Using Twilio and ServiceNow for IT Management by Fruition Partners

Using Twilio and ServiceNow for IT Management by Fruition Partners

This guest post is by Patrick Stonelake, Director of Innovations at Fruition Partners, a cloud integration services provider focused on IT Service Management. Patrick is here to introduce a new product that allows for simple integration of Twilio with the cloud-based enterprise IT Service Management platform ServiceNow.

Join Fruition Partners CEO Marc Talluto and Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson, along with Forrester Research Principal Analyst Eveline Oehrlich as we discuss what’s next for IT service management and how cloud-based tools are transforming IT. Free Webinar this Thursday, December 13th. 

TeleBridge: a Twilio Connector for ServiceNow Connecting Twilio to IT in the Enterprise

In our relationship with Twilio, we are continually impressed with the developer community’s ability to identify use cases of all sizes and shapes that can be addressed in new ways with the Twilio API. As we’ve spent the last year examining the potential uses of Twilio in large enterprises, we realized there was an opportunity to build a powerful SMS/Voice integration for IT managers. As a result of this work, we’re very pleased to announce the public debut of TeleBridge, a Twilio connector for the ServiceNow platform.

Fruition Partners provides solutions for Service Management in the cloud and helps large companies maximize the value of their IT and Business Services. We work closely with ServiceNow, a cloud platform for automated enterprise IT Service Management. ServiceNow’s excellent integration and platform capabilities allow us to bring other best-in-class cloud based technologies (like Twilio) to the toolkit of our IT customers.

TeleBridge and ServiceNow Workflow

The ServiceNow administrator’s toolkit now includes TeleBridge, a connector that combines the simple power of TwiML with the flexibility and control of the ServiceNow Graphical Workflow engine. This engine allows for real-time, flowchart-based workflow, accessible to any application in the ServiceNow platform, including custom-built platform applications.

With TeleBridge, the Fruition development team has augmented the standard list of ServiceNow workflow activities with 20 (and growing) Twilio actions, allowing our ServiceNow customers to build their own intelligent call flows using Twilio verbs and some custom activities that we have created specifically for this connector. We’ve supplemented the list of workflow activities with an integrated Twilio Management Console including customizable preferences and in-app Twilio number management.

Take a look at the TeleBridge connector in action:

Using TeleBridge for Surveys

We’ve been interested lately in changing the way that IT engages with their customers- moving from the “Last Mile” or PC- and browser-based communications to the “Last Meter” of SMS and voice-based interactions. Our ServiceNow clients often measure the satisfaction of their internal and external customers with surveys, a key built-in component of the ServiceNow platform. However, surveys are only as good as their response rate, and “pull” surveys which require the user to click a link to fill out a survey typically generate low response rates.

We’ve used several key Twilio activities from TeleBridge to create an outbound call to the recipient of the standard post-interaction survey. IT customers are now called directly by the system to collect their survey response, and can respond to the text-to-speech or recorded questions with number-press or IVR responses. This survey method has a number of benefits, including:

• The survey is pushed to the recipient and can be filled out with reactive action only
• Responses are more likely to be timely, helping the recipient to recall and record key information about their experience
• Critical responses (ie, “My problem has not been solved”) can be immediately addressed by connecting the recipient to an agent best suited to solve their problem – without hanging up the phone

This is one of a number of pre-built workflows which are provided to the ServiceNow administrator using TeleBridge. We’re building up a number of other workflows based on a public beta, which is currently ongoing and open to anyone with access to a ServiceNow environment. If you’re interested in the public beta – please click here to request access. We’re very interested to see how your experience with this new capability will challenge some of the assumptions we have made.

What’s Next for TeleBridge

We’re working on a number of exciting additions to this functionality, and we have been able to exploit the existing TeleBridge connector to do a bunch of interesting stuff, including more traditional call-center activities such as skills-based routing, Agent- and Manager-based call assignment, surveying, and supervision. We think we can change the way that ITSM systems like ServiceNow interact with the customers of IT, increasing satisfaction and efficiency for our clients. We’re looking forward to the response of our existing TeleBridge customers and our beta participants. If you’re a ServiceNow administrator and you’d like to add easy SMS and IVR/CTI capability to your ITSM workflows, please contact us!

In the weeks to come we will be providing additional technical background for readers of this blog and for followers of Fruition’s blog, including instructional webinars and more sample use cases. If you have any questions about TeleBridge or ServiceNow – feel free to send me an email.