Only 14% of customer service and support issues are fully resolved in self-service, according to a survey by Gartner. Even for issues that customers describe as “very simple”, only 36% resolve fully in self-service.

While many organisations have made considerable investments in self-service capabilities, the survey of 5,728 customers conducted in December 2023 revealed that resolution rates remain low.

“While 73% of customers use self-service at some point in their customer service journey, it’s concerning to see that so few fully resolve there,” said Eric Keller, senior director, research in the Gartner customer service & support practice.

He added: “It’s imperative that customer service and support leaders work to resolve the issues customers face in order to fully realise the value of their self-service investments.”

Customers Frustrated by Ineffective Self-Service

Customers feel a disconnect between the issues they want to solve and the capabilities that self-service can offer.

Forty-five percent of customers who started in self-service said the company didn’t understand what they were trying to do. Furthermore, the most common reason for self-service failure was that in 43% of cases, customers couldn’t find content relevant to their issue.

“Customers feel frustrated by self-service journeys that feel too rigid to deal with the complexities of their service issues,” said Keller.

He added: “Self-service can offer substantial benefits for organisations and customers, but work is required to ensure that customers’ needs are understood and responded to.”

Recommended reading

• Scottish Government Announce £33m Digital Evidence Pilot
• Scots Police Receive Notice on Cloud System
• Comment | Realising Scotland’s Digital Ambitions

According to Gartner, in order to improve self-service resolution, customer service and support leaders should:

• Scale and maintain self-service content by expanding content creation responsibilities to reps, enabling them to create knowledge as part of the issue resolution workflow, rather than as a separate process.
• Invest in proactive delivery of self-service solutions by using customer account, interaction and product usage data to predict customer needs.
• Simplify the resolution path on their website with a single digital concierge, such as a GenAI chatbot, positioned as the most prominent entry point to the customer journey.
• Assess and improve the performance of self-service content continuously — for example, by allowing both customers and reps to flag ineffective content and establishing ongoing processes for improving content quality.

“The realities of self-service journeys, which have many potential paths to a solution, varying expectations for content, and constantly evolving issue types — have limited the success of organisations’ self-service investments,” said Keller.

“Organisations need to capture, diagnose and predict customer intent in self-service, and match them with the best-fit solution.”