AI provides foundation for Atlassian customer service app

Atlassian plans to join the highly competitive world of customer service platforms by turning its focus inside out.

In the future -- the fledgling Atlassian Customer Service Management app is in closed beta now -- users will be able to deploy Atlassian's internal-facing ticketing and development workflows outwardly to its customers. Other customer service companies with strong footprints in IT service management (ITSM) include Zendesk and ServiceNow.

While Atlassian started in software bug tracking and project management, its Jira Service Management quickly became a popular ITSM tool and has sustained that popularity over the years; its user base has grown to more than 55,000 customers, according to Atlassian. Now, Atlassian is taking on not only ITSM counterparts such as ServiceNow and Zendesk but also bigger companies that offer customer service systems including Salesforce, Oracle and Microsoft.

Anu Bharadwaj, president of Atlassian, said at the company's Team '25 user conference last week that the Atlassian customer service platform takes customer chats and can return summarized information from internal sources for simple problems -- or information such as when requested features are already on the product roadmap -- summarized by generative AI.

Furthermore, agentic AI-powered tools can open tickets for more complex cases. On the back end, developers can see what problems and requests are coming in, and generative AI suggests plans on how to address them or, if those don't suit, files bug reports.

Analysts said the customer service management app is a natural fit for certain companies, especially those that sell cloud software or are already using Atlassian for their internal workflows -- or both.

Support agents in the software business are under a lot of pressure to solve problems that customers raise, said Kate Leggett, an analyst at Forrester Research. Atlassian Customer Service Management gives it a direct pipeline to developer staff. It's a natural extension of the tools the company already offers.

"They have been dancing around this customer service management product for a while, especially for their core customers," Leggett said.

Customer service technology is evolving and will continue to over the next year, said Liz Miller, analyst at Constellation Research. It opens the door for Atlassian to compete for customer service users because it can handle simple ticket-based problems or complex case management through its enterprise service management capabilities.

"What we're starting to see is that AI-powered self-service solutions are opening the door for service to take on a very different look," Miller said. "Knowledge will not come from the same resources. They will also not be delivered through the same channels."

Atlassian previewed Customer Service Management at Team '25. More information on how to sign up for the closed beta is here.

Don Fluckinger is a senior news writer for Informa TechTarget. He covers customer experience, digital experience management and end-user computing. Got a tip? Email him.