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I am a technical architect and ServiceNow enthousiast. Since then I have been obsessed with development and later on application design & architecture. Today I'm using my skills to design solutions for IT companies within the ServiceNow industry whilst in my free time, spent the majority of my time creating applications for all kind of things unrelated to ServiceNow.
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Today I successfully passed the ServiceNow Certified Implementation Specialist exam for Customer Service Management. In this article, I will be sharing my personal experience with the preparation, the training material provided by ServiceNow, and my personal experience of the exam itself.
The official learning path, which can be found here (ServiceNow University), requires you to complete 5 prerequisites:
Welcome to ServiceNow
ServiceNow Administration Fundamentals/CSA
Get Started with Now Create
ServiceNow Platform Implementation
Customer Service Management (CSM) Essentials
Only the “CSA” path is an actual mainline certificate that requires you to take a proctored exam. The other material can be completed at your own pace. Personally, I completed the first 3 courses a long time ago.
The new ServiceNow Platform implementation course was something completely different. This course focuses primarily on the overall implementation approach, mindset, and the success methodology “Now Create.” When I went through it, some of the content was very helpful for me to better understand the right consultancy mindset.
To complete the course, you have to complete the mandatory labs included within. The instructions were, most of the time, very clear. One thing I personally didn’t enjoy throughout this course is the many overlaps it has with the ServiceNow Essentials or CSA course. I understand that to comply with the use cases defined within, some basic tasks such as creating transform maps or modifying catalog items are essential, but the repetition in some of those tasks was very visible. For example, the creation of the transform maps.
In the Essentials course, you will be presented with a few courses to choose from. These courses ultimately contain the details on how to claim the voucher and the “e-book” about the topic. Upon completion of reading through the different tabs, you will receive instructions on how to claim the e-book, and you will be granted the voucher which you can use to take the exam.
DISCLAIMER: This section won’t contain any images due to copyright
The e-book itself has a fresh and interactive look. The headings are nicely organized on the left end, and for each section, it acts as a one-pager, adding to the overall experience of reading through the material.
I really liked the clean structure ServiceNow used to set up the books.
Every section is accompanied by a short and nice summary of the section, including some use cases making the topics more tangible and understandable. For each major section, they added an interactive page “Knowledge check” where they present you with Q&A formatted test questions. For me, this really helped me to understand if I fully understood the content of the e-book or if I had to read through the chapter one more time.
At last, every section also includes a lab. The lab instance can be retrieved through the ServiceNow Academy page.
Reading through the book was very satisfying. The way the book is structured, colored, and displayed felt very natural to me. In about 6 hours, I managed to read through the entire book with the necessary attention to remember most of its content. After I finished reading the e-book, I felt very confident to take the exam.
After feeling very confident about taking the exam, I decided to try some of the mock exams I found online. The result? Absolute failure. The questions were either completely unfamiliar or didn’t seem related to customer service management.
Feeling unsure due to the result of my mock exam, despite the perfect answers I could provide in the e-book, I assumed the Essentials E-book wasn’t enough. I decided to buy some mock exams from Udemy, which were much more helpful. After completing the exams and still miserably failing, I noticed that the majority of questions were based on many different sources such as the e-book, the docs, and even some general platform knowledge.
It's only when I started changing my approach that it eventually turned out to be successful. I began doing mock exam after mock exam, and with each "new" exam, I failed again. The results improved slightly as it helped me relate some of the earlier correct answers to newly asked questions. Every time I got a question wrong, I would read exactly what was wrong and try to connect it to what I had seen and learned from the book. Accepting that not everything was included in the book was necessary. I would just remember and see where it went. It didn't take long after retaking some of the exams before the results improved significantly. Even if it's just an exact replica, remembering these questions turned out to be more than just useful.
When I was about to take the exam, I was very unsure of what to expect. Did I miss a course? Were the mock exams really up to date and similar to the exam? So I started the exam. The first question didn’t immediately ring a bell, but it didn’t take long before I could see the very visible similarity to the mock exam. The further I got in the exam, the less I was worried. I marked one question for later review, but when I eventually had the option to re-check the answer, I just skipped it as I was confident I had scored enough to pass. After submitting the survey, I got to see the “pass” result.
After being in a very insecure position and eventually getting over-confident, I believe that passing this exam does require some product familiarity. You should be more or less aware of what CSM is about and its out-of-the-box capabilities.
I learned the hard way that reading and knowing the content provided in the e-book is not enough. It certainly helps you gain the overall “essential” product knowledge, but this isn’t enough, especially for the questions that overlap with other existing ServiceNow products.
My advice is to read the full e-book to get familiar with products or capabilities that you are unfamiliar with. The learning path also provides some optional materials. I personally skipped it due to time constraints, but if you do have the time, I would recommend completing the recommended coursework for the CSM certification bundle.
At last, mock exams. I believe this is by far the most recommended advice I could give you. I won’t be advertising the specific mock exam I used, but with some Google searches and the information I provided earlier in this blog post, it shouldn’t be hard to find some material that will help you succeed.
To pass the CIS CSM exam, focus on understanding the Customer Service Management (CSM) product and its capabilities. Thoroughly read the e-book in the learning path for essential knowledge, but also use additional resources like optional coursework and mock exams to fill knowledge gaps and become familiar with the exam format. Practicing with mock exams is especially helpful for understanding question types and building confidence. Combining official materials, extra resources, and mock exams ensures well-rounded preparation.