Mobile World Congress 2026: Autonomous CRM puts AI to work in telecom

By: Romit Ghose, Head of Product, Telecom & Media Industries at ServiceNow

Upcoming ServiceNow CX research reveals a critical gap in telecom: 75% of customers rate their service as less than great, and more than half (51%) would switch due to poor or slow service. Meanwhile, service reps juggle 3-5 disconnected systems to resolve a single problem, spending only 44% of their time on actual customer issues.

At Mobile World Congress 2026, telecom communications service providers (CSPs) are demonstrating what becomes possible when they move beyond patchwork systems to unified workflows powered by autonomous agents. Gartner® projects that, "Agentic AI is an extinction level event for traditional CRM "systems of record," with 90% of the market moving to 'systems of action' with front-end autonomous agents by 2029."

Putting AI to work

ServiceNow^® Autonomous CRM, built on the ServiceNow AI Platform, unifies sales, service, and fulfillment workflows with autonomous agents that take action, not just provide insights. Unlike traditional systems where AI capabilities are layered on disconnected tools, ServiceNow integrates data and workflows in real time.

The results are already proving transformative. Bell, Canada's leading telecommunications provider, achieved a 25% improvement in customer response time by deploying ServiceNow AI Agents in Telecom across their customer case and complaint management. The AI agents validate every case for completeness, auto-populate critical fields, and catch duplicates at intake. Case managers spend their time solving customer problems instead of fixing data entry or routing errors.

Hadeer Hassaan, Chief Information and Customer Experience Officer at Bell, told me: "ServiceNow is central to our goal of keeping promises to our customers. Since deploying ServiceNow AI Agents to streamline our customer case intake, triage, and processing, we've seen a 25% improvement in customer response time. This enables our case managers to process complex cases faster, leading to favorable CSAT outcomes. Our case managers also report 90% positive feedback on ServiceNow's AI accuracy, making the adoption of AI within our case management teams seamless."

ServiceNow's partnership with NVIDIA continues to grow. We're live with AI Agents in Telecom that handle service test and repair, billing issues, network incidents, and intent-driven order fulfillment, running on our NVIDIA AI infrastructure with NVIDIA AI Enterprise software. A Telco Customer 360 insights agent is next. And because most telcos are running dozens of agents, ServiceNow AI Control Tower gives them one place to manage, govern, and optimize agents across the business for accuracy and ROI while mitigating risk.

The industry's first autonomous roaming solution

While Bell demonstrates how autonomous CRM transforms operations within a single carrier, the technology is also enabling collaboration across carrier boundaries. NTT DOCOMO and StarHub are demonstrating the industry's first inter-carrier operational model for autonomous roaming resolution. Built on ServiceNow Autonomous CRM, the solution is designed to fix both technical and commercial sides of roaming simultaneously, connecting carrier networks while coordinating customer records across boundaries.

From legacy systems to autonomous CRM

The shift from disconnected systems to unified workflows extends beyond telecom CSPs. Panasonic Avionics Corporation, supporting more than 300 airlines worldwide with in-flight connectivity and entertainment, faced the same challenge: legacy systems that couldn't keep pace with customer demands.

The company is replacing siloed CRM and billing tools with ServiceNow CRM and Now Assist, implementing Sales and Order Management for Telecommunications integrated with Aria Billing Cloud and Tenon Marketing Automation. From telecom CSPs to aviation technology providers, autonomous workflows unify data and put AI where the work happens.

The path forward

When CSPs give teams the right tools, the results are clear. Some 66% of telecom executives report that first contact resolution time has improved since they started using AI (ServiceNow CX research).

From Bell's 25% improvement in customer response time to the industry-first roaming solution between NTT DOCOMO and StarHub, to Panasonic Avionics' transformation of legacy systems, organizations are moving beyond incremental fixes. Autonomous CRM is changing how CSPs serve customers by fixing real problems and putting AI where the work happens.