Omnichannel Software: Which Tools Unify Your Customer Channels?

Many companies are looking for the one piece of software that will solve omnichannel on its own. That tool does not exist: each solution covers part of the journey, and it is the way they fit together that creates continuity. To choose, you need to know what each family brings, which criteria really matter and how to listen to the Voice of the Customer to judge the result.

This guide defines omnichannel software and distinguishes it from a CRM or a messaging platform, presents the main families of solutions in a comparison table, details the selection criteria to review before signing, then proposes a simple method to check, once the tool is deployed, that it really improves your customers’ experience.

What is omnichannel software?

Omnichannel software is a solution that connects several contact channels, such as the website, the app, the store, the phone or messaging, around a single view of the customer. It shares their data and history across teams, so that every interaction takes previous ones into account, whatever channel is used.

Centralize channels, data and customer history

The first job of omnichannel software is to bring together what is usually scattered. Requests come in by email, chat, phone, social media or in store, and each one leaves a trace in a different tool. Without centralization, an advisor only sees part of the story, and the customer has to fill in the gaps themselves.

Centralizing does not mean storing everything in the same place. It is mainly about making useful information available at the right moment: the customer’s identity, their orders, their recent exchanges, the commitments made by a previous contact. A sales associate who finds an order placed online, or an agent who sees that a conversation has already taken place on messaging, can pick up without starting over.

Customer history is the most valuable data of all. It is what avoids repetition, makes it possible to personalize an answer and gives context to a complaint. It still has to be complete, up to date and understandable by teams that do not all do the same job.

This centralization is only the tool side of a broader approach. An omnichannel strategy defines the journeys to connect, the rules to harmonize and the organization to put in place; the software then makes it concrete day to day. Choosing a tool before clarifying this approach often leads to automating silos instead of removing them.

Omnichannel software, CRM or messaging platform: what are the differences?

The three terms are often confused, because the tools overlap and vendors regularly broaden their scope. Their starting logic is still different, and knowing it helps you understand what you are really buying.

A CRM is first and foremost a customer relationship database: it organizes contacts, accounts, opportunities and sales history. It mainly serves sales and marketing teams, and it becomes omnichannel when it receives interactions from every channel, not just those of the sales reps.

A messaging platform manages written conversations: website chat, instant messaging apps, SMS, social media. It excels at real-time exchanges, automating first responses and distributing conversations among agents. On its own, it does not cover the store, the checkout or the phone.

Omnichannel software, in the broad sense, refers to the ability to make these building blocks work together around a shared customer view. It can be a single suite or several connected tools. In both cases, the question to ask is not "which tool does everything?", but "how does information flow from one channel to another?".

What families of omnichannel software are there?

The solutions on the market fall into four main families. Each one serves a main use, is aimed at specific users and produces different data. The table below compares them and flags, for each one, the main point to watch when choosing.

These families are not mutually exclusive: most organizations combine several. A retailer will need a unified commerce tool and a customer service solution; a brand with a strong online presence will rely more on marketing and messaging. The point is not to choose one family, but to know which ones are priorities for your journeys.

Each family also produces its own indicators. Point-of-sale tools measure sales, customer service tools measure handling times and volumes, marketing tools measure open and conversion rates. None of them, on its own, tells you what the customer felt when moving from one channel to another. That is a limit to keep in mind when assessing the results of a deployment.

Finally, some solutions present themselves as suites covering several families at once. They simplify vendor management, but they do not spare you from checking how deep each module really goes: a suite that is very strong on customer service can remain basic on the checkout or on marketing.

What criteria should you use to choose omnichannel software?

Before comparing offers, it helps to set a grid of criteria shared by all the teams involved: customer service, sales, marketing, IT and management. Each one looks at the tool with its own expectations, and a shared grid prevents an important criterion from being forgotten along the way.

Security deserves a special place in this grid, because omnichannel software by definition concentrates a great deal of customer data. The IT hygiene guide from ANSSI, the French national cybersecurity agency, brings together 42 basic measures, such as strong authentication, access rights management or software updates, which make a good basis for questioning a vendor about its practices. Here are the key points to review.

