Only 14% of customer service and support issues are fully resolved in self-service. Even “very simple” issues are only resolved 36% of the time in self-service. The new research comes from a Gartner survey.
“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 of research in the Gartner customer service & support practice. “It’s imperative that customer service and support leaders work to resolve the issues customers face in order to fully realize the value of their self-service investments.”
Although marketed as a game-changer for customer service, this has resulted in a disconnect for the issues customers want to solve and the capabilities that self-service offers.
Less than half (45%) of customers who started their journey in self-service said the company did not understand what they were trying to do. This only complicates the customer journey for a simple issue.
Customers not finding the resolution content relevant to their issue was the most common (43% of cases) reason for self-service failure.
“Customers feel frustrated by self-service journeys that feel too rigid to deal with the complexities of their service issues,” said Keller. “Self-service can offer substantial benefits for organisations and customers, but work is required to ensure that customers’ needs are understood and responded to.”
Gartner has offered ways to improve these resolution rates. The firm has suggested to customer service and support leaders to scale and maintain content; invest in proactive delivery of the solutions; simplify the resolution path; and assess the performance of self-service content continuously.