1. Implementation readiness checklist: Virtual Agent
Success Pillar: Get your ServiceNow foundations right

2. Success Pillars – Structure
State and measure your business goals
Actively lead the transformation
Get your ServiceNow foundations right
Create excitement, drive adoption 1
State your transformation vision and outcomes 1
Engage an executive sponsor to drive change and remove roadblocks 1
Manage to
out of the box 1
Design an engaging self-service employee and customer experience 2
Build your business case 2
Find, manage, and coordinate capable, certified partners 2
Discover and map your service assets 2
Design an optimal agent and rep experience 3
Build a phased
program plan, identify quick wins 3
Build a dedicated, dynamic governance process, policies, and team 3
Plan your architecture, instances, integrations, and data flows 3
Create a change management plan 4
Baseline and track performance, usage KPIs, and metrics 4
Reimagine how you want work processes to flow 4
Plan for upgrades at least once a year 4
Build an internal team of ServiceNow experts and train users 5
Define and map out your business services 5
Build a community of champions 6
Manage platform demand

3. Virtual Agent implementation readiness checklist
Introduction
ServiceNow® Virtual Agent makes it easy for employees and customers to get what they need whenever they need it, with an enterprise conversational experience powered by natural language understanding (NLU). Virtual Agent automatically resolves your common service requests and offers a customizable chatbot interface. Getting started with Virtual Agent is as easy as configuring out-of-the-box (OOTB) conversations for IT support, human resources and/or customer service.
To begin seeing value from Virtual Agent, start with implementation readiness activities. The benefits of using a readiness checklist are:
You’ll implement and see value faster.
You’ll be aware of the key implementation risks and receive guidance on to avoid them.
You’ll have a superior, more efficient design (part of the Prepare phase below) so you get the most value from your Virtual Agent implementation.
The ServiceNow Implementation Methodology (SIM) described below is a proven methodology developed from thousands of ServiceNow implementations. I’s the recommended approach to implementation. This checklist provides actions for the Initiate phase and to plan for the Prepare phase. It does not provide activities to execute the Prepare, Create, Transition, or Close phases*, however these phases are improved and expedited by this checklist.
1. Initiate
Define your objectives, collect prerequisite information, and define the key processes for implementation success.
5. Close
The implementation team hands off to the platform maintenance team.
SIM
4. Transition
Gain UAT, training, go-live, and post go-live support.
2. Prepare (design for configuration)
Hold workshops to understand your process and platform needs, finalize the engagement timeline, and refine your configuration requirements.
3. Create
Perform configuration and unit testing.
*Include the activities for the Prepare, Create, Transition, and Close phases in your implementation project plan.

4. Virtual Agent implementation readiness checklist
Key risks to implementation success
Common problem (risks)
Impact
Correction
Lack of adoption leadership
Poor communication; misaligned expectations; poor adoption; organizational dissent; conflicting priorities; scope creep; requirements churn; and comprised results
Make sure you have a structured and active implementation leadership framework in place.
Lack of organizational sponsorship
Poor communication; moving expectations; missed expectation; organizational opt out; conflicting priorities; scope creep; requirements churn; comprised results
Make sure that all affected organizations are onboarded at the start of the implementation and understand and share the vision.
Managing scope of capability
Project is seen as a technology project that doesn’t require process change; capabilities are introduced without a clear link to value—sometimes for capability’s sake; conflicting priorities; scope creep; requirements churn; compromised results; long implementation timelines
Develop a clear value strategy that all stakeholders diligently adhere to and that delivers clear, measurable value incrementally. Executives and stakeholders must keep a close eye on the capability’s scope to make sure it is balanced with the organization’s capacity to change.
Over-engineered processes
Processes are adopted for process’s sake or to a level of granularity that impacts usability; the trade-off between process rigor and value is not kept in balance; user opts out; compromised results
Only follow processes if they demonstrate value and your organization can adopt them. When your approach allows for processes to be refined and tightened, your organization is more likely to adopt the changes see the impact they make.

