Gartner / Eric Keller — single most common self-service failure mode is inability to find relevant content; appears in >43% of cases

Claim: The single most common failure mode in self-service is the inability to find relevant content — appearing in more than 43% of self-service cases (Gartner, attributed to senior director Eric Keller).

Source: Gartner press release, August 19, 2024 (Dec 2023 survey of 5,728 customers).

Confidence: Verified — independent, primary press release.

Why this matters for Candid: This is the strongest indirect argument in the brief that a queryable, structured catalogue beats an un-queryable document. None of the independent research isolates "searchable catalogue" as a variable — but the >43% findability-failure finding nominates findability as the dominant lever. Anchors R5 — Self-service most often fails on findability; deliver self-service via structured, queryable records, not un-queryable documents.