Forrester (2016) — web/mobile self-service overtook the phone; FAQ-page use rose from 67% (2012) to 81% (2015) of US online adults
Summary
Claim: Web and mobile self-service overtook the phone as the most-used customer-service channel; use of help/FAQ pages on company websites rose from 67% (2012) to 81% (2015) among US online adults.
Sources: Forrester blogs, "Your Customers Don't Want To Call You For Support," March 3, 2016; "Online Self Service Dominates Yet Again, Why? It's An Effortless Way To Get To Your Answers," Jan 28, 2016.
Confidence: Verified — independent research house.
Scope caveat: Self-service channels BROADLY, not searchable catalogues specifically.
Why this matters for Candid: Trend corroboration for the HBR (Dixon et al., 2017) — 81% of all customers attempt self-service before reaching out to a live representative headline. The "self-service overtook the phone" framing is useful for SMB clients who default to "call us" as the primary touchpoint.
Related entries
Related
Referenced by (5)
- reference Research brief: the searchable, structured catalogue as a working tool — when records-not-prose pays off (June 2026) relates-to
- reference Forrester 2015 Customer Lifecycle Survey — 53% of customers likely to abandon online purchases if they can't find quick answers; 73% say valuing their time is most important relates-to
- reference Caveats for the searchable-catalogue brief: no study isolates catalogues as a variable; vendor-sourced skip thresholds; Baymard age; AI-eligibility under-sourced relates-to
- research-notes QUARANTINE — "Self-service interaction costs $0.10 vs $6-$12 for live agent" (attributed to Forrester) relates-to
- rule R5 — Self-service most often fails on findability; deliver self-service via structured, queryable records, not un-queryable documents depends-on