Omnichannel Experience: How to Make It Seamless and Measurable

A customer who starts something in the app, continues by phone and finishes in store is not comparing three channels. They live a single experience, and they judge it on its continuity: were they recognized, did they have to repeat themselves, was the information the same everywhere? Listening to the Voice of the Customer across all these interactions is the most direct way to know whether that continuity really exists.

This article explains what an omnichannel experience is and how it differs from simply being present on several channels, details its components, identifies the moments where it breaks most often, with examples by sector, and proposes a method to measure the continuity customers actually feel. Finally, it presents the levers to pull to improve it and the place artificial intelligence can take in it.

What is an omnichannel experience?

An omnichannel experience is one that the customer lives as a continuous whole, however many channels they use. They are recognized everywhere, their context follows them from one channel to the next and they never have to start over. It is perceived continuity, not the number of channels, that defines it.

An experience felt as continuous, whatever the entry point

The omnichannel experience is defined from the customer’s point of view. It does not matter whether they start on the website, in the app, with a call or with a store visit: what counts is that they can pick up where they left off, without a break or a step back. The entry point changes from one customer to another and from one day to the next, but the experience must stay the same.

This approach extends that of customer experience in general, adding a requirement for continuity between channels. An experience can be excellent on each channel taken in isolation and disappointing as a whole, if the transitions between those channels are poorly handled. That is precisely what omnichannel seeks to avoid.

Continuity also has an emotional dimension. A customer who is recognized and understood from one channel to the next feels considered; a customer who has to repeat their story at every contact feels ignored, even if each person they speak to is friendly. The emotion attached to the experience therefore depends as much on transitions as on the exchanges themselves, and it often determines loyalty and recommendation.

Finally, an omnichannel experience cannot be decreed: it can only be observed. It exists only if the customer perceives it as such. A company can connect its systems and share its data without its customers noticing any difference, if teams do not use them or if rules still differ from one channel to another. The only measure that counts is the customer’s.

What sets it apart from simply being present on several channels

Being present on several channels is not enough to offer an omnichannel experience. Many companies have a website, an app, a phone-based customer service, social media accounts and points of sale, without these channels communicating with each other. The customer has a choice of channel, but not continuity.

The difference lies in what travels between channels: knowledge of the customer, the history of their requests, the status of their orders, the commitments made by a previous contact. With a simple multichannel presence, this information stays locked inside each channel. In an omnichannel experience, it follows the customer wherever they go.

The overall approach that makes this continuity possible, and the detailed comparison between multichannel, cross-channel and omnichannel, are covered in a dedicated article. Here, the point is to look at the experience as the customer lives it, and to know how to measure it.

What are the components of a successful omnichannel experience?

A successful omnichannel experience relies on a few components that customers perceive directly. Each one can be observed in their feedback, and each one corresponds to a specific expectation.

• Customer recognition: the customer is identified whatever the channel, without having to give their details again at every contact. The advisor who picks up knows who is on the line, the sales associate can find their previous purchases with their consent.
• Continuity of context: what happened on one channel is known on the next. A request opened by chat is visible to the phone advisor, an order placed online is known to the store.
• Consistency of information and prices: customers find the same prices, promotions, conditions and lead times everywhere. An inconsistency, even a minor one, is enough to cast doubt on everything.
• Freedom to choose the channel: customers can move from one channel to another depending on their constraints of the moment, without being penalized. They are not sent to a channel they did not choose in order to get an answer.
• Personalization: offers and answers take into account what the customer has already done, bought or asked. It must remain consistent from one channel to another, and respect their choices regarding data.
• Resolution without repetition: a request is handled end to end, even if it crosses several channels. Customers do not have to explain their problem again or chase the next step themselves.

These components are linked. Personalization requires recognition, resolution without repetition requires continuity of context, and all of them rely on consistent information. A single failing component is enough to break the feeling of continuity, which explains why the omnichannel experience is so demanding.

Personalization deserves particular attention, because it is both expected and sensitive. A McKinsey study published in 2021 reports that 71% of consumers expect companies to personalize their interactions, and that 76% get frustrated when this does not happen. The challenge is therefore not to personalize more, but to personalize consistently across all channels.

