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customers help each other. A common mistake is to treat these areas as no-go zones for employees, when just the reverse is true: product engineers, developers and troubleshooters can learn a lot from reading and interacting with customers. But to make this happen, participation must be part of the job description, not just extra credit.

Finally, all self-service websites benefit by acknowledging transactions. While this is typically done with e-mail or on-screen messages, some companies have found that, especially in the early days of a site, calling customers to make sure the experience was a good one can improve adoption.

Doing all this is more a journey than a destination. Even armed with plenty of analytic data, you will not really know what succeeds until you try it. The best approach is to test-and-learn, then tweak the design and test again. And, as with any sales scenario, the best solution this year may become outdated in the next.

As for contact centers, they will still have a very important role to play—but one that evolves as a new, Web-savvy generation of consumers comes into its own. Contact centers will be less important as primary contact points, but will be seen as the place to go when the Website can’t deliver. Even today, many companies are reporting that their callers are actually asking more complex questions because they’ve already solved the routine ones online. That’s a pretty good indicator where the call center is headed. Every self-service site will be designed to minimize incoming calling. Yet no site will be complete without a number to call.