A path to seamless experiences

The word “omnichannel” has always bugged me. For ages, I thought it was nothing more than a trendy made-up word, dreamed up by Gen Z to sell software and consulting hours.

It’s also a shameless hijacking of well-established linguistic terms: “omni” is Latin for “every” or “all,” and is used as a prefix for common words like omnidirectional (all directions), omnivore (consumption of both plants and animals) and weightier terms like omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. 

For me, the “O” word represented something akin to a buzzword gone wrong. I found it ludicrous that we’d characterize a marketing strategy or technology product this way. I thought it was a straight-up dirty word. But recently, I’ve had a change of heart. 

Can “omnichannel” really be more than corporate hokum engineered to win business cases and close software deals? Let’s find out. 

What is omnichannel about? 

Most companies utilize diverse communication systems to talk to customers. Salesforce might be your B2B prospecting tool for sales agents. Still, all the email marketing runs through Marketo or your ecommerce or operational ERP might misalign with what is being sent out to customers. Each Martech tool has its unique methodology and identifiers. 

That’s why CDPs love to sing the praises of omnichannel — it’s a single concept that perfectly encapsulates the problem: to unify experiences, you need to unify data. Boring. We’ve heard that. Next. 

In reality, omnichannel embodies the desire of big-brand marketers to make the customer experience seamless, frictionless and highly personalized. But here’s what’s intriguing: marketers are used to a very linear concept of business growth. As illustrated by the classic paradigm funnel, each channel plays a distinct role: raise awareness, convert customers, provide post-purchase care and increase their loyalty and retention. 

But omnichannel puts another spin on that concept: recognizing that the customer’s experience doesn’t move in a singular, sequential direction but is quintessentially omnidirectional. The funnel is merely one part of the journey and across channels, interactions and online and in-person experiences lie a vast array of touchpoints. 

A better way to grasp how the flow of customers moves in and around a brand is through what I’ve coined as the “omnicircles”: 

The activities across both circles can sometimes look the same. However, effective acquisition tactics will always call for more loyalty-focused strategies like winning customers back, keeping them happy and preserving engagement. It’s a balancing act. Over-indexed in one circle, the other suffers. But the middle presents a ripe opportunity to create exponential growth. 

Fundamentally, omnichannel is about harmonizing both business strategies. Loyal customers are the basis for who we should be targeting with paid media campaigns. The purchasing habits and online behaviors of high-value customers not only guide the design of our shopfronts, apps and online stores but directly influence the focus of our content.

A loyal, happy and active consumer base is the compass of a growing brand. On the flip side, there is no loyalty without strong acquisition; finding the right customers and consistently growing the brand’s size of the pie reinforces customer retention. 

Obviously, omnichannel extends beyond simply doing stuff across various mediums: it’s about making all channels contribute to business and customer goals. But the question we really need to ask of our omnichannel strategies is whether or not it’s genuinely good for business.

Dig deeper: Marketing in the age of the omnipresent consumer

Omnichannel as a benefit maximizer

To do omnichannel well, a huge payload of strategic, political and technical zeal needs to go into it and even then, you need to petition the executive team to sign off on millions of dollars to get it off the ground. Where’s the payoff here? 

To answer that question, we need to look at the companies that actively invest in omnichannel strategies. Given that the locus of omnichannel is reserved for businesses with a lot of things or people in transit, we’re spotlighting — you guessed it — the retail industry. 

Retail is particularly sensitive because there’s always so much stuff in motion:

• Customers moving through websites.
• Emails and messages bouncing back and forth.
• Packages in various stages of delivery and return transactions.

It’s barely controlled chaos. And because there are just so many states in which a customer can be in at any given moment, retail ends up suffering the most from experience discombobulation. At least, that’s the theory. When retail does omnichannel, what are the actual results? 

Personalizing customer experience in retail can lift total sales by up to 2% for grocery and even higher for fashion and other retail categories, according to McKinsey. 

But when you ask customers if they care about getting personalized omnichannel experiences, the 2023 Grocery Tech Trends Survey from RIS News says that they don’t. But they do love a cheeky discount code. 

It’s a mixed bag. Here’s my take: 

When you don’t do omnichannel, you can’t compete with the players who most definitely do — and who are providing world-class experiences while they’re at it.

The increased costs for not improving the customer experience in an age where platform giants like Amazon, Uber and Instacart continue to cannibalize retail means that legacy retailers need to catch up. There’s just no getting around this one. 

Tim Mason’s and Sarah Jarvis’ second edition book, “Omnichannel Retail — How to Build Winning Stores in a Digital World,” canvasses this era as a once-in-a-century opportunity for retailers:

“The internet is undeniably the biggest and most relevant recent change in retail because of its impact on the way businesses engage with and serve customers. Where the average business traditionally operated a single, physical sales channel — the store — many now support multiple digital and physical sales and marketing channels, through the store and ecommerce websites and marketplaces to social media networks and traditional advertising media, including print, television and radio.”

Retail companies are positioned in an exceptionally unique period in history, and it’s their time to either grab it and run or roll over and die while a new generation of merchants storm in to take the spoils of a new world. 

Omnichannel needs strong martech leadership

In the whitespace of words scrawled across this article, it all seems very straightforward. Omnichannel is harmony; it’s a unified force in a business to serve a customer — end of story. 

But for most brands, hidden within these “omnicircles” is a complex maze of political battles, incentives, hierarchies, KPIs, OKRs, responsibilities and pet projects that make any kind of genuinely collaborative unity incredibly challenging. 

People who spearhead omnichannel programs come from a place of deep cognizance and empathy for the customer — try contacting an airline when your flight is canceled or the bank when your account is hacked and it’s a make-or-break moment for a brand. Martech folks desire to differentiate their brand through experience, and it’s a thing worth celebrating. 

But beyond that, omnichannel should be about doing truly omniscient business, a company that sees everything going on with their customers and takes holistic, proactive action around that flow of information.

Customer journeys break down because they reflect the dysfunction, asymmetry and lack of alignment in teams. If the mobile team has no idea what the CRM team is doing or what campaigns the paid media team is pursuing, then yes, that’s absolutely going to reflect badly on the customer experience. 

True leaders in martech look at the opportunity of omnichannel and the pitfalls of not pursuing it. They craft a vision to execute, a path to explore and a banner for people to unite under. The task of unifying people under a common cause rests squarely on the shoulders of company leadership. Omnichannel is simply just a reflection of that unity. 

Dig deeper: 3 reasons why customer journeys are the key to better experiences and profits