5. Virtual Agent implementation readiness checklist
Intended use
Your use of this checklist depends on the status of your Virtual Agent implementation project plan:
If you have a scoped project plan from ServiceNow Expert Services or a ServiceNow certified partner – This checklist helps you align with the ServiceNow best practices that will expedite readiness and enhance the design phase. Use it in addition to the recommendations provided by ServiceNow Expert Services or the ServiceNow certified partner that created your project plan.
If you don’t have an implementation project plan yet but are interested in what you need to prepare – This checklist highlights the standard steps to prepare for implementation, outlines the design phase homework, and gives you insight into some of the major decision you’ll make during implementation design. It also supports estimating the implementation effort and timeline (with a ServiceNow expert). If you’re in the process of scoping an implementation with an external services provider, use this checklist to make sure you’ve considered the best practices.
If you’re self-implementing – This checklist doesn’t provide design, configuration, or testing activities and is for readiness only. Work with ServiceNow experts with advanced knowledge of Virtual Agent processes and technical properties, including NLU, to plan your implementation and execution. If you don’t have this expertise internally, we recommend a ServiceNow certified partner or ServiceNow Expert Services for planning and assistance with execution.
Who should read this?
Action items in this checklist are intended for the implementation owner, who can be a primary business stakeholder, project manager, or other stakeholder who manages the project management and decision-making processes on the customer side. They don’t have to be a decision-maker but are responsible to make sure decisions are made and executed. 
Note: If you’ve already completed some of the activities on this checklist (such as defining your business objectives), skip those activities but document them.
Key readiness steps
1. Confirm prerequisites
2. Define vision, objectives and success
3. Assess your team readiness
4. Create structure for governance
5. Plan for OCM activities
6. Plan for implementation design

6. Step 1: Confirm prerequisites
Take the time to understand Virtual Agent’s and NLU’s capabilities and features and confirm that the underlying platform functionality required for your use of Virtual Agent is ready.
Confirm the underlying platform functionality
Consider your use cases for Virtual Agent (if you haven’t already determined them), such as IT support, HR, and/or customer service. You don’t have to confirm all use cases until the design phase but get an idea of how you’ll want to use Virtual Agent. The underlying platform functionality required depends on these use cases. If you’re unsure, see slide 15 containing OOTB Virtual Agent conversations and consider which would be the most useful.
Confirm that you’re currently using the Now Platform® on the New York release (or later) or will be on the New York release when you begin implementation. This is required for NLU capabilities. Here are resources for upgrading, if needed.
If you’re a new ServiceNow customer, you must set up the core platform.
Confirm that foundational ServiceNow capabilities are already deployed and in use. The most common underlying ServiceNow applications used with Virtual Agent are Portal, Service Catalog, Knowledge and ITSM (if your use cases relate to HR or customer service, HRSD and/or CSM will be on this list).
The applications your Virtual Agent needs to interact with are based on your use cases. If you’re unsure which applications you need for your use of Virtual Agent, you’ll discover them during the design phase before configuration. See slides 11–12 for design phase planning.
If you need to add applications to your current ServiceNow environment, take this into account during the design phase so the application(s) you need can be designed, configured, and in production before you use Virtual Agent.
Practitioner insight: Although it’s optional, NLU is critical to achieving the best user experience. An NLU model extracts relevant values from text received by the Virtual Agent and uses those values to provide a more natural and engaging conversational experience for the user.
Review Virtual Agent’s and NLU’s features and functionality
Read the Virtual Agent overview on the ServiceNow website. Take note of the application’s features, functionality, and benefits.
Read the Virtual Agent product docs. These resources are more technical and provide additional functionality detail.
Using NLU is essential to gain full value from Virtual Agent. See the NLU product docs. This includes information on terminology, utterances, and using the NLU model builder.
Watch this webinar: Ask the Experts: Understanding the NLU Capabilities in Virtual Agent. When you view the webinar page, look for this PDF to download. It contains useful NLU content slides.
1. Confirm prerequisites
2. Define vision, objectives and success
3. Assess your team readiness
4. Create structure for governance
5. Plan for OCM activities
6. Plan for implementation design

