How to build an effective omnichannel customer service strategy 

The illusion of omnichannel 

Many businesses believe they’re delivering omnichannel, simply because they offer customer service across multiple touchpoints. Whereas 20 years ago a company might have got away with just advertising a telephone number and maybe a physical address, this isn’t in any way enough anymore. 

So businesses build out. Business already have a phone line, they get a public-facing email address, maybe they add WhatsApp or live chat and on paper this looks impressive and allows the system integrators to pat themselves on the back and say “we’ve delivered a real omnichannel experience here”. But the thing is that they haven’t. They’ve built a multichannel experience. Why, you ask? Because the difference here isn’t in the semantics but in the experience.  

What is multichannel? It means you’re present on multiple platforms. 

What is omnichannel? It means the customer experience is connected across each platform.   

This is where most omnichannel customer service strategy falls apart. From the customer’s perspective it is painfully and frustratingly obvious where a business hasn’t been able to join the dots. They might start a conversation via live chat, get halfway to a resolution and then they need to switch to email and they must start back from square one. Or they send a message on social media, the agent gives them a phone number and they get bounced to a call centre with no reference to their original query. 

This is not a joined-up, omnichannel customer experience. This is a maze. It’s certainly one your customers didn’t ask to be dropped into. Unfortunately, this then creates effort – and if one thing is the enemy of loyalty, it’s effort.  

A 2020 study by Salesforce show that customers expect connected journeys by default. It’s not a nice-to-have -76% of customers expect consistent interactions across departments, but 54% say it generally feels like teams don’t share information. Now, in 2025, that will have accelerated hugely, meaning if you aren’t meeting these customers where they are and delivering the experience they expect, you are going to get left behind. 

Omnichannel done right should reduce friction. Omnichannel should preserve context so the customer doesn’t need to continually explain themselves repeatedly to different people and it should create continuity, so that tone, history and emotional state carry through. For the customer, omnichannel should give a sense of control and not confusion. 

And the danger to you and your business’s bottom line is that most customers won’t complain. Sadly, they will just leave.  

The cost of fragmented customer service 

When service experiences are disconnected, the damage is not always visible, but it’s real. Fragmentation doesn’t just frustrate your customers, it erodes trust, increases effort and quietly drains customer loyalty over time. The problem though isn’t just customer-facing; it’s disconnected service models that create internal friction too with longer handling times, higher agent fatigue and repeated failures to resolve issues at first contact. 

This is backed up by data. According to Sobot’s 2025 CX report, companies with high CES (Customer Effort Score) which indicates high-effort interactions, see much lower retention. By contrast, customers who experience low-effort support have a 94% likelihood of repeat purchases and spend 42% less time resolving issues. Ultimately, time saved by the customer is time saved by your agents, which saves you money. 

In fragmented environments, your agents become firefighters, not problem solvers and customers become your QA department. While these costs may not always tangibly appear on your balance sheet, inefficient support becomes a drag on every single metric that matters such as NPS, CSAT, CES, LTV and ultimately EBITDA.  

At the root of this is one critical mistake that far too many businesses are making and that’s not meeting the customer where they are. If your customer support channels are designed around your internal processes, or what you think a customer should be using to contact you, you’ve already lost the moment and possibly the relationship. 

Modern customer experience is inverted – you should be available where the customer is, not the other way around 

This is the foundational shift that too many brands have missed and that is to meet the customer where they are, not the other way around. Customers don’t adapt to your structure anymore. They expect you to adapt to their preference; on their devices and in their moment of need. That might mean resolving a payment issue over SMS, escalating a complaint over live chat or getting product guidance through social DMs, all in a single day. And they expect zero loss of continuity over those transitions. Your social media agent should know about what happened in the SMS conversation. This is why omnichannel done correctly is so important.

Let’s step back a second because sometimes this can seem like all you really need to do is flood your operation with channels and just make sure they’re connected. That isn’t what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about using the right channels with intent. Live chat shortens sales cycles and reduces basket abandonment. Email is still the backbone of formal service. Social media demands quick, visible, up-to-the-minute responsiveness. Self-service offers scale, but only if it’s designed to genuinely help. In-person still matters and so does phone. Every channel has its place, but none of them work in isolation – that’s what omnichannel really is. 