• Unified customer view: the tool must bring together the customer’s identity, history and interactions in a record accessible to every team, without double entry.
• Real time: information must be updated as soon as it changes, whether it is stock, an order status or an ongoing conversation. Reporting should keep the same pace.
• Open integrations (API): the solution must be able to exchange data with your existing tools, CRM, checkout, ticketing or messaging, through connectors and a documented API.
• Security and GDPR compliance: data encryption, fine-grained access rights, logging, clear contractual clauses on the processing of personal data.
• Data hosting: the location of the servers and the related guarantees must be known and compatible with your obligations, especially for your European customers’ data.
• Adoption by business teams: a powerful tool that is rarely used creates no continuity; usability, training and support matter as much as features.
• Total cost: beyond licenses, you need to factor in integration, configuration, training, maintenance and upgrade costs over several years.

GDPR compliance also goes through the contract. When the vendor processes your customers’ data on your behalf, it acts as a processor. The CNIL, the French data protection authority, recommends in particular setting out the conditions for returning and destroying data at the end of the contract, the rules for notifying incidents and guarantees on where the data is actually located.

Finally, adoption is prepared before signing. Involving advisors, sales associates and marketing managers in demos, having them test real cases and collecting their objections helps avoid a tool chosen by management but bypassed by teams. It is often this criterion, more than the list of features, that determines the success of the deployment.

How do you check that the tool really improves the experience?

Omnichannel software is judged by its effects on customers, not by its go-live. The indicators provided by the tool itself, such as the number of tickets handled or response times, tell you whether it works. They do not tell you whether customers enjoy a smoother experience. To find out, you need to listen to what customers say about it.

Analyze what customers say on each channel

Customers express themselves everywhere: online reviews, satisfaction surveys, tickets, messaging conversations, in-store exchanges. This feedback holds the answer to the question every team asks after a deployment: has anything changed for the customer? Reading it channel by channel, before and after the tool is in place, makes it possible to measure.

The most useful signals are those that describe a transition. A customer who says they no longer have to repeat their request, or on the contrary who explains being sent from one channel to another, gives direct information about continuity. This feedback makes it possible to measure the omnichannel experience as the customer lives it, and not only as the tools record it.

This reading requires bringing together feedback in very different formats. A public review, an open answer to a survey and the transcript of a conversation have neither the same length nor the same vocabulary. Analyzing them together requires processing that can understand natural language and extract themes, pain points and emotions, at scale.

That is the role of an AI expert in Voice of the Customer like Glanceable. Glanceable is not omnichannel software: it is an analysis layer that connects to the tools you already use, for example Zendesk or Intercom for support, WhatsApp for conversations, HubSpot or Salesforce for CRM, as well as review and survey platforms. A documented API also lets you add your internal data.

Link pain points to the teams and tools involved

Identifying a pain point is not enough: you need to know who can fix it. A customer who complains about stock shown as available but nowhere to be found in store points to the unified commerce tool and the logistics teams. A customer who had to repeat themselves after a transfer points to customer service routing and access to history.

Linking each pain point to the team and tool involved turns customer feedback into an action plan. Teams know what falls within their scope, tool owners see where configuration needs to change, and management has an overall view to decide on priorities. It is this link between listening and action that improves customer experience over time.

The results then need to reach the places where teams work. Sharing priority pain points in Slack or Microsoft Teams, or feeding them into existing dashboards such as Power BI, Tableau or Looker, avoids creating yet another tool to check. The analysis becomes part of teams’ daily work, instead of staying in a one-off report.

Finally, this follow-up makes it possible to check the effect of fixes. If routing configuration is changed, the share of feedback mentioning repetition should fall in the following weeks. If it does not, the problem lies elsewhere. This short loop between customer feedback, fix and verification is the best guarantee that omnichannel software delivers on its promises.

Ultimately, the right omnichannel software is not the one that promises to do everything, but the one that integrates with your tools, that your teams adopt and that makes information flow from one channel to another. And the only way to know whether it delivers on its promises is to listen to what your customers say about each of your channels.

Sources: ANSSI, "Guide d’hygiène informatique"; CNIL, "Sécurité : gérer la sous-traitance".

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