7. Step 2: Define vision, business objectives and measures of success
To gain support from leadership and stakeholders, you need a vision, business objectives, and measures of success for Virtual Agent. Make sure your implementation creates value that is measurable and take the present state into account to make sure you have an appropriate implementation plan.
Practitioner insight: If you already have an implementation project plan and you skipped Step 2, be sure you complete it before you implement. For implementation success and adoption, you need to gain sponsorship from key stakeholders and executives—and align with them on business. Make sure your project plan aligns with all outcomes from Step 2.
Suggested Virtual Agent business outcomes:
Scaling business efficiency and reducing costs while handling increased volumes of routine tasks
Reduced agent workload through automating routine requests
Improved service by providing customers and employees instant answers through 24/7 automated support
Faster time to resolution through reduced wait times and self-service for low complexity requests
Suggested Virtual Agent success metrics:
Customer usage
Number of: active users, new users, retained users, bot sessions, and method of choice for solving problems
User experience
First response time, average handling time, number of transfers to live agent, time to resolution, chat exits prior to resolution, and survey user rating
Define your vision, business objectives, and measures of success
that support your overall company objectives. Include your
executive sponsor in the process to alignment. Use our
Success Checklist to make sure your vision cascades into clear and
measurable business outcomes.
Confirm that the vision, business goals, and measures of success are defined for impact that you can make with Virtual Agent.
This referenced checklist is critical and requires additional action items. See the suggestions to the right for Virtual Agent business outcomes and example success metrics to assist.
1. Confirm prerequisites
2. Define vision, objectives and success
3. Assess your team readiness
4. Create structure for governance
5. Plan for OCM activities
6. Plan for implementation design

8. Step 3: Assess your team readiness
There are multiple teams involved and specific skills required to implement and maintain Virtual Agent. Make sure you have the right team in place or begin with a plan to engage them. Don’t finalize your resourcing and project plans until you’ve assessed your team’s readiness.
Confirm your implementation and maintenance resources
Identify a project manager for implementation. This person should be experienced with leading software implementation projects, and Agile. ServiceNow experience is highly preferred.
Confirm your executive sponsor is committed and fully engaged.
Confirm your business-side ServiceNow platform owner is committed and fully engaged (typically a senior manager to VP).
Identify the business process owners who will provide input for the process design (service desk process owner, and/or any process owner with a team that will provide support with Virtual Agent).
Practitioner insight: If you’re engaging external ServiceNow experts for implementation, make sure your internal maintenance team is involved in the implementation design and configuration activities so they can own system maintenance without knowledge transfer once implementation is complete.
Confirm your technical team has the needed skills for implementation and maintenance:
ServiceNow systems administrator – Experienced in ServiceNow implementation and has taken Virtual Agent training
NLU Administrator – 1Experienced in ServiceNow implementation, has taken Virtual Agent training and understands NLU; should become well versed with the NLU product docs from Step 1
Testing resources
Development resources (JavaScripting skills)
System administrators and developers – Introduce to Now Learning and Now Creators to encourage skills development
Practitioner insight: Include a process owner who knows where employees go for support (if there are multiple options) and how employees communicate. Understanding the company lingo, acronyms, and how employees request support is important for creating NLU utterances when you create NLU models. You can find more information on NLU utterances in the NLU resources from Step 1.
Identify the technical owners for the Virtual Agent implementation and post go-live support.
Ask all technical team members who will be involved in implementation and post go-live maintenance to complete ServiceNow Fundamentals training prior to design.
Practitioner insight: You won’t know the estimated effort or commitment of resources until the implementation scope and project plan are confirmed. See Step 4 for design phase planning and consult a ServiceNow certified partner or ServiceNow Expert Services if you’re unsure of what your resource plan should be.
1. Confirm prerequisites
2. Define vision, objectives and success
3. Assess your team readiness
4. Create structure for governance
5. Plan for OCM activities
6. Plan for implementation design

9. Step 4: Create structure for governance
Governance for your Virtual Agent journey should include implementation governance and post-implementation governance. Implementation governance supports successful implementation, and post-implementation governance supports the long-term success of Virtual Agent in your environment. Your implementation governance team should form your post-implementation (maintenance) governance team.
Create an implementation governance committee
Assign your designated ServiceNow platform owner, business process owners (ITSM, HRSD, CSM these depend on Virtual Agent conversations and processes in scope), IT service desk lead, partner representative, project manager, and other business stakeholders as required. Your executive sponsor should chair this committee.
Define a meeting cadence, standard agenda, and decision process. In addition to standard project tracking, meetings should include:
Project objectives (e.g., improvements to process performance, technical usability) clearly identified and prioritized.
A review of organizational change management activities. See slide 10 (next slide) for OCM plan development.
Work with your executive sponsor and ServiceNow platform owner to develop a responsibility assignment matrix (RACI) to establish a common, documented understanding of decision rights for the migration project.
Confirm that your governance team is prepared to define measures of success for enterprise, IT, and operational objectives. These measures of success should come from the goals and metrics discovered in Step 2.
Establish a technical governance subcommittee
Assign technical stakeholders, including staff responsible for support, administration, security, and integration. Your designated ServiceNow platform owner should chair this subcommittee, supported by your project manager.
Define a meeting cadence, standard agenda, and decision process. In addition to standard project tracking, meetings should include:
Identification of technical obstacles and strategies for resolution.
Review requests for new Virtual Agent conversations or functionality. These should require a business justification process before you implement them.
Your technical governance subcommittee should report to your migration governance committee or steering group. Establish the rights to make decisions rights between your migration governance committee and technical governance subcommittee using a RACI.
Practitioner insight: The governance structure you establish for implementation should set an initial baseline for the governance you’ll need for post go-live maintenance, especially to manage demand. See our Success Checklist for additional details.
1. Confirm prerequisites
2. Define vision, objectives and success
3. Assess your team readiness
4. Create structure for governance
5. Plan for OCM activities
6. Plan for implementation design

