Gartner (Aug 19, 2024; survey of 5,728 customers Dec 2023) — only 14% of customer service / support issues are fully resolved in self-service; even for "very simple" issues only 36% resolve fully
Summary
Claim: Gartner press release, Aug 19, 2024 (survey of 5,728 customers, Dec 2023): "Only 14% of customer service and support issues are fully resolved in self-service. Even for issues that customers describe as very simple, only 36% resolve fully in self-service." 73% use self-service at some point in their journey. Quote attributed to Eric Keller, Sr. Director, Gartner Customer Service & Support Practice.
Source: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-08-19
Confidence: Verified (analyst primary research).
Caveat: Gartner is an independent analyst firm — no portal-vendor incentive.
Why this matters for Candid: Single most credible independent piece of evidence against "build it and they'll log in." Use this number in client conversations, not the vendor "70% want self-service" framing. Pair with Gartner (Aug 2024) — why self-service fails: 45% of self-service starters say "the company didn't understand what they were trying to do"; in 43% of failures users couldn't find relevant content for the why.
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Referenced by (10)
- reference Research brief: client portals for SMBs — the honest case (June 2026) relates-to
- reference Gartner (2019, 8,398 customers) — only 9% of customers report resolving their issues completely via self-service relates-to
- reference Gartner (Aug 2024) — why self-service fails: 45% of self-service starters say "the company didn't understand what they were trying to do"; in 43% of failures users couldn't find relevant content depends-on
- reference Salesforce State of the Connected Customer — vendor-asserted: 57% say self-service "critical/very important"; 59% prefer self-service for simple questions; 88% say experience as important as products relates-to
- reference Practitioner data: "Most firms find 40-60% of clients haven't logged in in the last 90 days" — the ghost-login problem stated by an adoption-tool vendor relates-to
- reference Patient portal usage (academic, adjacent benchmark): cross-sectional study 32.1% used (range 26-51%); ER real-time 17.4% of 1.28M; US national 2022: 77% offered, 68% accessed relates-to
- reference Caveats for the client-portals brief: source-incentives are pervasive; the independent anchors are McKinsey and Gartner; market-size figures unreliable; the viral 42% stat is misattributed relates-to
- rule R2 — Run a 90-day adoption test with a cheap bought portal before committing; if <40-50% of clients log in, the portal is solving a problem the client base doesn't have depends-on
- reference BARC / Eckerson Group (March 2022, 214 D&A leaders surveyed Nov-Dec 2021) — BI/analytics adoption at 25% of employees on average; "stuck around 20% for many years" per Eckerson relates-to
- reference Gartner (March 2026 survey of 646 B2B buyers, Aug-Sep 2025) — 67% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free experience; 45% used AI during a recent purchase relates-to