When you fail to meet customers in their preferred channel or worse, make them repeat themselves across multiple channels, you introduce friction. Friction costs you money. It introduces churn, bloats contact volume and signals a lack of customer focus. It tells the customer your internal setup is more important than their experience and it tells them you don’t care. And if your customers think you don’t care, they will buy from someone who does. 

So, if omnichannel isn’t about being everywhere and it isn’t about stacking tools, what is it about?  

It’s about building a customer service strategy that’s connected, coherent and designed around the actual journey your customers take, and not the internal organisational chart.  

Building your omnichannel support strategy: what works and what doesn’t 

As we’ve discussed, omnichannel customer support isn’t a tech stack. It’s not a checklist of platforms and it’s certainly not something you just bolt on to your existing support model. It’s a strategy and one that’s grounded in real customer behaviour, operational clarity and emotional intelligence which delivers across platforms, teams and tools. 

Done well, omnichannel reduces effort, drives loyalty, increases profit and gives your brand a measurable edge over others out there. Customers will flock to brands who care. If you care, customers will flock to you. 

But how do you build a customer service model that delivers on those outcomes? At Ventrica, we’ve seen that the most effective omnichannel strategies are built on four foundations. These aren’t just tools, they are the principles that provide a solid foundation and if they’re not in place, no platform or AI overlay will fill the gaps. 

The four foundations of connected, omnichannel customer experience 

1. Clarity of the journey your customers are taking 

If you don’t understand how your customers move through your service experience – across channels, time and intent, then you can’t build anything truly omnichannel. You’ll be operating in silos and guessing at friction points. If you want to measure success in customer service outcomes and not response times, then you need to understand this. 

Journey clarity is the cornerstone. It’s not just about mapping customer touchpoints, it’s about understanding the sequence, context and emotion behind them. 

Start with the actual customer journey, not the ideal one 

Most organisations begin with the brochure version of the journey which is generally linear and rational. If you have any experience with customers, you know they are not linear and rational. Their experience is decidedly non-linear, messy interruptive and emotional. 

A customer might: 

Start browsing on mobile > Ask a product question via chat > Abandon cart and receive an SMS > Respond the next day via email > Then call after delivery to report an issue. 

This isn’t five different journeys; it’s one customer who is trying to resolve their needs. Every handoff, repetition or reset in tone or context is a chance to lose this customer. 

Map the journey from the customer’s point of view 

Customer journey mapping is a diagnostic exercise where you need to: 

• Identify the entry points into your customer service ecosystem (and determine how many are default vs how many are accidental). 
• Understand why customers might choose one channel over another at each stage. 
• Track where they switch channels and whether it’s by choice or whether it’s because the first one failed. 
• Overlay emotional state where does the confidence drop, where does effort spike and where does trust erode. 

Omnichannel should be about continuity, not just breadth. 

Overlay operational reality onto your omnichannel strategy

Once you’ve mapped the customer journey from their perspective, the next step is to layer in what’s happening in your organisation, because alignment here is crucial and without it, you don’t have a solid strategy. 

Ask yourself which teams own which channels? In many businesses, email is owned by one department, live chat by another, phone by another again, social media by marketing, etc. and these internal boundaries are invisible to the customer. The effects though, are not with inconsistent tone, broken context and repeated requests for the same information. This is what the customer sees – they don’t care about your handoffs and workflows.

You also need to understand where data is lost or fragmented. When a customer switches from chat to email, or from social to phone, does their case follow them? Or are they starting over with every interaction? If agents can’t see the customer’s previous touchpoints or worse, they must manually switch through separate systems to find them. the result is slow, impersonal service that erodes trust. 

Omnichannel only works when the operational structure supports continuity. Agents need access to a unified view of the customer, not a ticket in isolation. That means shared, integrated tools, connected data and empowerment to act on the full context. Without this, you are designing an experience you just won’t be able to deliver on. 

Use data to challenge assumptions 

Customer journey mapping must be grounded in data. Assumptions about how customers interact with your business are dangerous. You need evidence.  

