Bad customer experiences are costing companies a staggering $3.7 trillion every year globally—and it’s only getting worse.
Fragmented tools and siloed data slow down support teams, frustrating both agents and customers. Customers are often forced to repeat themselves when switching between channels, while agents struggle to keep track of previous interactions.
Disconnected support systems mean longer wait times, frustrated customers, and lost revenue.
The solution? Omnichannel customer service.
The question isn’t whether you should implement omnichannel customer service but rather how soon you can do it.
Explore the benefits and discuss how businesses can create a seamless omnichannel customer service strategy.
Key pointers:
- Omnichannel customer service connects all support channels—email, chat, phone, and social media—into one platform. This lets agents access full conversation history, ensuring personalized, seamless support without customers repeating themselves, creating a consistent experience that drives loyalty and satisfaction.
- Multichannel support provides various communication options, but they work independently, causing fragmented conversations and repeated queries. In contrast, omnichannel service integrates all channels, ensuring a smooth, connected, and frustration-free customer experience.
- Omnichannel support benefits customers by boosting satisfaction, reducing resolution time, and enhancing retention. It also improves agent productivity by centralizing interactions and leveraging AI for routine queries. Businesses gain valuable customer insights, allowing for more personalized, data-driven support that strengthens loyalty.
- Track key metrics like CSAT, NPS, response time, and retention rates to measure omnichannel success. Use customer feedback and AI insights to identify gaps, ensuring seamless, personalized support. Regular analysis and refinements keep your strategy efficient, customer-focused, and growth-driven.
What is omnichannel customer service?
Omnichannel customer service is a support strategy that seamlessly unifies all communication channels—emails, live chat, social media, and phone under one platform. Agents can have full access to the conversation and provide instant, personalized, and context-aware support to customers without them repeating their issues.
According to Forbes, companies that offer omnichannel services have retained 89% of their customers.
Omnichannel vs. Multichannel customer service
Mistaking multichannel for omnichannel can cost businesses heavily—one fragments customer interactions while the other delivers seamless, connected experiences.
Aspects | Omnichannel customer service | Multichannel customer service |
|---|---|---|
Concept | Provides a seamless and connected experience across all channels. | It supports multiple channels, but they operate independently. |
Integration | All channels are integrated under one platform, allowing smooth transitions. | Channels work separately, requiring customers to repeat themselves. |
Communication | Consistent and unified conversations across channels. | Communication is fragmented across different channels. |
Data management | Centralized data system, ensuring a unified customer view. | Data is siloed across different channels. |
Customer experience | Personalized, seamless, and efficient, enhancing satisfaction. | Inconsistent, as customers may face repetition and delays. |
Challenges | It requires an advanced CRM system, customer service management tools, and proper implementation. | The limited connection between channels leads to friction in customer support. |
Benefits of omnichannel customer service
When customers reach out through social media, follow up via email, and escalate through live chat, they expect a seamless, connected experience—not a frustrating cycle of repeating themselves. Yet, many businesses still operate in silos, leading to longer resolution times, fragmented interactions, and declining customer satisfaction.
Omnichannel customer service eliminates these inefficiencies by integrating every touchpoint into a unified, intelligent system. The result? Faster resolutions, higher engagement, and stronger customer relationships—all while enhancing operational efficiency.
1. Builds trust and delivers a seamless experience
Omnichannel customer service provides a seamless and consistent experience across all touchpoints—whether customers reach out via live chat, email, phone, social media, or in-store. It allows customers to switch between channels effortlessly without repeating themselves, reducing frustration, streamlining interactions, and fostering customer loyalty.
2. Agile channel integration and reduced support cost
Companies with a strong omnichannel customer experience strategy can seamlessly integrate new channels into existing systems—no rebuilding, no delays. This level of agility allows businesses to adapt to customer preferences in real time while enabling customers to embrace newer channels with confidence. Companies leveraging omnichannel solutions have cut support costs by up to 30% while boosting customer satisfaction by 19%.
3. Seamlessly streamlined customer service
Omnichannel customer service eliminates all data silos and fragmented support, ensuring customers receive seamless interactions across all touchpoints. With every channel connected under one platform, the customer’s data are leveraged seamlessly in CRM systems, giving agents full context to provide faster resolutions and frustration-free support.
