What Defines a Good Omnichannel Customer Experience?
Jan 27, 2025
What defines a Good Omnichannel Customer Experience?
Imagine this: 73% of customers say they’ll switch brands after just one poor experience. Think about that for a moment. One misstep, one frustrating interaction, and your competitors get the win. That’s the reality businesses face in a world where customers expect seamless, connected experiences—whether they’re chatting on your website, calling your support line, or DMing you on social media. But what does it take to get it right? It’s not just about being available everywhere. It’s about being consistent, intuitive, and genuinely helpful. It’s about meeting your customers where they are, delivering what they need, and making every customer interaction effortless, leading to satisfied customers.
In this blog, you’ll get actionable insights to elevate your strategy, keep customers loyal, and even turn them into advocates for your brand. Let’s dive in!
What Is an Omnichannel Customer Experience?
An omnichannel customer experience connects all your customer touchpoints (phone, email, social) to each other to create one unified customer journey. Unlike a single-channel strategy, which limits customer conversations to one medium, or multichannel strategies, which keep conversation channels separate, omnichannel integrates all the platforms to deliver uninterrupted communication. Think of it this way:
A customer starts a chat on your website, as the issue gets escalated;
They later call your support line.
They follow up with a WhatsApp message.
The resolution is then shared over email and SMS.
In an omnichannel setup, these interactions are all integrated. The handoff from one channel to the other is smooth, as you use an email or phone number to track how they move through the support channels. The conversation and context is never lost.
This interconnectivity is not simple to set up but once done, it saves time for the customers and the agents assisting them. This in turn makes interactions seamless and quick. This leads to positive customer interactions and lower operational costs. Ultimately, this seamless integration leads to satisfied customers.
Why Is Omnichannel Customer Experience Crucial for Businesses?
At scale, keeping track of customer issues and tickets becomes a behemoth of a task. If a customer has to repeat themselves across channels, they will eventually get frustrated. The time pilferage in looking up customer tickets by agents also adds to the overall operational cost. Connecting customer touchpoints is the only possible solution. Here’s how omnichannel experiences contribute to a business’s success.
Improved Customer Retention: Consistency across channels makes the customers feel valued. When businesses make the effort to deliver seamless journeys, customers are more likely to stay loyal. Satisfied customers are more likely to return and stay loyal.
Better Brand Perception: A cohesive experience reflects professionalism and reliability, two traits that modern customers prioritize when choosing where to spend their money. Even today, the seamlessness provides shock and awe. It almost feels like magic.
Increased Revenue Opportunities: Omnichannel strategies allow businesses to identify cross-selling and upselling opportunities by tracking customer behavior across multiple platforms.
Speedy Resolution: Omnichannel customer experience reduces the time in customer lookup and ticket tracking. In every conversation with the customer, the support agents have the context of previous conversations, products purchased, and current issues. With this data, agents can offer personalized support in an instant. This saves time and money for the business. Not to mention its rippling effects on handle times, resolution rates, and customer satisfaction.
The Technology Behind Omnichannel CX
Centralized Data Management
Any omnichannel customer experience lives and dies with the CRM system in use. A CRM system that can create and manage detailed customer profiles with little oversight is non-negotiable. This system should be able to consolidate data from multiple touchpoints into one single database.
For example: If a customer calls to claim a warranty on a product, this call gets transferred to the right department who ask the caller to submit pictures. This automatically creates a ticket in the CRM along with a summary and transcript of a call (By the way, Phonely can do that). The same customer then sends the images over email, waiting on a resolution. This updates the right ticket in the CRM. All this info makes its way to the right department for review via email, from the CRM. Once the status is updated, this is relayed to the customer via SMS and E-Mail from the CRM.
As you can see, the CRM is the central piece that joins every channel to propagate one ticket and also allows interdepartmental collaboration.
Our recommendation is SalesForce, HubSpot, PipeDrive, and GoHighLevel. Yes, these are on the expensive side, but they are one of the few options that make this seamless information exchange possible.
AI and Automation
An omnichannel customer experience strategy will invariably include AI and automation. Tracking and updating interactions, like in the example above is next to impossible for a human. The sheer volume of data in this strategy is overwhelming. User tickets often require human action, so not everything warrants a ticket or human involvement. And given the amount of data, agents should be able to focus on making decisions, and not waste time on data lookup. That's where AI and automation come in.
AI Chatbots integrated with your socials and your website can offer quick resolutions to common issues without involving an agent in the process.
Voice AI Agents: AI Agents for phone calls like Phonely can assist with routine inquiries over the phone, ensuring customers receive quick responses even outside business hours. This can include order updates, ticket status, troubleshooting and so much more.
Automation Tools: Tools like Zapier and Make are central to your omnichannel strategy. As customer interactions take place, these tools can be set up to update relevant CRM fields, and also send information to the right department awaiting action.
Inbuilt Automation: Several CRMs offer automation built into their platforms. Using these instead of automation tools can make your setup look less complicated, which can help save on setup time and overall costs.
These are by no means exhaustive. Automation and AI technology are growing at a rapid pace. With time, it gets easier to gather customer information, extract key information from it, and reduce the overall requirement of human involvement.
Real-Time Analytics
When tracking customers through multiple channels, you invariably have the opportunity to collect more customer data. This includes timestamps, channel preference, resolution times, and satisfaction levels. You also get direct measurable and actionable insights into common issues and customer sentiment. All of these can be used to improve your support quality, marketing material, sales process, and the product itself. This trend-spotting happens in real time. Add a data analyst to your workforce, and the same data that was overwhelming now becomes foundational to your business decisions. Then again, the analyst needs to be able to make decisions based on the data, not waste time trying to gather it.
