Designing a top-notch omnichannel customer experience in 2025

Are you tired of buzzwords like “seamless omnichannel experience”? We get it. It sounds cliché at this point. But the truth is, it’s still exactly what consumers are looking for. So here it goes again:

Consumers today expect seamless, omnichannel experiences more than ever.

To make this worth your time, we’re giving the omnichannel customer experience a 2025 update: exploring the latest technologies that power it, highlighting brands that are getting it right in the AI era, and showing you what you can do to create (or improve) your own omnichannel experience.

What is an omnichannel customer experience?

An omnichannel customer experience means delivering a coherent journey no matter which channel your customer is on. Unlike a multichannel approach, which is about being present on different platforms, omnichannel focuses on consistency and continuity. It’s not just about showing up, but it’s about showing up in sync.

While omnichannel experience doesn’t equal personalization, your customers should feel like every step of the engagement is bespoke. That means integrating online and offline touchpoints from retail stores and kiosks to social media and email, and streamlining interactions to create a predictable, engaging experience every step of the way.

The modern buyer’s journey

Customers are no longer shopping in isolation. Gartner mentions that “customers comparison shop with their smartphones while in-store.” Today’s customers have more choices than ever before, so they seek out the brands that can provide them with the best options and the most convenience.

To illustrate this shift in behavior, we can break the customer experience down into three stages.

1. Discovery

Customers become aware of your products and services through various touchpoints: AI-driven search, organic search, social media, physical ads, and more. This is where brand visibility and first impressions are formed.

2. Purchase

Customers are offered options, incentives, and transparency that make it easy to compare and choose. Conversion happens across any channel, online or offline, depending on what’s most convenient or persuasive in that moment.

3. Loyalty

The journey doesn’t end at the sale. Customer satisfaction with the product, service, and overall experience determines whether they return, stay engaged, or even become advocates for your brand.

Why is omnichannel customer experience important?

Omnichannel customer experience is in such high demand due to the nature of the modern buyer’s journey and growing customer expectations. A PwC report backs it up: people are willing to pay 13-18% more for a better customer experience. To break down the benefits of omnichannel customer experience:

From consistency to advocacy

While many say that omnichannel experiences drive trust, loyalty, and customer satisfaction, it's essential to recognize that the underlying foundation is consistency. An experience with continuity across channels not only reduces friction but also reinforces a powerful message: “We get you.” Built on that trust, customers feel confident that their expectations will be met, leading to stronger loyalty, higher retention, and greater brand advocacy.

Get to know your customers better

By providing a connected experience across all customer touchpoints, you can better understand what customers truly want and need. As third-party tracking slowly disappears and zero-click behaviors rise, building an omnichannel experience becomes even more critical. It enables enterprises to track and connect first-party interactions across email, ads, social, and on-site activity, allowing them to adapt marketing strategies based on how customers actually engage, not just where they click.

Generating more revenue

The brands that can deliver an omnichannel experience are the ones that end up winning customers over. When you give customers a consistent and engaging experience, it will lead to improved conversion rates and more revenue. It is reported that brands that provide omnichannel customer engagement see a 9.5% yearly increase in annual revenue.

What defines a good omnichannel customer experience

While multichannel experiences can be created relatively easily(by allowing customers to interact across different channels), delivering an actual omnichannel experience requires integrating online and offline touchpoints into a cohesive journey. To do this effectively, companies need tools that support consistency, personalization, and connectivity across all touchpoints.

In the following section, we’ll explore real-world examples of brands that are doing this exceptionally well.

Consistent messaging

Consistency across channels is the foundation of an effective omnichannel experience. It reinforces brand identity and builds trust, especially as customers move between digital and physical touchpoints. According to Lucidpress, consistent brand communication can increase revenue by 23%. Whether it’s a billboard or an in-app push, the tone, value prop, and experience should feel unmistakably “you.”

Seamless integrations

Omnichannel is about connection. Integration between systems (CRM, POS, web, app) ensures that customers can start on one channel and continue on another without friction. Think Apple’s handoff between devices or Amazon’s order-to-pickup process. That continuity is what drives satisfaction and repeat engagement.

Personalized experiences

An omnichannel experience must recognize who the customer is and what they’ve done across all touchpoints. McKinsey reported that 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions. Starbucks, for example, uses AI-powered personalized rewards to interact with customers. The experience must evolve with the customer, not reset with every interaction.

Efficient customer service

Support should meet customers where they are, without repeating history. Omnichannel customer service means that a conversation started on live chat can be continued via email or social DMs, with full context carried over. Brands like Zappos excel here, using integrated systems to ensure continuity.

