Salesforce and ServiceNow are two of the important players in the field of cloud-based enterprise solutions, as both play an important role in streamlining and enhancing business processes. In addition, both platforms help optimize customer relationship management and service management operations.
Despite their common aim of empowering businesses in today's competitive landscape, Salesforce and ServiceNow differ in features and functionalities that set them apart. We have differentiated both platforms based on their pros and cons, integrations, target market, and more.
Salesforce vs ServiceNow: An Overview
Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM software that helps businesses seamlessly manage customer interactions across various channels, including email, phone, chat, and social media. It offers various tools and services, including case management, knowledge management, AI-powered chatbots, and analytics. These features aim to improve their customer service operations and drive customer satisfaction.
On the other hand, ServiceNow is designed to help IT companies manage and automate their IT workflows by offering a wide range of IT solutions, including customer experience management, finance service management, and legal service management. ServiceNow enables users to seamlessly automate most of their ITSM processes, including help desk, monitoring services, managing suppliers, configurations, and events that will improve collaboration between teams.
Between Salesforce and ServiceNow, ServiceNow is favored for its IT service management functionalities, while Salesforce is known for its extensive customer relationship management capabilities. Thereby, making it a favorable choice for businesses focused on sales and marketing.
Salesforce vs ServiceNow: Pros & Cons
- ServiceNow is completely customizable, as the platform offers templates that will amp up a service desk for your firm. On the contrary, extensive customization in Salesforce is not possible, and you might need assistance from an expert.
- Salesforce is known for its powerful CRM capabilities, thereby helping businesses manage customer relationships, sales, marketing, and customer service effectively. On the other hand, ServiceNow excels in IT service management, helping organizations streamline and automate their IT processes.
- Salesforce offers a wide range of cloud products that will help you meet an extensive range of use cases. However, ServiceNow has limited use cases when compared to Salesforce.
- ServiceNow is suitable for Android and iPhone devices. However, its usage for Windows is limited, but Salesforce can seamlessly work on any platform that ranges from a web-based platform to Android and iPhone devices.
ServiceNow vs Salesforce: In Terms of Features
- CRM Functionality: If the primary focus of your business is sales and marketing, Salesforce's Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud's CRM tools will be of great help. However, ServiceNow offers very limited CRM functionality since it is primarily focused on customer service management.
- Integration with other systems: Both platforms offer seamless third-party integration. But Salesforce's AppExchange marketplace offers an extensive ecosystem that consists of various pre-built integrations, thereby making it easier to connect with other applications.
- IT Service Management: ServiceNow excels in this parameter as it offers a robust suite of ITSM tools. If your organization highly depends on IT operations and requires features like incident management and change management, ServiceNow will be the best choice compared to Salesforce.
- Automation and AI: Salesforce has industry-leading AI capabilities, and it also provides an extensive range of automation functionalities using which you can streamline workflows across multiple teams. ServiceNow, however, has limited AI potential since it does not have sophisticated generative capabilities.
- App Building: Salesforce has a lightning app builder that gives users easy access to an intuitive platform for building customer-oriented apps to integrate with internal workflows. ServiceNow's app engine studio offers IT teams a user-friendly low-code widget-based module that can be used to create mobile and desktop apps for both internal and external use.
ServiceNow vs Salesforce: Target Market
Both Salesforce and ServiceNow cater to a diverse section of the market. Salesforce is primarily known for its customer relationship management solutions, as it lays a lot of emphasis on sales, marketing, and customer service. ServiceNow, on the other hand, is recognized for its IR service management and IT operation capabilities. Therefore, ServiceNow targets the market of IT professionals and businesses looking to optimize their IT service delivery, automate workflows, and improve IT operations at large.
Salesforce vs ServiceNow: Integrations
Salesforce excels in integrating with various customer-centric applications that offer a wide range of pre-built integrations, APIs, and a robust app marketplace known as AppExchange that enables users to easily connect Salesforce with various popular tools for sales, marketing, and analytics. On the other hand, ServiceNow focuses more on IT service and operations-based integrations.
Salesforce vs ServiceNow: Usability
Salesforce is a SaaS-based company, and it has a major CRM platform for sales, marketing, and customer care. It has also gained immense popularity due to its exclusive product line and endless integration possibilities. In addition, Salesforce also enables developers to configure the system easily in a short span. On the other hand, ServiceNow is a web-based framework, and it becomes difficult to upgrade ServiceNow tools. So, it is advisable to connect with experts if you want to execute the task.
Salesforce vs ServiceNow: Customer Support
The customer support offered by Salesforce is extensive, as it provides three-tier support levels. Trailblazers and Salesforce Trailhead offer standard support, and customers who need extra support can join Premier. On the other hand, ServiceNow's customer support is not very vast. It offers customer service that will help the users to collaborate with other teams and solve problems. In addition, they also offer 24/7 customer service on the phone and a live chat feature, which helps save money.
Which is Better, Salesforce or ServiceNow?
Salesforce outshines ServiceNow in various areas, making it a favorable choice for most users. First and foremost, Salesforce's extensive AppExchange serves as a marketplace with pre-built apps, integrations, and industry-based specific solutions that are missing in ServiceNow. In addition, Salesforce is recognized for its robust CRM capabilities, helping businesses easily manage their customer relationships. However, ServiceNow shines under the customization feature as the platform offers built-in templates that will help enhance your firm's service desk.