AI Won't Save CRM if Workflows Are Still Broken
ServiceNow, Wednesday, September 2nd, 2026
ServiceNow argues CRM differentiation has moved downstream to action, citing a decade of flat customer satisfaction scores.
For two decades CRM was mainly about capturing and consolidating data into a unified customer view, which ServiceNow says is now table stakes. Differentiation has moved downstream to what actually happens after the system flags something.
Despite large sums spent on customer experience technology, satisfaction scores have barely moved in more than ten years, and the American Customer Satisfaction Index reports no detectable returns from CX investment, with complaints surging 16% in the first quarter of 2026.
The article argues the harder work is building an execution layer that connects systems, governs AI agents and redesigns CRM workflows around action.