Where does the omnichannel experience break most often?

Breaks in the omnichannel experience almost always occur in the same places: where the customer moves from one channel to another, and where several teams have to coordinate to respond. Here are the three most frequent weak spots, illustrated with generic examples in several sectors.

At transitions between website, app and store

The first area of breakage lies between digital channels and the point of sale. The customer looks at a product in the app, checks its availability on the website, then goes to the store. If the displayed stock is wrong, if the price differs or if the sales associate cannot see what the customer viewed, the transition fails.

In retail, the typical break is a product shown as available online but nowhere to be found on the shelf. The fix involves more frequent synchronization of store stock and more cautious display of availability. In automotive, a customer who configured a vehicle online arrives at the dealership and has to start everything again with the salesperson; the fix is to make the configuration accessible at the dealership.

In telecoms, the break often occurs between the online customer account and the shop: an offer visible in the app is not available in store, or a subscription started online cannot be completed in the shop. Aligning offers and sharing ongoing requests between the two channels fixes these gaps.

Between order, delivery and return

The second area of breakage concerns everything that follows the purchase. The order is placed on one channel, delivery is handled by a service provider, and the return can be made on yet another channel. Each step involves different teams and sometimes different partners, and each handover is an opportunity for a break. The logistics organization behind these steps falls under omnichannel distribution.

In e-commerce, the most frequent break is delivery tracking that does not match reality: the parcel is shown as delivered when it is not, or the lead time changes without explanation. The customer then contacts customer service, which does not always have more information than they do. The fix is to share tracking data with advisors and to warn customers before they start to worry.

The return is the other sensitive moment. An item bought online that the store refuses to take back, a refund that drags on without anyone knowing why, a procedure that differs depending on the purchase channel: these situations turn a simple formality into a source of customer effort. Harmonizing return rules and making the refund visible at each step greatly reduces these pain points.

When customers have to repeat their request to customer service

The third area of breakage is the one customers mention most often: having to repeat their request. The customer explained their problem by chat, is called back by an advisor who does not know about the exchange, then transferred to another department that asks the same questions again. Each repetition degrades the experience a little more.

In banking and insurance, this is particularly marked at important moments: filing a claim, applying for a loan, disputing a transaction. Customers expect their file to follow them, from the app to the branch and from the advisor to the expert. The fix involves a shared contact history and a clearly identified contact person for complex requests.

In telecoms, repetition often occurs during technical incidents: the customer reports an outage online, describes it again on the phone, then a third time to the technician. Passing the diagnosis from one channel to the next, and keeping the customer informed of progress without them having to chase, turns a painful experience into a controlled process.

How do you measure the continuity customers actually feel?

Measuring the omnichannel experience means looking at what traditional indicators, built channel by channel, see poorly: transitions. The table below links the main switching points between channels to the signals to listen for, the available feedback sources and the teams involved.

The first step is to cross-reference indicators by channel and by journey. A high satisfaction score on every channel can hide a poor experience on a journey that crosses them. Conversely, a well-designed journey can be dragged down by a single failing channel. Reading results by journey, and not only by channel, shows where continuity gets lost.

The second step is to read the verbatims that mention several channels. A review that mentions both the website and the store, a survey that talks about a call after a chat exchange, a ticket opened after an online order: these multichannel verbatims are direct witnesses of transitions. They say what the customer experienced between two channels, where scores stay silent.

The third step is to track a few simple indicators over time: the share of feedback that mentions repetition, the share that mentions an inconsistency between channels, the perceived effort on journeys that cross several channels. How they evolve tells you whether the actions taken really improve the continuity customers feel.

Which levers should you pull to improve the omnichannel experience?

Once breaks are identified and measured, three levers make it possible to act on the omnichannel experience over time: customer knowledge, team tools and governance.

Share customer knowledge across teams

The continuity of the experience depends first on what teams know about the customer when they interact with them. Fragmented customer knowledge, spread across the website, the store, customer service and marketing, mechanically produces breaks. Sharing it means allowing each person to pick up where the previous one left off.