4. Provides hyper-personalized experience
Omnichannel customer service, integrated with advanced CRM systems, allows businesses to unify customer insights across all channels to deliver contextual and tailored support. However, DevRev’s Knowledge Graph takes this further by giving support agents an instant, 360-degree view of past interactions, issues, and preferences. So when a customer moves from live chat to email to phone, agents already have full context—delivering faster resolutions and a frustration-free experience.
5. Uses customer data to build stronger relationships
Omnichannel customer services help you to go beyond being everywhere—it’s about knowing your customers better. By unifying data from every interaction, businesses gain a complete view of customer preferences, behaviors, and pain points. This intelligence helps brands anticipate needs, personalize experiences, and proactively solve issues before they arise.
How to create an omnichannel customer service strategy?
Achieving true omnichannel customer service requires strategic planning and flawless execution. Here’s a step-by-step guide for you to implement it:
1. Understand your customer expectations
Every customer is unique, and so are their expectations, don’t treat them just as another user. You aim to meet or exceed their expectations—but how do you measure success?
Collecting customer data is just the first step—what you do with it defines success. Use AI to analyze feedback, detect sentiment, and pinpoint recurring issues, ensuring customer concerns are addressed proactively. Segment users based on their preferences—do they prefer live chat over email or self-service over human support? Tailor your approach accordingly.
Identify bottlenecks in the customer journey and eliminate friction by streamlining interactions and automating routine tasks. Data alone won’t improve the customer experience, but taking action will.
2. Identify the channel your customer use
Not all customers prefer the same communication channels to connect with your support team–some may reach out via live chat, while others prefer email, social media, or phone calls. To create an effective omnichannel strategy, you must first identify where your customers are most active and how they prefer to engage with your support team.
For example, if your business sees a surge in email inquiries, it’s a clear sign that email is a preferred customer channel. To maintain efficiency and responsiveness, seamlessly integrate it into your support system, ensuring timely replies, automation where possible, and a unified customer experience across all touchpoints.
3. Invest in an omnichannel customer service platform
CRMs are standard in most businesses, but they’re no longer enough to meet the rising customer expectations. Enhancing your CRM with an AI-driven omnichannel customer service platform that seamlessly transforms support from reactive to proactive is much needed to stay competitive.
As customers expect effortless, personalized support—without repeating themselves across channels. To meet these rising expectations, businesses need an AI-native CRM that unifies every interaction in one place. By giving your support team real-time visibility into the complete customer journey, you can enable faster resolutions, proactive service, and a truly frictionless experience.
4. Train your customer service team
With AI handling routine customer inquiries, support teams can focus on solving complex, high-value issues. However, AI alone isn’t enough—human expertise remains essential for delivering personalized, empathetic support.
As customer expectations evolve, businesses must continuously upskill their service teams. Ongoing training, mentorship, and hands-on product workshops ensure agents are equipped to navigate complex challenges, provide faster resolutions, and enhance the overall customer experience.
5. Create a self-service option
With 60% of customers preferring to resolve issues on their own, businesses must offer seamless, AI-powered self-service solutions that eliminate wait times and enhance user experience.
An intuitive knowledge base with FAQs, guides, and interactive troubleshooting ensures instant access to answers, while AI chatbots provide real-time support and escalate complex issues when needed. Community forums enable peer-to-peer problem-solving, and embedded in-app help delivers contextual assistance without disrupting the user journey.
6. Focus on customer data privacy
As businesses increasingly use omnichannel customer service to resolve queries seamlessly across channels, they also collect and store vast amounts of customer data. This makes customer data privacy a top priority, as cybercriminals are always looking for vulnerabilities.
According to a McKinsey study, 87% of respondents would avoid companies with security concerns, and 71% would stop doing business with a company after a data breach. So, one of the simplest yet most effective ways to protect customer data is by staying updated with software updates.
4 Easy steps to measure the success of your omnichannel customer service
When customers expect instant, personalized support across channels, measuring your omnichannel strategies is key. It helps you to find out if you are providing seamless, efficient, and satisfying support to your customers.
1. Measure the key performance indicators to evaluate your omnichannel service
Measuring the KPIs gives you an update on whether your customers are happy with your support across channels or if you need any improvement. The KPIs to measure are;
- Customer satisfaction score (CSAT): Measures how happy customers are with their support experience, providing direct insights into service quality.
- Net promoter score (NPS): Indicates customer loyalty and brand advocacy—higher scores mean customers are more likely to recommend your business.
