The Rise of ‘System of Action’: Rethinking CRM for the AI Era
Impact shows up in how a customer’s business actually runs day to day. It’s not about a system going live or a dashboard looking impressive. It’s about whether issues are resolved faster, whether revenue moves more quickly, and whether people genuinely feel their jobs have become easier, says Shakira Talbot, Group VP, CRM EMEA at ServiceNow.
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CRM systems have largely served one purpose for years: Capturing Information. They tracked customer interactions, stored sales data, and generated reports that helped organisations understand what had already happened.
But as customer journeys became more fragmented across departments, channels, and platforms, many businesses discovered that having data was not the same as being able to act on it.
The rise of enterprise AI is now forcing a broader rethink. Organisations are no longer asking whether systems can record activity faster; they want technology that can resolve issues, trigger workflows, and coordinate actions across the entire customer lifecycle in real time.
Increasingly, the conversation around CRM is shifting from visibility to execution.
“What’s changed now is the role AI can play. It’s no longer just supporting people; it’s starting to act on their behalf…. It’s this ability to orchestrate workflows and manages the entire customer lifecycle in real time. That’s the real game changer,” says Shakira Talbot, Group Vice President, CRM EMEA at ServiceNow.
In this interview, Shakira discusses why traditional CRM models are no longer sufficient, how AI is reshaping customer operations across EMEA, and why organisations must rethink CRM as a system that actively drives outcomes rather than simply records activity.
Excerpts from the interview;
You lead CRM across EMEA at ServiceNow, with a strong emphasis on ‘real customer impact.’ In practical terms, what does impact look like for you, and how quickly can you tell if it’s missing?
For me, it’s very simple. Impact shows up in how a customer’s business actually runs day to day. It’s not about a system going live or a dashboard looking impressive. It’s about whether issues are resolved faster, whether revenue moves more quickly, and whether people genuinely feel their jobs have become easier.
That’s when you consider CRM moving up the value chain, from being a system of record to being a system of action.
In my engagements with enterprises in the Middle East, I’ve found that expectations tend to be even higher. The pace of transformation is incredible, driven by national programmes and big ambitions. Organisations aren’t investing in CRM for marginal gains; they want visible change, and they want it quickly.
And honestly, you can tell quite early when that impact isn’t there.
The conversations start to shift. People talk more about features than results, more about what’s been configured than what’s improved. When the focus moves to ‘rolling out the next phase’ instead of what’s already changed, that’s usually a sign the system is live, but it’s not really delivering.
You’ve described the shift from CRM as a ‘system of record’ to a ‘system of action.’ What specifically broke in the old model, and why did it take the AI era for those limitations to become impossible to ignore?
Traditional CRM was built to capture information. And for a long time, that was enough. But recording is passive. It doesn’t solve anything on its own. What we started to see was that it created a structural problem inside organisations. Customer journeys became fragmented across departments, systems, and teams.
Even with good data, people still had to jump between tools to get anything done. It created friction, both for employees and for customers. And early attempts at automation and AI didn’t fully solve that. They helped people work faster, but they didn’t remove the underlying complexity.
You could respond more quickly, but you still couldn’t resolve things end-to-end.
What’s changed now is the role AI can play. It’s no longer just supporting people; it’s starting to act on their behalf. It can move across systems, trigger workflows, and carry out a process from start to finish. It’s this ability to orchestrate workflows and manages the entire customer lifecycle in real time. That’s the real game changer.
And when you see that in action, the gaps in the old model become very obvious. If your data is siloed or your workflows aren’t connected, AI simply can’t deliver. It’s not just inefficient anymore; it becomes a real barrier to progress.
Across EMEA, organisations are investing heavily in AI. In your work, where are you actually seeing it change outcomes on the ground, and where is it simply adding another layer on top of already fragmented systems?
It has the potential to go either way, and what really differentiates those that truly transform from those that simply layer complexity is the focus on the fundamentals.
Where the foundations are strong, where data is connected, and processes are aligned, AI can make a real difference. It can resolve issues faster, surface the right information at the right time, and even prevent problems before they happen. That’s when customers start to see meaningful improvements in experience and efficiency.
But when those foundations aren’t there, AI tends to sit on top of the problem rather than solve it. You end up with tools that sound impressive but don’t really change the experience. A chatbot that can respond, but not resolve. Insights that highlight complexity, rather than remove it.
What differentiates the Middle East is the structural clarity of its mandates. National AI strategies in Saudi Arabia and the UAE aren’t built around experimentation; they’re anchored to measurable national outcomes, and that clarity makes a big difference in how AI is adopted.
What are the earliest signals that tell you a CRM is functioning as a true system of action? And conversely, what are the red flags that it’s still just tracking activity at scale?
One of the clearest positive signs is when the system isn’t just supporting work, but actively doing it.
An issue comes in and is automatically routed with the right context; the right workflow is triggered; and it is resolved or handed to someone fully equipped to close it in one interaction. When that becomes the norm, not the exception, you know the system is acting.
You also see it in how leadership conversations change. When executives stop asking for more dashboards and start asking how to scale what’s working, the system has shifted from explaining the past to enabling the future.
The red flags are equally obvious. Teams still toggling between systems to handle a single interaction; reports multiplying while resolution rates stay flat; AI deployed without any measurable improvement in outcomes. At that point, the technology is present, but the transformation isn’t.
Lastly, if CRM is to become a true system of action, not just a reporting layer, what’s the one leadership assumption that needs to be unlearned?
That CRM is just a sales tool. For a long time, that’s how it’s been positioned. Something that helps track the pipeline and forecast revenue. And that thinking has shaped how it’s implemented and how success is measured.
But that’s only one part of the picture. A true system of action supports the entire customer lifecycle. It doesn’t stop when a deal is closed. In many ways, that’s where the real work begins. It connects sales, service, operations, and everything in between.
If leaders continue to see CRM through a narrow lens, then even the best technology will only optimise a small part of the journey. This is something I see leaders in the Middle East grasping intuitively. The region’s transformation agendas are not departmental; they are enterprise-wide and often national in scope.
Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, backed by bodies like SDAIA and a growing national AI infrastructure, is redesigning entire value chains. Qatar’s Digital Agenda 2030 frames digital transformation as an economic catalyst across all sectors simultaneously.
The UAE’s Zero Government Bureaucracy Programme does not ask individual ministries to improve in isolation; it sets a unified national standard for how citizens, residents, and visitors are served.
When leadership is thinking at that level, the conversation about CRM shifts naturally from ‘how do we track our pipeline?’ to ‘how do we orchestrate the entire relationship?’ That is the unlearning that’s necessary.
CRM is not where you record what happened with a customer. It is where you ensure the right thing happens next.
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