ServiceNow KB: Customer Support (KB0547260)

Customer support

ServiceNow offers world-class customer support to every customer. Quick solution paths can be found using customer support tools such as the community and product documentation. The Customer Support team, located in our support centers in Santa Clara, San Diego, Orlando, London, Amsterdam, and Sydney, is comprised of trained, experienced professionals with deep product knowledge and real-world experience. The goal of our customer support effort is to help your team resolve issues as quickly as possible.

Customers working for commercial organizations can read this page to learn about obtaining customer support from ServiceNow, including online resources and a customer support phone number. Customers working for government organizations can obtain information specifically for their needs by reading the Customer Support for United States Government Customers knowledge base article.

Note: Customer Support does not provide assistance with implementations. Please contact the ServiceNow Implementation Services team.

Support best practices

ServiceNow suggests this customer support pathway for quick solutions:

Clearly identify the issue or question.
View the ServiceNow Product Documentation.
Search the ServiceNow Community. You must create an account in the ServiceNow Community in order to post.
Open an incident using the online Customer Support system in HI.
Contact the Customer Support team.

ServiceNow Product Documentation

The ServiceNow Product Documentation is the main repository for information about how to use the product. The search functionality returns answers from both the product documentation and the ServiceNow Community. Each article offers comment and ratings functions. Participation and feedback are encouraged. Questions concerning documentation can be registered directly on each page using the Feedback tab.

ServiceNow Community

The ServiceNow Community offers blogs, articles, groups, and events related to ServiceNow usage, administration, and customization. Searching the community returns answers from all parts of the community site.

Knowledge Base

The ServiceNow Knowledge Base contains known errors, useful solutions, and troubleshooting tips to address commonly asked questions. It can be accessed within HI by navigating to Get Help > Knowledge.

ServiceNow monitoring

ServiceNow has a robust monitoring and diagnostics framework based on delivering cloud service to the end user. This framework helps detect, respond, predict, and prevent issues at each layer of the service dependency. For additional information, see ServiceNow Monitoring - Overview and Insight in the HI Knowledge Base.

Support basics

Hours: All support tools and materials are available on our websites 24 hours a day. The Customer Support team is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including all holidays.
Online support: Customer Support system is available at hi.service-now.com. Customers receive user IDs during the implementation process.
Phone support: For information, see Contact Us.

Searching for an answer to your issue (Enterprise customers)

In the HI Service portal, accessed by navigating to hi.service-now.com, you can search through ServiceNow knowledge base articles, known error articles, product documentation, and the community for an answer to your question or issue.

To find results in public knowledge articles and Community, Search on the landing page before you log in.
To find results from the Service Catalog, Knowledge bases, and Community, log in to hi.service-now.com and Search from the HI Service Portal homepage or in the navigation bar on any page of the portal.
To view contextual results on the incident creation form, click Get Help > Create an Incident and complete the Description.

Searching for an answer to your issue (ServiceWatch customers)

On the HI Self-Service Homepage, enter search terms or INT, PRB, CHG, FTASK numbers in the Find Anything field to search knowledge bases or to find specific records.

Submitting an incident

To report an issue, submit an incident.

For all HI incident reports, you must select an incident type. It is essential for quick resolution of the problem that you choose the most appropriate selection. Additional fields appear on the incident form based on the type you specify. The type options are:

Ask a Question if you want more information on using or administering your ServiceNow instance.

Submit a Request if you need ServiceNow to perform a task in your instance not available in the Service Catalog.

Report Something is Broken if you experience unexpected behavior in your instance.

Report a Performance Issue if you experience slowness with your instance.

Report an Outage if you cannot access or use your instance.