- First response time (FRT): The speed at which support teams respond to queries; faster responses lead to better experiences and higher satisfaction.
- Customer lifetime value (CLV): This represents the total revenue a customer is expected to generate over time, highlighting the long-term value of great customer service.
- Customer effort score (CES): Tracks how easy it is for customers to get the help they need—lower effort equals a better experience.
- Customer retention rate: Measures how well your business retains customers; a strong omnichannel strategy ensures they keep coming back.
2. Collect customer feedback and satisfaction survey
While KPIs provide quantitative data, customer feedback through satisfaction surveys gives you a deeper insight into the quality of the support. Businesses actively collecting such feedback from their customers not only show them that their voices matter but also help businesses identify strengths and improvement areas.
Surveys such as Customer Satisfaction score (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), and Customer Effort Score (CES) can evaluate response times, agent effectiveness, and the overall support experience.
3. Analyze customer retention and loyalty
A seamless, personalized, and efficient omnichannel customer support experience not only enhances customer satisfaction but also directly impacts business growth. Customer retention rate (CRR) measures how well your business keeps customers over time, while customer lifetime value (CLV) quantifies the total revenue a customer generates throughout their relationship with your brand.
Tracking these metrics helps assess whether your support strategy is effectively driving long-term engagement, loyalty, and profitability.
4. Track the metrics and make continuous improvements
As customers expect to receive instant, context-aware personalized responses, omnichannel customer service must remain agile and continuously evolve. A drop in satisfaction scores or increased response times may signal the need for strategic changes.
To effectively track and optimize these metrics, businesses need an AI-native CRM that centralizes customer interactions, ensures seamless transitions across channels, and maintains full conversation context. This enables support teams to respond faster, personalize interactions, and proactively enhance the customer experience.
Best examples of omnichannel customer service
1. The secret behind 100ms’ clear visibility into every customer interaction:
100ms, a live-video infrastructure and API-first company is revolutionizing the way developers build and deploy enterprise-class video applications, allowing them to go from concept to deployment in hours rather than months. However, as the company rapidly scaled, it faced a significant challenge in managing customer support across over 300 Slack channels and emails. This complexity led to missed requests and difficulty in prioritizing urgent issues.
Gupta, co-founder and CEO, reflects on the struggle, saying, “The biggest problem was interacting with our customers and truly understanding the urgency of every conversation.”
To solve this issue, 100ms looked for a solution without breaking the bank. After exploring options, they found that DevRev was the perfect fit. By integrating DevRev, 100ms was able to consolidate its support efforts into one platform, providing clear visibility into every customer interaction. This unified approach allowed them to prioritize effectively, speeding up response times and easing the burden on their team.
Now, with DevRev support, 100ms can deliver seamless, omnichannel customer service, ensuring a smooth and efficient support experience for all its clients.
2. Too many tools, too much chaos? Here’s how Spotnana fixed it:
Spotnana, a travel-as-a-service platform on a mission to simplify and modernize corporate travel, faced significant operational roadblocks as it expanded. Siloed tools, scattered communication, and inefficiencies in customer service became major challenges, especially during the pandemic.
Relying on multiple tools like Salesforce, Jira, Freshdesk, Figma, Smartsheet, and Notion, Spotnana quickly realized that seamless communication, a strong company culture, and a customer-centric approach were essential for sustained growth. In search of a solution, they turned to DevRev.
With DevRev, Spotnana was able to streamline its workflows, improve team collaboration, and enhance omnichannel customer service through AI-driven automation. This transformation reduced inefficiencies, increased team agility, and strengthened customer engagement.
Now, Spotnana is positioned for even greater growth with DevRev’s evolving capabilities.
Redefine your omnichannel customer service with the right tool
Customers will never tolerate fragmented support experiences that lead to long wait times and repetitive interactions. Exceptional customer service goes beyond simply responding to queries—it requires businesses to retain context across interactions, provide instant resolutions, and ensure seamless transitions between channels. A truly connected, omnichannel experience eliminates frustration, enhances efficiency, and builds long-term customer loyalty.
Achieving this level of seamless, intelligent support requires more than just a traditional CRM.
DevRev’s AI-native platform unifies customer interactions across all channels, ensuring real-time context, instant resolutions, and frictionless transitions—without customers having to repeat themselves. With AI-powered insights, automated workflows, and a centralized knowledge graph, businesses can reduce response times, enhance agent efficiency, and deliver the personalized support experiences customers expect.