Phonely in Omnichannel Experiences
Phone support has been cardinal to customer experience for a very long time. It's the quickest and most interactive form of customer support short of a video call. Phonely combines the accessibility of a phone call with the automation potential of a chatbot or email. The customer gets quick access, and the business gets to take actions like creating tickets, answering FAQs, and providing troubleshooting steps. Its like taking your most competent human agent, and replicating their process using AI!
CRM Integration
Phonely integrates with your CRM to centralize customer data. Using API interactions Phonely can view, grab, and add data to your CRM just like a human agent would. This means that your AI phone agent has the context of previously created tickets, product purchase history, and any previous interactions over email, social, chat, and much more. It's like a chatbot, but it's one you can call, that has the same information and decision-making prowess of a human agent.
We have seen this applied in so many ways. The use cases seem to amaze us daily. We have customers who are using Phonely to provide troubleshooting and setup steps for IoT devices. In the same breath, they create tickets inside HubSpot for any issues that need human intervention (warranty claims, refunds, etc.). Another user is using deal additions in PipeDrive to place outbound calls to prospects and collect images over WhatsApp and EMail which they use to provide estimates on home improvement projects! The sky is the limit.
Automated Phone Support
We are not oblivious to the fact that humans will always be cardinal to customer interactions. Some issues in the health and financial sector require handholding the customer through the journey. But regular interactions like appointment booking and balance checks don't need a human agent. Phonely extends the automation of a chatbot to phone support. Here’s how it works:
Customers call your support line with a question about their order.
Phonely’s AI retrieves the necessary data and provides an immediate response.
If escalation is needed, the call is routed to an agent, who already has the full context within your CRM tool of choice.
Omnichannel Continuity
Phonely ensures that calls are seamlessly integrated into the broader omnichannel customer service ecosystem. As long as you have the right automation in place, Phonely can view the data from customer chats to lead the conversation as soon as it answers the Phone. For example:
A conversation that begins on WhatsApp can be continued over the phone without losing context.
Actions requested during interactions can be used to send relevant information to the right departments.
Personalized Interactions
Using the information from your CRM Phonely’s AI analyzes customer data to deliver tailored responses. Whether it’s recommending a product or resolving an issue, every interaction feels personalized.
Intuitive Workflows
Phonely uses specific workflows that get summoned when a trigger word or statement is said. This means that the customer engages in a context-specific conversation aligned with their specific issue. This is also connected to key apps using APIs so all the relevant sources get updated. Like marking call outcomes in a CRM and escalating key issues to the right decision-maker in your organization.
Omnichannel Marketing and Sales
Why stop at customer support? Marketing and sales can also utilize multiple channels to target customers with the perfect combination of words and visuals to increase revenue.
What is Omnichannel Marketing?
Omnichannel marketing is when businesses promote their products and services across all channels, devices, and platforms using unified messaging, cohesive visuals, and consistent marketing collateral. This strategy ensures that customers receive a seamless and integrated experience, whether they are engaging with your brand via social media, email, or in-store. By reaching customers where they are with relevant and on-brand offers, omnichannel marketing enhances the effectiveness of your brand message and ensures you connect with your target audience, leading to more conversions. Omnichannel marketing platforms have made this easier. Several CRMs like the ones we mentioned above have these capabilities built in.
How to Create an Omnichannel Marketing Strategy
Creating a successful omnichannel marketing strategy involves several key steps:
Identify Target Audience and Target Channels: Understanding your customers’ preferences and behaviors. Conduct market research to determine which channels your audience uses the most. Is it Instagram or TikTok? Do they use a desktop or mobile device to interact with your brand? This insight will help you focus your efforts on the most impactful platforms.
A Unified Brand Message: Consistency is crucial in omnichannel marketing. Ensure that your brand message, visual identity, and tone of voice are uniform across all channels. This creates a cohesive customer experience and reinforces your brand’s identity.
Integrate Marketing Channels and Tools: Utilize technology to connect and manage multiple channels. Tools like customer relationship management (CRM) systems, social media management platforms, and email marketing software can help streamline your efforts and ensure that all channels offer a seamless experience.
Measure and Analyze Performance: Track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as engagement rates, conversion rates, and customer feedback. Analyzing this data will help you understand what’s working and where there’s room for improvement, allowing you to refine your strategy for better results.
Omnichannel Retail
Omnichannel retail means the ability to sell across all channels. Social, online, and in store. Several brands have nailed an omnichannel retail strategy to make it easier for a customer to buy your product. Marketplaces like Shopify have led this transformation.
Disney: Disney creates a magical customer experience by seamlessly integrating digital and physical touchpoints. From their website and mobile app to their theme parks and stores, every interaction is connected, providing a consistent and enchanting experience.
Starbucks: Starbucks excels in customer engagement with its personalized rewards program and app-driven experience. Customers can order ahead, earn rewards, and receive personalized offers, all of which are integrated with their in-store experience.
PUMA: PUMA has achieved remarkable success by unifying customer data and implementing personalized marketing automation. This approach has led to a significant increase in email revenue and a more engaging shopping experience across their website, email, and social media channels.
Omnichannel Is the Future of CX
In today’s customer-centric world, delivering a seamless omnichannel experience isn’t optional—it’s essential. Businesses that prioritize consistency, personalization, and integration across channels are the ones that will thrive. Satisfied customers are a key outcome of a successful omnichannel strategy.
Combined with a CRM, Phonely makes it easy for businesses to create exceptional omnichannel experiences by integrating phone support into their existing ecosystems. With tools like CRM integration, automated voice support, and AI-powered personalization, Phonely helps businesses meet their customers wherever they are.