Start by looking at channel performance and transition points. Where are customers dropping off? Which channels generate the highest rates of repeat contact? How does customer time-to-resolution vary by entry point? If your live chat promises instant help but just escalates to email with 48-hour delay, that’s not fast. It’s friction and frustration disguised as responsiveness.  

Sentiment analysis and post-interaction feedback can reveal emotional drop-off points. If customers become more negative after switching channels, that’s a red flag. Are they being asked to repeat themselves? Are different people telling them different things? 

You should also review contact reasons by journey stage: are customers contacting you during onboarding, or post-sale? Are issues concentrated in fulfilment, billing or product guidance? This helps you identify which moments matter and where omnichannel investment will have the greatest impact.  
 
Tools like Zendesk, Intercom or even just a CRM platform can surface this data, but only if you’re asking the right questions and analysing through the lens of customer effort. 

2. Customer support channels with individually defined purposes 

In a rush to appear accessible, many organisations adopt a “more is more” approach to service channels. But as we’ve explained, “being omnichannel” does not equate to “being everywhere”. It means “being available with intent” on the channels that make sense to your customers and that are designed to deliver real value at the right time. 

Every channel should serve a purpose and more importantly, should play a distinct role in the wider customer journey. A customer with a billing query shouldn’t have to navigate through a chatbot. A customer waiting for a delivery update shouldn’t need to call you and a customer asking a basic product question on social media shouldn’t be told to email support and wait 48 hours. 

Each interaction like these signals to your customer that you don’t care. So how do you ensure each channel serves a defined, specific purpose that drives trust and shows you care about your customer? 

Design for outcome and not presence  

The starting point for channel strategy isn’t “what can we offer” but instead it’s “what does the customer actually need in this moment”? 

Live chat is ideal for in-the-moment assistance, especially in sales and pre-purchase journeys, where timing and reassurance can make the difference between a conversion and a bounce. It’s not for data-sensitive queries or queries that require a follow-up. 

Email is a strong channel for formal, documented queries or lower-priority issues, but it must be managed with consistency and clarity. It is not for urgent pre-purchase questions because that’s a great way to drive people to your immediate competitors. 

Phone is still essential for high-emotion or complex queries; the kind of interactions where tone, nuance and reassurance matter more than speed.  

Social messaging requires responsiveness, context and care because it’s often emotionally charged, fast-moving and public-facing. It’s not for resolving billing queries or high-sensitivity queries that require file exchange or multiple approvals. 

Self-service is powerful for simple queries, but only when the knowledge base is maintained with care. if the information isn’t truly helpful, up to date and cleanly structured, people won’t trust it and you’ll irritate them. For example, if you change your phone number, make sure you update it in your knowledge base, or you’ll have people who can’t get hold of you. 

Your customer cares whether the channel they chose works and whether the answer feels fast, clear and human. That’s what it really means to be omnichannel.

Understand channel fatigue and preference shifts 

It’s also crucial to track how customer expectations shift over time. Channels that were once cutting-edge can quickly become friction points if they’re not maintained. A chatbot that lacks contextual understanding becomes an obstacle. A phone line with 30-minute hold times becomes a liability. A social media feed that only responds during office hours becomes a PR risk. 

Customers will self-select based on perceived ease, trust and clarity. Your job is to listen to those signals and not to override them with your internal logic. 

Integration matters, but design matters more  

Even with the best tech stack, poor channel design will fail. You can connect platforms and automate handoffs, but if you haven’t considered what the customer is trying to do in each moment, your channels will underperform. 

3. Connected context: omnichannel is not just availability, but continuity 

Customers do not care that you’re on six or seven different channels. They care whether the story travels with them when they switch between them. This is what we mean by connected context; the ability to maintain a coherent, informed experience across every touchpoint, without forcing the customer to start over. 

Availability without continuity is just noise 

Imagine a customer starts a conversation with your chatbot. It can’t solve the issue, so it escalates to a chat agent. The agent asks for the same details the chatbot did. Later, the customer receives an email follow-up, but it only refers to the chatbot transcript, not the live agent’s update. Frustrated, they call, only to be asked to explain everything again. 

Each one of those channels were available, but none of them worked together. In real terms, this kind of fragmentation means longer resolution times, higher agent handling effort, increased customer churn due to repetition fatigue and duplicated work across teams.  

