Click to apply. Upload an ID. Re-enter details the company already has. What was meant to be a shortcut starts to feel like extra work. People bounce between screens, fix avoidable errors, and start over when flows break. The “invisible” journey becomes the whole experience, and it’s costing conversions.
Over the past few years, do-it-yourself has become the default. People expect to take care of things on their own at any hour, and companies need a way to serve everyone quickly and consistently. The tension is simple: customers want high accessibility, organizations want efficiency, and both depend on a journey that feels coherent and cared for. When that balance slips and the consumer’s digital experience is not considered, tools multiply but do not connect, context falls away between steps, and efficiency on paper turns into extra work in practice.
To understand how people navigate online tasks and what drives completion or abandonment, Liferay partnered with the third-party survey platform Pollfish. The Liferay 2025 Digital Self-Service Report was conducted in August 2025, surveying 1,000 U.S. adults (18+) across regions and demographics. Respondents shared experiences with digital tasks, the pain points that increase effort, and the kinds of guidance and support that make these journeys work.
Key Findings
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Poorly designed journeys lose customers: 68% have abandoned a digital task, and 73% have skipped a purchase because the process was too annoying.
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Customers feel like unpaid staff: 82% feel they are doing tasks an employee used to handle (53% sometimes, 29% very often).
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Stress is the default, even for the tech-savvy: 64% feel frustrated and 39% exhausted, while only 12% feel empowered; 67% describe themselves as tech-savvy yet are still overwhelmed by digital customer service.
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The load is highest in compliance-heavy industries: respondents name healthcare (48%), government (37%), insurance (32%), and banking (32%) as making them do the most work.
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People want a person at predictable moments: 36% want to work with a human when self-service fails, 19% for important or sensitive tasks, and 16% when the path is unclear.
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Users hand companies a simple playbook: Prioritize clear instructions (57%), simplicity (54%), support when needed (42%), and reliability (34%).
“Digital self-service is a promise about time,” said Bryan Cheung, CMO at Liferay. “People want to finish a task in a few minutes, on their schedule, with help close by if they need it, and companies have to serve many people at once without confusion. The real test is whether the experience holds together from the first click to the final confirmation. When it works, speed turns into confidence and trust follows.”
When Self-Service Adds Extra Work, People Quit
Self-service should cut effort; too often it adds it. What looks like a shortcut can become a shift in who does the work, with customers completing tasks they assumed the business would handle. 82% say they feel they are doing work an employee used to do, with 53% saying this happens sometimes and 29% very often. Behavior proves it: 68% have abandoned a digital task, and 73% have skipped a purchase because the process was too annoying.
The burden is heaviest where paperwork and verification dominate. Healthcare leads at 48%, followed by government at 37%, then insurance and banking at 32% each. These are places where compliance matters, identities must be verified, and records need to match precisely. When the stakes are high and systems are fragmented, even simple steps can feel like a maze. The takeaway is not that these industries should avoid DIY; it is that they must hold it to a higher standard.
Digital Experiences Feel Harder Than They Should
People infer why do-it-yourself flows exist, and that judgment colors everything that follows. 54% say the primary motive is to cut costs, 9% believe it is to improve the experience, and 37% think it is both. Respect moves with that perception. When asked how self-service makes them feel, 55% say less valued, 16% say more valued, and 29% feel no change. When people believe the work is being shifted to them, patience wears thin and small hiccups are interpreted as proof of a larger problem.
The emotional center of today’s digital journeys is not confidence, its strain. 64% of respondents feel frustrated, 39% exhausted, and only 12% feel empowered. Even respondents who see themselves as tech-savvy feel overwhelmed (67%). The message is clear: the constraint is not willingness to use self-service but the quality of the experience around it.
A typical moment looks like this. Someone starts a task on a phone, switches to a laptop to upload a document, and finds that their session expired. An address the company already has on file is rejected. A vague error suggests trying again later without saving progress. After a few loops like this, many either escalate to a person or look elsewhere.
