Expanding into front-office CRM by creating a "CSM-minded" Customer Success product that beats competitors and accelerates adoption

Context and strategic challenge

As a company, our strategy was to expand from IT services into the front office. Customers were consolidating platforms and expecting integrated workflows that connected IT, Customer Service, and increasingly, sales and post-sales.

Within the Technology Providers SKU at ServiceNow, which is a blend of ITSM, Customer Service, and packaged IP, our bet was that a Customer Success product was the missing piece that could let us expand from our traditional offerings and help customers run more of their business on a single platform, reduce cost, and deliver a better experience.

The competitive stakes were high. In head-to-head evaluations, buyers increasingly expected more customer-facing capabilities than what ServiceNow traditionally offered, and the absence of a solution could take us out of deals. This project was both a strategic growth play and a defensive necessity.

My role

I joined as the lead designer at the very beginning of the project, with only one PM, a handful of engineers, and no dedicated researcher. I ran desk research and competitive analysis, and pulled in insights from internal SMEs (sales reps and solutions consultants) to guide our first release.

As the product gained traction, I expanded my role: defining the UX strategy called “Ways of Working” (daily review, risk management, and planning), mentoring three other designers without formal authority, and continuously socializing the vision across executives, stakeholders, and customers.

Phase 1: Proving demand with a lean MVP

The first release was intentionally minimal. Based on desk research and SME interviews, I came up with a set of features that represented the core of our main competitors’ offerings:

1. A basic landing page with signals of customer health (rudimentary for first release)
2. A customer page with details about the customer journey (barebones collection of records associated with customer)
3. A success blueprint page with customer goals and outcomes (not yet connected to risk or adoption)

This breadth of features would allow us to have customer conversations and gauge interest, but with few engineers, I couldn’t over-invest in a lot of UX because I couldn’t be confident it was the right thing for users, so I relied heavily on out-of-the-box patterns. The goal was not polish but validation: get something into customer hands quickly, prove demand, and reduce the risk of rebuilding later.

This lean MVP may not have been beautiful, but it was strategically sound. It demonstrated that ServiceNow was serious about Customer Success, helped close early deals, and gave us confidence to invest further.

Phase 2: Scaling with a bold UX strategy

Uncovering why CSMs stayed reactive and how that costs billions

Once the MVP proved demand on a product offering and workflow level, we brought in a researcher to run foundational qualitative studies with Customer Success Managers (CSM’s) to understand what it would take for our solution to beat competitors. From my desk research and competitive analysis, I knew that a table stakes aspect of a Customer Success product and a central part of user needs was customer health. I also knew that leading competitors’ solutions handled health in a very manual, disjointed way and that ServiceNow had a real opportunity to give a standardized, quantified solution aligned with our customers’ business goals. I partnered with the researcher on a research plan that sought to discover CSMs’ pain points and mental models around customer health.

That work uncovered the core problems:

1. The day-to-day is disconnected and reactive Multiple disconnected applications; manual, reactive workflow

In an ideal world, I’d have a tool that connects my Outlook, Salesforce, OneNote, and Gainsight. If this magical tool could connect all these activities together and work in an AI manner to drive my work and what I need to stay on top of, that would make me so much more effective. It would be a single pane of glass giving me a view into everything I’m trying to do.

2. There’s no single definition of success Subjective assessment of progress; misalignment with customer goals

“...the Success Readiness Assessment with Microsoft, it wasn’t received well, which was a huge barrier in them getting this value journey completed...it was pretty much just reading off a list of questions and it was a pretty painful process for them which made the value journey get delayed a bit.”

3. It’s nearly impossible to get ahead of problems

Rarely the time and never one place

“Of course, I do my best, do my job and try to be proactive and make it ‘easy’ for the AE...Sometimes that’s not enough and I need to reactively work on risk and meet some customers more often a few months before renewal.  Sometimes we are missing information…We don’t always have regular alignment with AEs because it’s not possible to do that for 50 accounts.”

And the users’ problems were our customers’ problems. Because their Customer Success tools were often disjointed from main CRM systems and required a lot of manual input, CSM’s barely used them, which caused a vicious cycle of poor data and low usage. In short, many of our customers were paying for a tool that gave them no benefit, and worse—the lack of insight into their customers’ journey with them led to avoidable churn.

The Ways of Working framework and strategy

The research revealed that CSMs weren’t just asking for features, they were asking for a way to get out of the cycle of reactivity. To respond, I framed the solution around three “Ways of Working.” Instead of isolated tools, I created a system that mapped directly to the natural rhythms of a CSM’s time.

Each of these Ways of Working became an L1 navigation item—a ‘first-class citizen’ in the product. This decision ensured that proactive workflows weren’t hidden in submenus or secondary tabs, but instead were made central to how CSMs navigated their day.

1. Daily Review: starting proactive, not reactive

Activities

• Checking email and calendar
• Preparing talking points by reviewing customer information
• Prioritizing tasks through reviewing their to-do list

Challenges:

• Navigating between multiple systems to access customer data
• Triangulating data to obtain a comprehensive customer view

Consequences:

• Inefficiency and loss of valuable time = stuck in reactive processes
• Lack of single, reliable source of information

CSMs told us they began each day by “seeing what was on fire.” The Daily Review homepage flipped this script by providing a single entry point showing customer health, upcoming meetings, and top tasks and risk signals. It set them up to act intentionally instead of reactively.