This sharing covers transaction data, but also what the customer has expressed: their requests, complaints and feedback on their experience. An advisor who knows that a customer left a negative review after their last delivery can adapt the conversation. A product team that sees the pain points expressed on every channel can prioritize its fixes.

Sharing customer data must also follow a framework. The CNIL, the French data protection authority, points out in particular that only necessary data should be collected, that customers must be informed of how it is used and that it must not be kept indefinitely. Personalization based on data collected transparently strengthens trust instead of eroding it.

Equip advisors and sales associates

Advisors and sales associates are the ones who make continuity real, or who make it fail. They need tools that give them access to the customer’s history, orders in progress and previous exchanges on other channels. Without these tools, even the most attentive teams cannot spare customers from repeating themselves.

Choosing omnichannel software for customer service or sales depends on the journeys to connect and the teams who will use it. No single tool can cover everything, and a tool’s value depends as much on its adoption by teams as on its features. A simple tool, well integrated into daily work, often produces more continuity than a complete tool that is rarely used.

Equipping teams also means training them. A sales associate who knows how to find an online order, an advisor who knows how to read a customer’s history before picking up, a team that knows how to pass on a file without losing information: these gestures, repeated at every interaction, build the omnichannel experience day after day.

Break down silos in experience governance

The third lever is organizational. In many companies, each channel has its own manager, budget and indicators. Nobody is responsible for transitions between channels, even though that is where the experience breaks. Breaking down silos in experience governance means giving a shared body responsibility for the journeys that cross several channels.

This shared governance translates into common goals, follow-up rituals that bring the different teams together and clear arbitration rules when interests diverge. It also makes it possible to assign each pain point identified to the team able to act, and then to check that the fix has had an effect.

Finally, it requires a common language. When marketing, customer service, stores and logistics share the same reading of customer feedback, organized by journey and by switching point, discussions focus on causes and solutions rather than on who is responsible.

What role can AI play in the omnichannel experience?

Artificial intelligence plays a part at two levels in the omnichannel experience: in the interactions themselves, to personalize exchanges, and in the analysis of the experience, to understand what customers say about it.

Personalize without losing consistency across channels

AI makes it possible to tailor offers, content and answers to each customer, in real time and across many channels. Used well, it strengthens the feeling of being recognized and understood. Used poorly, it can create inconsistencies instead: a different recommendation on the website and in the app, an automated message that ignores an ongoing complaint, an offer made to a customer who has just cancelled.

The condition is that personalization relies on the same customer knowledge, whatever the channel. An AI fed with partial data, specific to a single channel, reproduces silos instead of overcoming them. Consistency across channels must therefore remain the rule, and personalization a means of strengthening it.

Transparency also matters. A customer who understands why they are offered a given product or answer accepts personalization more easily. A customer who feels watched without having agreed to it experiences it as an intrusion, which degrades the experience instead of improving it.

Analyze all customer feedback, whatever its channel

The second contribution of AI is the analysis of customer feedback. Online reviews, surveys, tickets, conversations, call transcripts: customers express themselves on every channel, in formats and volumes that make manual analysis impossible. AI makes it possible to read them together, extract themes, pain points and emotions, and link them to the journeys involved.

That is the role of an AI expert in Voice of the Customer like Glanceable: analyzing feedback from every channel, identifying pain points and their root causes, and linking them to the journey and team involved. Glanceable is not omnichannel software: it draws on the feedback your customers already leave, on all your channels, to tell you where your omnichannel experience breaks.

This cross-channel reading changes how the experience is managed. Instead of tracking a score per channel, teams see the transitions that generate the most pain points, how those pain points evolve over time and the effect of the fixes made. The omnichannel experience then becomes measurable, and therefore manageable.

Ultimately, the omnichannel experience is not measured by the quality of each channel, but by the continuity customers feel between them. It is built by sharing customer knowledge, equipping teams and breaking down silos in governance. And it only becomes manageable on one condition: listening to what customers say about their transitions, on all channels at once.

Sources: McKinsey & Company, "The value of getting personalization right, or wrong, is multiplying", 2021; CNIL, "RGPD en pratique : maîtrisez votre relation client".

Ready to see where your omnichannel experience breaks?

See Glanceable with your data.
A 30-minute discussion, using your data.

Request a demo →