10. Step 5: Plan for OCM activities
Consider organizational change management (OCM) activities throughout planning and implementation for successful adoption and long-term success.
Plan for a pilot
Initiate a limited scope pilot after the design phase and before the larger- scale Virtual Agent implementation. This is important for showing quick wins for effective OCM—and pilot feedback will enhance the quality of the larger scale Virtual Agent implementation. Detailed activities for a pilot are outlined in the OCM Success Checklist.
Here are our recommendations for a Virtual Agent pilot: 
Start discussions with two to four small teams that would highly benefit from Virtual Agent, are interested in Virtual Agent, and can commit to a pilot.
Confirm the chosen team is willing to share feedback and the value they gained from the pilot.
Put a structure in place to document the lessons learned from the pilot.
Confirm the scope and dates for the pilot during the design phase. Most pilot scopes start small, enabling three to five Virtual Agent conversation intents.
Build an OCM plan
Confirm that you have leadership and executive sponsor support for
OCM, including budget for an OCM program lead and/or
ServiceNow expert support. This should also include an explicit
definition from leadership about what good OCM should look like
for your organization.
Conduct an initial stakeholder analysis and prepare to update it biweekly. See our Success Checklist* for more details.
Conduct an OCM readiness assessment* to measure how ready your stakeholders are for the organizational change needed to support Virtual Agent. This should be conducted before design discussions. Based on your readiness assessment, use our Success Checklist* to create an OCM plan and develop an OCM impact analysis and risk assessment.
*Tailor these resources to your use of Virtual Agent and your business environment.
1. Confirm prerequisites
2. Define vision, objectives and success
3. Assess your team readiness
4. Create structure for governance
5. Plan for OCM activities
6. Plan for implementation design

11. Step 6a: Understand current requests and processes
The implementation design process involves multiple teams, collaborative decision-making, and a thorough understanding of your current processes and technical environment. Due to this, it can often take weeks or longer to collect necessary information, coordinate the right people, and solidify decisions during the design phase (Prepare phase in SIM). By following the action items in Step 6, you can proactively collect design-related information and initiate engagement with the required stakeholders. This will enhance and expediate the design process.
If you’re engaging a ServiceNow-certified partner or ServiceNow Expert Services for creating an implementation project plan, provide the items in this section to enhance project planning conversations. If preferred, complete this section with your services partner.
Understand your current requests and processes
Work with business process owners to document your current service request types, processes, and related teams. This includes existing self-service processes, if any.
Create wireframe process guides or diagrams to illustrate how all service requests are handled in the environment currently, including the portals associated with the requests. If there are many complex processes, start with the service request processes that are the most compatible with self-service solutions—but the more complete this diagram is, the better. This may require collaboration with other departments.
Include the persona and supporting information for who is making the request and who is handling the request.
Include details about the types of requests (such as password reset) and the resources (such as service desk agents) who typically resolve the requests.
Document your 10 most common service requests (that relate to your use cases from Step 1) and the 10 least complex service requests that are the most compatible with self-service. These 20 requests will be considered when choosing OOTB conversations in the design phase and may inform building future conversations.
Practitioner insight: If needed, use data to find your most common service requests. Use ServiceNow Performance Analytics or other reporting tools to create a list of the most common incidents and/or cases.
List any concerns or roadblocks you foresee for implementing or adopting Virtual Agent.
List details for self-service options in your current environment.
Practitioner insight: If there are no current self-service options, take note that you may need additional OCM efforts for awareness and adoption when Virtual Agent is deployed.
1. Confirm prerequisites
2. Define vision, objectives and success
3. Assess your team readiness
4. Create structure for governance
5. Plan for OCM activities
6. Plan for implementation design