The customer will assume this is either deliberate, or that you’re just incompetent and either way, the result is the same and that is that they get the impression that you simply don’t care enough to remember them. Either way, it’s not omnichannel. It’s multichannel, done badly.

Build a shared source of truth for your service team

Actual connected context requires some kind of unified data layer. That doesn’t mean one monolithic platform. It means omnichannel systems that are integrated, consistent and updated in real time. A shared view of the customer’s interactions, preferences and sentiment should be accessible to every agent, in every channel, at any point in the journey. If you don’t have this, you don’t have an omnichannel experience. 

Platforms like Zendesk and Salesforce can all support this, but only if your processes are designed to make use of the data they surface. If the tech is connected but your customer service agents aren’t trained or empowered to act on the context, the customer still feels like a stranger. 

Design continuity into every handoff 

Connected context means that handoffs are intentional. If a chat escalates to a call, does the agent receiving the call see the full transcript? Do they understand the customer’s emotional state, not just the issue type? If an email follow-up is required, is the tone and resolution history preserved? 

This is where experience design matters as much as infrastructure. Every time you make a customer repeat themselves, you weaken that relationship. Every time you pick up where they left off, you strengthen it.  

Continuity drives trust, customer engagement and loyalty 

Inconsistent customer service experiences don’t just inconvenience, they create doubt. Customers begin to question your competence, your coordination and your care. We’ve all been there, “how can an organisation this large and this successful be so disorganised?” is a question we’ve all asked once or twice when dealing with an issue. But when context flows between channels smoothly, it sends a powerful message. It says, “we see you, we remember you and we’re working with you.” Customer service doesn’t get better than that.

This is what turns omnichannel service from a technical investment into a brand advantage. 

4. Human experience at the core 

Omnichannel is framed as a technology challenge and yes, platforms, integrations and AI all matter. But at the heart of every customer service strategy, there’s something more fundamental and that is the human experience. 

Customers don’t remember what you did. But they will remember how you made them feel. 

The best omnichannel strategies are built not just for efficiency, but for emotional clarity. They recognise that behind every ticket, notification or message, there is a real person navigating a real question, a real frustration or a real need and that person expects to be treated like a human, not a case ID. 

Empathy doesn’t scale unless you design for it  

Digital self-service, chatbots and automated workflows all have their place. But they’re not designed to handle emotionally loaded or situationally complex issues. When escalation is needed, the human experience must take over seamlessly, confidently and with care.  

If a customer has had a delivery go wrong, been overcharged or been let down by the product, they don’t want a chatbot or a templated email. They want a human who listens, who can understand their query and can make it right. 

This is where most omnichannel setups fall short because they automate the first level of service, but don’t empower the people behind it to resolve, empathise or recover trust. 

Train for tone 

A true omnichannel strategy isn’t about what tools agents use, but rather about how they show up across those tools. 

 
That means training agents to: 

• Adapt tone to the channel and customer state 
• Recognise emotional cues, even in text 
• Maintain continuity and ownership across journeys
• Know when to slow down, when to escalate and when to follow up
• This is brand experience delivery, and it impacts loyalty just as much as speed or resolution time. 

Human intelligence, emotionally applied 

AI can detect sentiment. Platforms can surface data. Automation can triage volume. But only humans can build trust. Only humans can understand nuance, adapt in the moment and create an interaction that feels memorable for the right reasons.  

The brands that lead on CX don’t do so because they respond faster or offer more features. They lead because they make customers feel seen, understood and valued no matter the channel.  

That is the difference between multichannel coverage and true omnichannel connection. But delivering this kind of connected experience requires more than just good intentions or the right software, it takes expertise and that’s where Ventrica comes in. 

Why Ventrica? 

Because omnichannel isn’t just about being present; it’s about being consistent, connected and human. That takes more than a platform. It takes orchestration. 

At Ventrica, we bring together everything it takes to deliver true omnichannel customer service which includes strategy, people, process, technology and emotional intelligence. We don’t just offer channels, we build journeys. We don’t just support your customers, we understand them. 

Whether you need advisory input, a fully managed solution, or a partner to scale with you globally, we handle it, end to end.  

If you’re interested in building a true omnichannel strategy and delivering great CX – let’s talk. 

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