2. Success conversations: planning an important aspect of customer health

Activities

• Document meeting notes and follow-up actions
• Track progress towards success goals

Challenges

• CSMs do not get personal value by documenting meetings in CRM
• Success goals can flex and change

Consequences

• No driver for CSM to log all meetings in CRM
• CRM has incomplete data (affects management and CSM transitions)
• Lack of documentation affects CRM capabilities
• Non-documented success goal changes, inaccurate tracking and data

One of the major signals for customer health was when a customer was last contacted. On the Level 1 navigation, we gave the CSM’s another view of their book of business—a calendar view with meetings organized by customer and information about health and when they were last contacted.

3. Anticipating risk: turning gut feel into a shared workflow

Activities:

• Flag potential risk based on conversations
• Book of business (BoB) review to flag potential risks

Challenges:

• CRMs today do not account for risks on a macro level
• CRMs focus on documentation, not on ‘so what’

Consequences:

• No way to find and address issues on larger scales (ex. Product, account stage)
• Risk management planning is not standardized
• Proactive risk anticipation is a heavy lift that can only be done periodically (once a quarter)

Previously, risk management meant informal signals: checking the news, hallway conversations, “a general vibe.” We replaced that with a structured dashboard where risks could be logged, tracked, acted on collaboratively, and even automated. This gave CSMs a common language and standardized process and their leaders a reliable signal.

I presented the Ways of Working strategy to Genesys, our first strategic customer, and the buyers immediately saw its relevance and potential to solve their business challenges. They highlighted the value of the health score framework, success portfolio landing page, and touchpoint planner. Even in mid-fidelity form, these demos confirmed we were solving the right business problems and gave ServiceNow credibility against established competitors.

Translating strategy into a coherent product

Turning the Ways of Working strategy into a product required balancing depth with speed.

First, I made intentional tradeoffs: we built custom flows for the most visible and high-value pages, while relying on out-of-the-box patterns for lower-level records to move faster. This balance allowed us to deliver a coherent experience that felt customer-ready, without overextending resources.

Second, I divided ownership so each designer could go deep into their workflow, while I provided system-level direction, design feedback, and coaching. Alongside my own design work on the Home and Customer Engagement pages, I ran critiques and retros, set alignment rituals, and partnered with research to validate the work. This balance allowed junior and mid-level designers to grow while ensuring the product held together as one coherent system.

I designed the Home and Customer Engagement pages.

A junior designer owned the Touchpoint Planning experience

A mid-level designer owned the Risk Management experience

A second junior designer owned the Success Blueprint experience.

Final Design: The Customer Success product in action

The end-to-end designs were very well received in validation sessions. CSMs described the experience as built “for me” rather than “for management,” a critical shift from how competing tools are often perceived. Buyers and partners highlighted the GenAI capabilities and the standardized workflows as standout differentiators. Beyond external validation, we also collaborated with our internal partners to adapt the product for ServiceNow’s own internal adoption, ensuring credibility and usability at scale. Adoption momentum is strong: ServiceNow Impact and Genesys are slated to go live in 2025, and several other customers are design partners and continue to work closely with our team. To sustain this traction, we established a cadence of structured engagements with customers and partners, from mid-release co-creation to end-release evaluations and design roadshows, creating a continuous loop of feedback and improvement.

1. Daily review Confidently prioritized poor-health engagement; efficiently diagnosed issue; Took automated action based on company best practices

And beyond: creating a unified design system

To make Customer Success scalable and coherent, I invested in system-level design. Beyond individual workflows, I set principles for the entire product: a clear page hierarchy that funneled from Ways of Working into the Customer Engagement hub, standardized signals like health, last contact, and risk across every surface, and a centralized product library that gave the team a single source of truth.

The most visible example of this was the customer work card system. I created reusable rules for how initiatives, tasks, risks, and plays should be displayed, ensuring that no matter where a CSM encountered them, the structure and signals were consistent. This gave my team confidence in what they were designing, sped up team velocity, and allowed us to scale without fragmenting the experience.

Outcomes and impact

The Customer Success product quickly became the fastest-adopted solution in our SKU, outpacing even decade-old offerings. It played a role in multiple competitive wins, where the presence of a Customer Success solution tipped decisions in ServiceNow’s favor. Analyst recognition is underway, with the product under review for Gartner placement. Strategic customers such as Genesys and ServiceNow Impact are preparing to go live in 2025, with many others in the pipeline. Adoption momentum continues to build, supported by ongoing design partnerships and structured engagements with the field.

Reflection and learning

This project reinforced that making the right thing is often about sequencing and restraint—validating demand with a lean MVP before scaling into an opinionated UX strategy. It stretched my leadership skills, as I mentored and directed a team without formal authority, ensuring coherence across multiple workflows while still delivering my own designs. It also deepened my collaboration with research and field teams, showing me how to turn raw insights and business needs into a coherent product vision.

Ultimately, this case study shows how I thrive in zero-to-one spaces, where ambiguity is high and the stakes are strategic. It reflects my ability to connect research, business priorities, and design systems into products that resonate with users, differentiate in the market, and drive adoption.