12. Step 6b: Document technical environment, OOTB options
Confirm existing functionality
Document all ServiceNow applications currently in use and any systems that may interact with Virtual Agent. Here’s a list of the most common ServiceNow applications used with Virtual Agent. Confirm any that are applicable to your environment, based on your use cases. This information will be used to assist with architecture and process design.
Service Portal
Service Catalog
Knowledge Base
Mobile
IT Service Management (ITSM) – If use cases are for ITSM
HR Service Delivery (HRSD) – If use cases are for HR
Customer Service Management (CSM) – If use cases are for CSM
Performance Analytics – If incident or case analytics are desired
List any additional ServiceNow applications that may interact with
Virtual Agent
Any other systems that may interact with Virtual Agent
Document required integrations
ServiceNow provides three OOTB integrations with Virtual Agent. Confirm which, if any, will be used in your implementation.
Slack
Microsoft Teams
Workplace by Facebook
Any additional integrations that may be needed
Related integration diagrams and/or technical details for planning from your architecture team
Consider which OOTB conversations will be prioritized
See slide 15 for an outline of OOTB conversations. These ServiceNow Virtual Agent conversation docs have additional information on OOTB conversations. This information is useful for design planning and estimating implementation effort.
Choose ITSM OOTB conversations (1–29 on slide 15)
Choose CSM OOTB conversations (1–3 on slide 15)
Choose HRSD OOTB conversations (1–9 on slide 15)
Document any non-OOTB conversations you would like to add or discuss
Consider whether conversations will facilitate hand-off to a live agent
Most Virtual Agent implementations use these applications.
Practitioner insight: The Virtual Agent should be initiated from the most widely used Service Portal. If there are multiple portals in use, we recommend configuring a master portal.
1. Confirm prerequisites
2. Define vision, objectives and success
3. Assess your team readiness
4. Create structure for governance
5. Plan for OCM activities
6. Plan for implementation design

13. What’s next?
Now that you’ve completed all preparedness items, your next steps are based on your status when you began this checklist.
1) You have a scoped project plan from ServiceNow Expert Services or a ServiceNow certified partner – Share the outputs from this checklist with ServiceNow Expert Services or your certified partner (whomever created your project plan) to make sure the activities in your project plan reflect your checklist findings. You’ll use the checklist outputs again during implementation execution, when you confirm your final design and resource planning. OR
2) You do not have a project plan yet, but are interested in what’s required to prepare – Use the outputs from this checklist to inform your decisions when choosing a services partner (their approach should align with the recommendations in this checklist) and to consider what you’ll need to implement and get the most value out of Virtual Agent.
3) You plan to self-implement – If you have internal ServiceNow experts with advanced knowledge of Virtual Agent processes and technical properties (including NLU), then use the checklist outputs to expedite implementation kick-off and to enhance the design phase. If you don’t have this internal expertise, contact a ServiceNow certified partner or ServiceNow Expert Services to initiate project planning.
Related resources:
Explore Agent Workspace
Webinar: TechNow: Go from Conversation to Resolution with Virtual Agent
Webinar: Virtual Agents: Great Experiences, Impressive Scale, Lower Cost
Webinar: Enabling Service Excellence Through ServiceNow’s Agent Intelligence
Explore Predictive Intelligence with our Playbook: Make machine learning simple with Predictive Intelligence
NOW Learning: Virtual Agent Fundamentals (NOW Learning access required)

14. Appendix

15. OOTB conversations: ITSM, HRSD, CSM
NEW YORK
EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE PORTAL
CUSTOMER SERVICE PORTAL
IT Service Management
HR Service Delivery
Customer Service Management
Check IT ticket status
Open IT ticket
Create change request
Printer issues
Create problem
Process approval
issues
Repository access
setup
Resolve incident
Escalate IT ticket
Reset RSA token
Get password reset link
Search knowledge base
Guest Wi-Fi access
Service disruptions
Identify available change windows
Submit A request
Troubleshoot slow computer
Identify Scheduled changes
Update assigned task
Local admin access
Update change request
Manage distribution list
VPN connectivity
Meeting Room Issues
Walk-up check-in
My Assigned Equipment
General HR inquiry
Request for leave
Pay discrepancy
Update address
Update
Update phone number
Add emergency contact
Delete emergency contact
Update emergency contact
Check Case Status
Get Help with Product
Get Help with Order
VA Common Topics ● Greetings ● End Conversations ● What can you do ● What is the date/time ● Live agent ● Feedback