Omnichannel chaos: Why customers expect a seamless experience, but brands are falling behind

Imagine a customer searching for help online, only to explain their issue over and over again across different support channels. This is the reality for 63 percent of consumers, who, according to Forrester, are willing to switch brands after just one negative experience.

Customers expect effortless transitions between digital and offline touchpoints, whether they are engaging via chat, email, phone, social media or in-store interactions. Yet, companies struggle with fragmented data, outdated technology and disconnected customer journeys.

According to PWC, 80 percent of brands believe they provide an excellent customer experience, yet only 20 percent of customers agree. This gap between how companies perceive their service and customers’ actual expectations leads to declining loyalty, lower conversion rates and increased churn.

Customer expectations vs. harsh reality

Today’s consumers interact with brands through multiple channels before making a purchase decision. Research from Harvard Business Review shows that 73 percent of customers switch between touchpoints – browsing products on mobile, checking reviews on social media and finalizing purchases on desktop or in-store.

They expect brands to remember their purchase history, provide context-aware support, offer seamless transitions between channels and deliver personalized experiences. Most businesses fail to meet these expectations because their support systems are often siloed, preventing agents from accessing unified customer data.

For example, a customer may start a chat conversation, get transferred to email and then call a support hotline – only to be asked to repeat the same information at each step. This frustration is a significant reason why brands lose customers.

How to create a truly seamless experience?

To close this gap, businesses must stop treating customer channels as separate interactions and start integrating them into a unified ecosystem. This requires a centralized data system that integrates customer interactions across all platforms, AI-driven automation to provide real-time recommendations and predictive analytics to proactively solve problems before they escalate.

Some companies are already setting the standard for seamless omnichannel experiences. 

• Sephora has integrated online and in-store experiences, allowing customers to access their purchase history, loyalty rewards and personalized recommendations across all touchpoints. This approach has increased customer retention by 15 percent and boosted the average purchase value. 
• Starbucks uses AI-driven analytics to track customer preferences and automatically offer personalized promotions, increasing repeat visits and engagement. 
• KLM Royal Dutch Airlines developed BlueBot, an AI-powered chatbot that assists customers with flight bookings, baggage tracking and real-time itinerary changes. This solution reduced agent workload by 50 percent and significantly improved response times.

Advanced metrics to measure omnichannel success 

Many companies rely on traditional CX metrics like net promoter score (NPS), customer satisfaction (CSAT) and customer effort score (CES), but these do not fully capture omnichannel effectiveness. A more accurate assessment comes from tracking customer journey analytics, predictive cx metrics, first contact resolution (FCR) and omnichannel retention rate.

Customer journey analytics allows businesses to map out the entire customer experience and identify pain points. Research from McKinsey shows that companies using journey analytics can increase customer loyalty by 25 percent. Predictive CX metrics provide AI-driven insights that forecast churn risk, dissatisfaction and service bottlenecks. Netflix, for example, uses predictive analytics to identify at-risk subscribers and proactively offers personalized recommendations, reducing churn by 17 percent.

FCR and omnichannel retention rate play a critical role in measuring seamless interactions. In a recent project, I worked on optimizing a multi-channel support strategy for a company facing high customer frustration due to disconnected systems. We noticed that customers who started conversations via chat often escalated to email or phone because their issues were not resolved immediately. 

The FCR rate was only 52 percent, meaning nearly half of all customers had to repeat themselves across multiple channels. By integrating customer data across all platforms and implementing real-time AI-powered recommendations, FCR increased to 78 percent in just three months, customer satisfaction improved by 22 percent, and ticket escalations decreased significantly.

CES is another critical measure, assessing how easy it is for customers to resolve their issues. Harvard Business Review found that 94 percent of customers who experience low-effort interactions remain loyal. Revolut applies artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze query complexity, providing in-app guidance to reduce support volume and enhance satisfaction.

By leveraging these advanced metrics, companies can go beyond simply reacting to problems and start proactively preventing them. 

Only through deep customer journey analytics and AI-driven solutions can brands create the seamless experience that customers expect.

Chaos or opportunity?

Omnichannel is no longer a differentiator; it is a fundamental expectation in modern customer experience. 

Customers today do not see different channels as separate touchpoints but as part of a single, continuous interaction with a brand. Companies that fail to deliver a seamless experience risk losing customers to competitors who do.

The gap between customer expectations and actual service delivery is widening due to fragmented data, lack of integration and reliance on outdated CX metrics. Many businesses continue to view omnichannel as an add-on rather than a core component of their strategy. However, brands that prioritize seamless interactions by investing in AI-driven analytics, automation and unified customer data platforms are seeing tangible results in customer retention and revenue growth.

The shift toward a truly omnichannel experience requires a company-wide transformation, not just an upgrade to customer support. 

Organizations must break down silos, integrate real-time data across all channels and ensure that customer interactions are seamless from start to finish. This means not only using AI to automate routine processes but also applying predictive analytics to anticipate customer needs before issues arise.

The brands that bridge the gap between customer expectations and actual service delivery will emerge as industry leaders. Meanwhile, those who continue to ignore these challenges risk losing customers permanently. 

Is your brand ready to turn chaos into a competitive advantage? 

Quick links

• How to build a robust support and CX eco-system from the ground up
• 7 skills for CX teams: Mastering the balance of empathy, technology and data
• Social media vs reality: How consumer attitudes are shifting

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