{"slug":"southeastern-railway-cuts-case-handling-time-10-8-with-servicenow-now-assist-for-csm","url":"https://findausecase.com/use-cases/southeastern-railway-cuts-case-handling-time-10-8-with-servicenow-now-assist-for-csm","title":"Southeastern Railway cuts case handling time 10.8% with ServiceNow Now Assist for CSM","description":"Southeastern Railway, working with ServiceNow partner UP3, deployed ServiceNow's Now Assist for CSM to automatically summarize customer chats and cases for its Contact Centre Agents. Since 1 April 2025, Southeastern has routed 27,500 chats to live agents; average case handling time fell by 1 minute 30 seconds, a 10.8% reduction, saving approximately 687.5 hours of agent time (85+ full working days). Southeastern's existing ServiceNow Virtual Agent already handled around a third of customer queries, resolving 80% of those autonomously, with each Virtual Agent interaction 825% more cost-effective than a phone call.","company":"Southeastern Railway","industry":"Transportation","country":"United Kingdom","aiCapabilities":["Conversational AI","Generative AI","Agentic AI"],"technology":["ServiceNow Now Assist for CSM","ServiceNow Virtual Agent","ServiceNow CSM Pro Plus","ServiceNow ITSM Pro"],"deployment":"Unknown","problemStatement":"Southeastern's Customer Relations team, consisting of 72 contact centre staff and 16 at head office, handles between 40,000-100,000 customer contacts over a typical four-week period, with about 90% of customers now contacting digitally and wanting rapid resolution. Southeastern needed to help its Contact Centre Agents quickly respond to and resolve the volume, complexity and variety of interactions being routed to them after its Virtual Agent already resolved simpler queries autonomously.","solutionApproach":"Working with ServiceNow partner UP3, Southeastern deployed ServiceNow's Now Assist for CSM, first implementing Case Summarisation to automatically summarize chats and customer records for Contact Centre Agents, then broadening the scope to Chat Summarisation, with Chat Recommendation under evaluation. Because Southeastern's ServiceNow instance was built on custom tables, UP3 configured a bespoke solution using the Now Assist Skill Kit rather than relying on an out-of-the-box configuration. This built on Southeastern's existing ServiceNow Virtual Agent, which already handled around a third of customer queries via online chat.","businessValue":"Since 1 April 2025, Southeastern has routed 27,500 chats to live agents. Average case handling time fell by 1 minute 30 seconds, a 10.8% reduction, saving approximately 687.5 hours of agent time, equivalent to more than 85 full working days. Southeastern's existing ServiceNow Virtual Agent already handled around a third of customer queries, resolving 80% of those autonomously, with each Virtual Agent interaction 825% more cost-effective than a phone call. The implementation of Now Assist for CSM was completed within three weeks.","evidence":{"band":"high"},"sourceUrl":"https://up3.co.uk/customer-stories/southeastern-now-assist-ai-case-study","dates":{"publishedAt":"2026-08-16T03:31:20.444Z","publishedAtSource":"ledger","updatedAt":"2026-08-18T10:29:43.587Z"},"license":"Open for reading and citing with a link to https://findausecase.com/use-cases/southeastern-railway-cuts-case-handling-time-10-8-with-servicenow-now-assist-for-csm. Bulk republication requires permission."}