Submitting a non-outage incident

Navigate to hi.service-now.com.
Do one of the following:
- Enterprise customers, Search from any page of the HI Service Portal and then click Report an Issue; or click Get Help > Report an Issue.
- Express customers, click Express Support (https://express.servicenow.com/support/) and then Submit a request.
- ServiceWatch customers, click Self-Service > Incidents > Create New Incident.
[Partners] can submit INTs on behalf of their customer companies by using the Company Switcher (on the header bar below their user name).
Use Your Communication Profile to verify that we have the correct information to contact you.
- Name and email will need to be updated on your profile. Click on your user name in the header bar to access My Profile.
- Click and Edit phone numbers to update on your profile as well.
- Update your Time Zone for Incident Communication to reflect your availability for a ServiceNow representative to contact you. This can be set to sync to your computer/device in your profile. To change the time zone for this individual incident, select a different time zone. On the incident record, the specified time zone appears in the Requested time zone for incident field.
[Required] Select an incident Type that is not an outage. For an outage incident, see the procedure following this one.
Select a Category.
- This field is required if you select Ask a Question or Submit a Request or Report Something is Broken in step 5.
- If the incident affects multiple categories, select the most relevant one.
[Required] In Describe the issue, type a short summary of the incident. Include recommended details:
- Symptoms/Behavior
- Affected forms, list and pages
- Steps to reproduce
- Any recent changes/known causes
Once you enter text in the Describe the issue, a list of ServiceNow service catalog requests, knowledge base articles, product documentation pages, and community posts based on the text appears below on the form automatically. Note that community posts must be marked as Answered to be included in the list. If you edit the text in the Describe the issue field, different search results appear automatically. Read the pages to find information and a possible solution to your issue.
- Clicking on a request, article, page, or community post from the suggested articles list will open it in a new tab/window. If you did not find a solution, close the window and finish the form.
- If there is no longer a reason to submit the incident, click Cancel. A feedback and rating screen appears. You can provide specific feedback and click a feedback button.
Drag and Drop or Click and Select to add attachments (screenshots, logs, etc).
In Affected Instance, specify the instance on which the issue is occurring.
- Select all instances that are affected.
- Customers can select only their own instances. ServiceNow partners can select their own instances and can also select instances of customers they manage by choosing a different company in the Company field.
In What is the business impact?, specify Critical Impact, Significant Impact, Some Impact, or No immediate impact. If an instance, system, or critical business function is unreachable or unstable, select Critical Impact.
- This field is required if you select Performance Issue or Outage in step 5.
In How many users are affected?, specify All Users, Most Users, Some Users, or Single Users.
- This field is required if you select Performance Issue or Outage in step 5.
When did you experience this issue?,
- Enter the time when the issue began or became critical.
- Enter the end time if you know it.
- Leave both blank if you are not sure.
Click Report the Issue. A confirmation screen appears with the incident number and Time Zone for Incident Communication with the option to provide specific feedback and rating.
- Rate your experience and type specific feedback into the Comments field. When you are finished, click Submit. Your new incident is displayed automatically.

