective.