Clear communication

Transparency and proactive communication build trust across channels. In an omnichannel strategy, this means aligning promotional messaging, availability updates, and policy changes across web, email, app, and more. Glossier does this well by syncing social, email, and customer support updates in real time. Customers should never feel like one channel knows something the others don’t.

How to improve omnichannel customer experience

Bettering the omnichannel customer experience requires the right strategic approach and tools. Here are some best practices to improve the omnichannel experience.

1. Map the customer journey

You need a strong understanding of your target audience, identify the channels they frequently use, and the messaging types that appeal to them. Then break down your customers’ experience from awareness to advocacy. Identify every touchpoint (online and offline), possible entry and exit points, and friction areas. This gives you clarity on where consistency and connection matter most.

2. Standardize taxonomy and structure

A consistent taxonomy is the foundation of any scalable omnichannel experience. It’s how you organize and label your content, customer data, and products across platforms.

When your taxonomy is aligned from your CMS and CRM to your storefront and email tool, you can deliver relevant content and messaging across every channel. Think of it as the glue that powers personalization, making it possible to show the right message to the right audience at the right time, without reinventing the wheel for every channel.

Start simple: define categories like topic, content format, funnel stage, and audience segment. Then make sure the same labels apply across your tools.

3. Select the right architecture

Your tech architecture is the backbone of your omnichannel strategy. Without the right setup, delivering a connected customer experience across channels becomes clunky, slow, or downright impossible.

There are two main approaches companies take:

• All-in-one suites are widely adopted and traditionally seen as the “safe” choice. They offer nearly everything: CDP, CMS, marketing automation, commerce, analytics, etc, under one roof. But this often comes at the cost of flexibility. You’re expected to use everything from the same vendor, even if certain components fall short of your needs. As a result, they can become slow to adapt, expensive, and hard to scale across diverse touchpoints.

• API-first architectures give you the flexibility to choose between tools and connect them through APIs. This approach is more modular and scalable, lets you build your own stack based on what your team actually needs, and evolve it over time as your customer journey becomes more complex.

An API-first setup is especially powerful for companies that want to personalize experiences deeply, move fast, and avoid vendor lock-in. It requires more upfront planning and integration, but it gives you long-term control.

As one of our customers, DTM put it:

User expectations change constantly, and your digital architecture must be built for extensibility and adaptation. We build with the user in mind, not given software features.

4. Integrate data and systems

You need systems to talk to each other: CRM, CDP, CMS, POS, eCommerce, and analytics tools. Integrating them allows you to create a single source of truth for user behavior, history, and preferences. Without data flow, omnichannel is just a buzzword.

5. Define channel-specific logic

Decide what content/offers/actions are delivered in which channel and how they adapt. Example: an abandoned cart email triggers in email, but maybe it's a push notification on mobile or a chatbot prompt on the site.

6. Measure, test, and refine

Track performance per channel, device, campaign, and customer segment. Don’t treat omnichannel as a one-time launch; treat it as an evolving system that improves with feedback and experimentation.

Final words: Is omnichannel the elixir?

Let’s cut through the noise.

Customer behavior is changing faster than most brands can keep up with. One day, they’re searching on Google, the next they’re discovering through TikTok, then converting via a QR code in a subway ad. Omnichannel isn't some magic fix; it’s a response to this reality. A way to stay present, relevant, and connected. For now.

But don’t get carried away. Omnichannel isn’t the destination. It’s a strategy. The real rule is to stay connected with your customers, wherever they go next.

That said, it’s worth the effort, especially as we move into a world of zero-click journeys, dark funnels, and AI-curated discovery. If you’re not showing up cohesively across channels, you’re simply not in the game.

Just be realistic and don’t expect perfect attribution or obsess over platform vanity metrics. Instead, focus on what matters: building trust, shortening the path to value, and delivering consistent, connected experiences. And above all — stay curious. Because whatever comes after omnichannel, your customers will be there first.

Frequently Aasked Questions

How to create an optimal omnichannel customer experience?

An omnichannel customer experience ensures consistent and seamless engagement across every stage of the customer journey, regardless of the channel. To enable this, brands must integrate touchpoints across both online and offline channels. This involves mapping out the customer journey, standardizing taxonomy and structure, selecting the right tech architecture, integrating data and systems, defining channel-specific logic, measuring and refining the strategy based on performance.

How to personalise the omnichannel experience?

To make the experience feel truly personalized, brands must deliver continuous, tailored touchpoints, regardless of where the customer left off or picked up the interaction. That requires clear customer journey mapping, a consistent taxonomy, and structured content that adapts across channels.

How does Hygraph support an omnichannel customer experience?

Hygraph’s taxonomy feature helps you define a core set of tags or audience segments your team can apply to every content asset. Once this structure is in place, you can scale personalization without needing to manually hardcode every campaign. It becomes a system that your content team, growth team, and even sales team can all rely on.