Paul Fipps, President, Global Industries and Strategic Growth at ServiceNow highlights AI-driven solutions for customer satisfaction, a strategic plan to drive innovation and business transformation.
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Hi Paul, walk us through your journey with ServiceNow and how your role has evolved over the years.
When I joined ServiceNow in 2021, my mission was simple – to help as many customers as possible digitally transform. Initially, that meant leading the highly collaborative effort to build ServiceNow Impact, a first-of-its-kind value acceleration solution that ensures our customers successfully adopt and realize value from ServiceNow products. It was a fantastic opportunity to create a product I wish I’d had in previous roles leading company-wide digital transformation.
After 18 months building and scaling ServiceNow Impact, I transitioned to our Global Field organization to lead the teams working hand-in-hand with our most strategic Marquee customers. To meet their needs, we continually push ourselves to think bigger, bolder, and more creatively. As part of that, we created the Marquee Experience, our commitment to and investment in the success of those strategic customers.
Most recently, my organization has expanded to include our Customer Outcomes, Hyperscaler business, and Industry GTM teams. While their unique capabilities vary, we all share a common commitment to customer experience and value…everything we do is about ensuring they have the expertise, experience, and resources they need to deliver on their business objectives with ServiceNow.
ServiceNow is known for co-creating industry-specific, AI-driven solutions with its customers. Can you share some examples of innovative solutions developed through these collaborations?
At ServiceNow, we firmly believe in “better together” solutions. For example, we’re helping Bell Canada transform from TelCo to TechCo amid a shifting media and mobile landscape. Among other things, that means collaborating on purpose-built telco solutions that accelerate service delivery and meet customer needs in hours or days versus weeks.
In retail, it’s been a privilege to partner with Schwarz Group to transform their retail operations and offer our joint customers enhanced cybersecurity through the integration of ServiceNow and XMCyber. We’re also working with STACKIT, another Schwarz Group entity, to create powerful data-hosting solutions for the highest compliance and security requirements.
Finally, in financial services, we’re really excited about co-innovating alongside Visa to create ServiceNow Disputes Management, Built with Visa. This is a single connected disputes resolution solution that starts with the first indication a charge is questionable and extends through investigation and final resolution.
How do you measure the success of these AI-driven solutions in terms of business transformation and customer satisfaction?
What we’re ultimately looking to do is help our customers increase case deflection, developer productivity, and agent productivity. Let’s start by looking at our own deployment.
Internally, our IT help desk saves 45 minutes per avoided case. In customer service, our colleagues save 30 minutes every time Now Assist, ServiceNow’s generative AI capabilities generates knowledge-based articles for them. Our employees will save 21,000 hours with faster self-service, and our developers complete noncomplex scripts in half the time with a 48% code generation acceptance rate. We’ve achieved over $5M in cost takeout and $4M in productivity across the organization.
We’re doing the same things for our customers, too. Our CEO Bill McDermott hit on these in our Q2 earnings call, but they’re worth repeating. For example, BT Group announced that its Now Assist pilot helps agents write case summaries and review complex nodes faster, cutting both times by 55%. This helped drive down the average time to resolve cases by 1/3.
What are some of the biggest challenges you face in leading a global team, and how do you address them to maintain a high level of performance?
When you lead a global team, you’re operating across different contexts and cultures. You need a shared foundation and point of reference. At ServiceNow, that’s our purpose and values. I constantly strive to reinforce and model ServiceNow’s core values with our global teams because they directly contribute to our outstanding performance.
Finally, we have our purpose…we make the world work better for everyone. This north star lets our teams navigate change, adversity, and disagreement, because they know what they’re doing matters. When you have a team-oriented culture, tackling challenges together is fun.
Can you discuss ServiceNow’s strategic growth areas and how you plan to drive innovation and business transformation in these areas?
Our growth opportunity is being the AI platform for business transformation. Fundamentally, that means the whole of the enterprise can be transformed by ServiceNow because we bring intelligence and generative AI to every workflow, persona, and department.
What we’re seeing is CEOs and CIOs don’t want a thousand different point solutions…they’re looking for a few strategic partners who can help them build and transform for the AI future. We’re uniquely positioned to drive that future because our platform already acts as a single pane of glass that connects different systems and data sources.
What are the top five leadership learnings you would like to share with the growing leaders in this AI-driven world?
- Mission first, team second, yourself third.
- Values drive behaviors that drive results.
- Put the customer at the center…always.
- Have fun. Work is hard enough, but when people come together to solve challenges with colleagues they like and respect, it can be a blast too.
- Constraints breed creativity. How can you leverage generative AI to amplify productivity and impact?
As we embark on this AI-driven world, it’s essential for leaders to prioritize their customer’s needs, drive business transformation through innovation, and foster a team-oriented culture. By doing so, we can unlock the potential of AI to amplify productivity and impact, ultimately creating a better world for everyone.
Q: What drives your focus on AI-driven solutions for customer satisfaction?
A: Our ultimate goal is to help customers increase case deflection, developer productivity, and agent productivity.
Q: Can you share some examples of innovative solutions developed through ServiceNow’s collaborations?
A: Yes, we’ve collaborated with clients like Bell Canada, Visa, and Schwarz Group to develop innovative solutions that transform their operations and meet their customer needs.
Q: How do you measure the success of these AI-driven solutions?
A: We measure success through metrics like cost takeout, productivity gains, and customer satisfaction.
Q: What are some of the biggest challenges you face in leading a global team?
A: Challenges include operating across different contexts and cultures, but a shared foundation and point of reference like our purpose and values helps address these issues.
Q: How do you plan to drive innovation and business transformation at ServiceNow?
A: We’re focusing on being the AI platform for business transformation, bringing intelligence and generative AI to every workflow, persona, and department.