Submitting an outage incident

Navigate to hi.service-now.com.
Do one of the following:
- Enterprise customers, Search from any page of the HI Service Portal and then click Report an Issue; or click Get Help > Report an Issue.
- Express customers, click Express Support (https://express.servicenow.com/support/) and then Submit a request
- ServiceWatch customers, click Self-Service > Incidents > Create New Incident.
[Partners] can submit INTs on behalf of their customer companies by using the Company Switcher (on the header bar below their user name).
Use Your Communication Profile to verify that we have the correct information to contact you.
- Name and email will need to be updated on your profile. Click on your user name in the header bar to access My Profile.
- Click and Edit phone numbers to update on your profile as well.
- Update your Time Zone for Incident Communication to reflect your availability for a ServiceNow representative to contact you. This can be set to sync to your computer/device in your profile. To change the time zone for this individual incident, select a different time zone. On the incident record, the specified time zone appears in the Requested time zone for incident field.
In Type, select Report an Outage. For an incident that is not an outage, see the procedure preceding this one.
[Required] In Describe the issue, type a short summary of the incident. Include recommended details:
- Symptoms/Behavior
- Affected forms, list and pages
- Steps to reproduce
- Any recent changes/known causes
Once you enter text in the Describe the issue, a list of ServiceNow service catalog requests, knowledge base articles, product documentation pages, and community posts based on the text appears below on the form automatically. Note that community posts must be marked as Answered to be included in the list. If you edit the text in the Describe the issue field, different search results appear automatically. Read the pages to find information and a possible solution to your issue.
- Clicking on a request, article, page, or community post from the suggested articles list will open it in a new tab/window. If you did not find a solution, close the window and finish the form.
- If there is no longer a reason to submit the incident, click Cancel. A feedback and rating screen appears. You can provide specific feedback and click a feedback button.
Drag and Drop or Click and Select to add attachments (screenshots, logs, etc).
In Affected Instance, specify the instance on which the issue is occurring.
- Select all instances that are affected.
- Customers can only select their instances. ServiceNow partners can select their own instances and can also select instances of customers they manage by choosing a different company in the Company field.
[Required] In What is the business impact?, specify Critical Impact, Significant Impact, Some Impact, or No immediate impact. If an instance, system, or critical business function is unreachable or unstable, select Critical Impact.
[Required] In How many users are affected?, specify All Users, Most Users, Some Users, or Single Users.
When did you experience this issue?,
- Enter the time when the issue became an Outage.
- Enter the end time if you know it.
- Leave both blank if you are not sure.
Do one of the following:
- To stop and not submit an incident, click Cancel. A confirmation screen appears with the option to provide specific feedback and rating.
- Click Report the Issue. A confirmation screen appears with the incident number and Time Zone for Incident Communication with the option to provide specific feedback and rating.
  - Rate your experience and type specific feedback into the Comments field. When you are finished, click Submit. Your new incident is displayed automatically.

Note: If you must escalate your incident, contact Customer Support using the appropriate number listed on our Support page. Provide your incident number when requesting escalation.

Determining incident priority

The priority of all requests is determined in accordance with the following guidelines:

Priority	Definition	Response Time
P1	Any defect that causes an instance to be unavailable	30 minutes
P2	Any defect that causes a mission-critical function to fail	Two hours
P3	Any request or defect that is significantly impeding work or progress	Twelve hours
P4	Any request or defect that is important but not significantly impeding work or progress	Twenty-four hours

Opening a repeat incident

If an incident has been closed but the issue occurs again, you can open a repeat incident. Key fields on the original incident, such as the short description, company, caller, and category, are copied to the repeat incident. The repeat incident contains a reference to the original incident. To see the reference, personalize the Incidents list view by adding a column for Original Incident.

Opening a repeat incident is helpful when communicating with ServiceNow Customer Support. Customer Support does not monitor, nor are they alerted to, email that is in reply to a closed incident. Creating a repeat incident opens the correct communication channel.

To open a repeat incident:

Navigate to hi.service-now.com.
Do one of the following:
- Enterprise and Express customers, click My Issues. Remove the Active = True filter by clicking on the breadcrumb.
- ServiceWatch customers, navigate to Self-Service > Incidents > My Closed Incidents.
Open an incident in the Closed state.
Click Open Repeat Incident.
Edit the new incident as necessary.

Viewing open incidents

Customers can view incidents they have created at any time. To view open incidents:

Navigate to hi.service-now.com.
Do one of the following:
- Enterprise and Express customers, go to My Issues, and click the Incidents tab.
- ServiceWatch customers, navigate to Self-Service > Incidents > My Open Incidents.
Click an incident Number for detailed information.

Viewing closed incidents

Customers can view incidents they have closed at any time. To view closed incidents:

Navigate to hi.service-now.com.
Do one of the following:
- Enterprise and Express customers, go to My Issues, and remove Active=True by clicking on the breadcrumb.
- ServiceWatch customers, navigate to Self-Service > Incidents > My Closed Incidents.
Click an incident Number for detailed information.

Customer Admin role

ServiceNow requires customers to designate at least one user as Customer Administrator to create and manage users on the Customer Support portal. For more information, see Customer Administration.

Request Items

For information about requesting an Instance upgrade: Managing Upgrades with the Instance Upgrade Management Dashboard.

For information on how to Request plugin activation: Activating ServiceNow Plugins

Notifications

Article Information