What omnichannel means
The word comes from “omni”, all, and “channel”: every channel at once. In practice it describes a way of serving customers in which they choose where to write and the company recognises them on any of those channels, with everything it already knows.
It goes by several names. Omnichannel strategy, omnichannel customer service and omnichannel experience all mean the same thing. It should not be confused with multichannel, which is having several channels that are not connected, or with cross-channel, which is moving from one channel to another within a single process, such as booking online and paying at the desk.
Multichannel vs omnichannel: the difference
Both offer several channels. The difference is whether those channels talk to each other. A quick way to tell: if a customer switches channel, do they have to explain everything again?
- Multichannel: each channel works on its own. The phone has its notes, WhatsApp lives on one handset and email in another inbox. The customer repeats themselves and the team never sees the full picture.
- Omnichannel: every channel writes to the same record. Whoever serves the customer sees what happened before, wherever it came from, and the customer carries on where they left off.
Why omnichannel is so important
Because customers do not think in channels: they think about their problem. Someone may call to ask, write on WhatsApp to confirm and turn up at the desk with a new question, and they expect the business to remember all three.
For the company, the main benefit is order. With one history, anyone on the team can pick up a case, people get the same answer on every channel and costly mistakes are avoided, like giving two different answers to the same question. It also makes data protection easier: it is simpler to know what is held about each person when it is all in one place.
Omnichannel examples
The classic example comes from retail: buying online and collecting in store, where the assistant already knows what you ordered. In services it looks more like this:
- An academy: a father rings to ask about English classes and the next day writes on WhatsApp; whoever replies can see the call was logged and offers him the trial lesson straight away.
- A hair salon: a client books by message and, when she arrives, reception sees which service she asked for and with whom.
- A gym: a member asks at the desk about changing their membership and then confirms it in writing; both are in their record.
- A business that serves other businesses: several people from the same organisation write from different numbers and everything ends up in that organisation’s record.
Is omnichannel a CRM?
Not exactly. Omnichannel is a way of serving customers; the CRM is the tool that makes it possible, because that is where each customer’s single history lives. Without a CRM that receives the channels, omnichannel depends on everyone writing down by hand what happens, and that does not survive a month of real work.
Alongside the CRM you usually need a shared inbox, where the team sees and answers conversations from every channel. The guide to what a CRM is explains its parts.
What it takes to serve customers in an omnichannel way
More than buying tools, it is about putting five things in order:
- One record per customer, with all their ways of getting in touch: phone, email, social media username.
- Recognising the customer on each channel, so their message is added to the record they already have instead of creating another one.
- A shared inbox, with an owner for every conversation.
- The same information for every channel: opening hours, prices and rules written down once.
- Clear rules on who handles what and when a case passes to someone else.
How a small business can get started
The most common mistake is opening channels that nobody can then keep up with. One channel handled well beats five handled badly. For a small service business the sensible order is this: first, the channel most people already use, which for many businesses is WhatsApp, connected to a CRM; next, bring together in that CRM the records that are currently scattered; and only then add other channels, one at a time.
When you add a channel, the test is simple: write to it yourself as if you were a customer and check that the message appears in the right record and that whoever answers can see what came before.
How to tell if your customer service is omnichannel
You do not need a dashboard to check. It is enough to look at a handful of last week’s conversations and answer four questions: did any customer have to repeat what they had already explained? Are there customers with more than one record? Was any conversation left without an owner? Did anyone get two different answers to the same question?
If the answer to all four is no, your channels are joined up. If any is yes, that is your next fix, and it is almost never opening another channel: it is usually merging records, assigning owners or writing down once and for all the information everyone was explaining in their own way.
Common mistakes
Nearly every problem with customer service that calls itself omnichannel but is not comes from one of these slips:
- A different record for each channel, so the same customer appears three times.
- Different answers depending on where the customer asks.
- Conversations with no owner, which nobody answers because everyone thinks someone else will.
- Channels open on the website that nobody checks, such as a forgotten form or social account.