Over time, the weight of these small frictions becomes fatigue, not just irritation in the moment. More than half (54%) of respondents say they feel more exhausted than two years ago when dealing with digital services (38% somewhat, 16% clearly more). 37% report no change, and only 9% feel more confident. Unless effort comes down, that fatigue will keep pushing people to switch, delay, or drop out.
Confusing Journeys Drive Re-entry, Restarts, and Exits
The cycle often begins with unclear guidance. Only 33% say instructions are usually or always clear. That ambiguity feeds rework. 84% find themselves re-entering information that a company should already have, and 91% have had to start a task over because something went wrong. What should be straightforward turns into correction, duplication, and second attempts.
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When tasks feel hard:
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57% call or live chat
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39% search for answers
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33% try again later
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25% abandon
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After three failed tries:
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46% call or chat
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17% try a different company
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16% stop altogether
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13% keep trying
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This behavior is predictable. If the system is unreliable, effort increases, and customers either escalate to a human or abandon the process. People will try to self-serve until they hit predictable thresholds. 36% of respondents say they prefer to talk to a person when the DIY path fails, 19% want to work with a human on important or sensitive tasks, and 16% look for help when the process is unclear.
Complex Tasks Turn Self-Service Into Shared Service
The burden of DIY often spills across ages and households. 78% say there are real differences by generation in how people handle digital tasks. Many have stepped in to help someone else complete a process, most often because the steps were confusing. 57% say they helped for that reason, 38% because they had done the task before and could provide guidance, and 38% because the other person had low confidence with digital tools. When the journey is hard to follow, the work doesn’t disappear. It just shifts to family members, coworkers, and friends.
What Do People Actually Want? Clarity, Simplicity, Support, Reliability
Customers are not asking for bells and whistles. They want the basics to be solid:
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Clear instructions (57%)
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Simplicity (54%)
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Support available (42%)
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Reliability, no errors (34%)
When it comes to specific features, people are just as practical. 31% want the ability to save progress and return later. 26% want clear step-by-step feedback so they know what is left and what went wrong. 24% want real-time chat within the flow, and 19% want shortcuts that recognize repeat users. Build these pieces and the experience starts to feel respectful. The work gets lighter, confidence rises, and self-service becomes what it was supposed to be.
Conclusion
Self-service is not the problem; poorly designed digital journeys are. People are willing to complete tasks on their own when the path is clear and error-free. What erodes trust is feeling like unpaid staff, repeating information, or starting over after an error. The result shows up in behavior and emotion: higher abandonment and a baseline of frustration.
The same journeys can work differently with a few consistent choices. Done together, these choices turn self-service from extra work into saved time:
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One profile that travels. Unify identity and profile data so forms prefill and details persist across journeys. Ask only for what is new through progressive profiling, and pull trusted data from connected systems.
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Save progress and guide the path. Respect the customer’s time. Auto-save each step, allow return on any device, and show a simple step tracker with what is needed up front. Use plain-language labels, inline validation, and short, readable errors. Liferay’s content and localization tools keep the same guidance clear across audiences.
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Add human help without a reset. When errors repeat or the task involves money, identity, or benefits, integrate live help in context. Pass form state, uploaded documents, and recent errors to the agent so customers do not have to repeat themselves. Offer callback or secure messaging, and let users switch between self-service and assisted paths without losing progress.
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Build for reliability and reduce effort over time. Track re-entry, retries, restarts, and time spent on blocking steps, then set targets to bring them down. Use these signals to prioritize fixes and test improvements to instructions and help timing.
“People remember how a journey ends,” said Bryan Cheung, CMO at Liferay. “At the last step, what matters is ease and a clear outcome. When customers get a receipt or confirmation and know what happens next, the experience ends in confidence instead of doubt. Retention is the compound effect of endings like that, repeated across days and channels. Make the digital journey unmistakably clear and dependable, and you stop pushing people away and start earning their trust.”
