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

Claim: Gartner (Aug 2024 release): "45% of customers who started in self-service said the company didn't understand what they were trying to do," and in 43% of cases customers couldn't find content relevant to their issue — the most common point of failure.

Source: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-08-19 ; https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/3-flaws-to-fix-in-customer-self-service

Confidence: Verified.

Why this matters for Candid: Defines the actual design problem. A portal that doesn't (a) recognise what the user is there to do and (b) put the relevant content within one click of login will fail in roughly that proportion of attempts. This is the case for narrow, task-focused portals over kitchen-sink ones.