Omnichannel Customer Experience: Definition and Benefits

You want to show up for customers wherever they are online, ready to sell to them when they’re ready to buy. But customers won’t look for you where you don’t appear. That’s why you need to provide an omnichannel customer experience.

An omnichannel customer experience is what reinforces your Instagram-sponsored post with a Google Search ad, a personalized email, and soon after, an ad seen while they scroll on TikTok—all of which lead to the ability to buy the product, whether on your website or in-app.

When every touchpoint shares the same inventory and customer preferences, the experience feels seamless, no matter where it begins. 

It’s the experience today's buyers expect, and what you should deliver.

What is an omnichannel customer experience?

An omnichannel customer experience is an integrated approach to customer interactions across all touchpoints—from digital and social channels on desktops and mobile devices to offline channels, such as brick-and-mortar stores. These channels are interconnected and designed to work together for a seamless experience.

To create that type of customer journey, brands connect five elements:

1. Unified customer profiles: Powered by a customer data platform (CDP) that shares individual customer preferences based on past interactions, order history, and past support services across every channel.
2. Real-time inventory and order routing: Sync availability and automate fulfillment across your ecommerce site, marketplaces, and in-store point-of-sale.
3. AI-powered personalization: Serve up the right product, promotion, or support content—based on context and behavior—no matter where a shopper shows up.
4. Consistent branding and UX: Deliver a cohesive visual and functional experience across your website, app, social storefronts, and physical locations.
5. Effortless hand-offs: Let customers pick up conversations via live chat, SMS, or in-store without repeating themselves or starting over.

For example, a shopper might spot a product in-store, read FAQ online, see a retargeted ad or a TikTok ad days later as they scroll, and finally buy it on the brand’s ecommerce site.

But an omnichannel journey isn’t possible when your store hasn’t connected its digital and ecommerce systems. Unified commerce—where ecommerce, POS, inventory, fulfillment, and customer data all live on one platform—eliminates those silos. 

Retailers that migrate to Shopify’s unified commerce architecture will spend 22% less overall while launching new sales channels 20% faster, as evidenced by a report from a Big Three consulting firm.

📚 Read: If Your Business is Striving for Omnichannel, You’re Already Behind

Key omnichannel touchpoints

Shoppers aren’t moving straight through a sales funnel anymore. They move between social feeds, messaging threads, and physical spaces before buying anything. There are over 100 possible options, as seen in the graph below.

Some of the most impactful ways people are shopping in 2025 include:

• Social commerce storefronts like TikTok Shop: US social commerce revenue will hit nearly $118 billion in 2027, as social networks drive more than 7.8% of all online sales.
• Conversational commerce on messaging apps: Global spending via chat-based channels is expected to reach $11.6 billion by 2027, making real-time messaging helpful for customer support and product discovery.
• Buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS): A 2024 study of online shoppers found that more than half used store or curbside pickup within the past year, and sales from these orders are projected to hit $204 billion by 2027.
• AR product try-ons: One case study found that shoppers who interact with 3D/AR models are 44% more likely to add items to cart and 27% more likely to complete a purchase. Immersive content now directly lifts conversion.
• Live-shopping events: According to an October 2024 eMarketer forecast, 23.4% of US buyers are expected to complete a purchase via livestream in 2026. Getting comfortable with shoppable video positions you for that surge.

How omnichannel drives revenue in 2025

Retailers that switch to a unified commerce strategy see an average 8.9% lift in total sales and a 5% jump in operational efficiency, per one report.

The following figures show a clear pattern. Shoppers want easy movement between channels and richer digital interactions—and will reward brands that deliver:

• Shoppers blend 50+ touchpoints: The typical buyer now interacts with up to 50 online-and-offline moments before checkout, a jump from just two touchpoints 15 years ago. 
• Physical contact still matters: 57% of shoppers want to touch and feel products in person, despite 38% still preferring to buy online. 
• Unified data improves upsells: When store staff access unified customer profiles, in-store sales can increase by up to 40%, and targeted recommendations online or offline lift average order value by 20%.

In 2023, Canadian luggage retailer Bentley moved their entire 125-location network to Shopify to implement their unified commerce strategy. The brand rolled out real-time inventory, BOPIS, and ship-from-store to power more personalized shopping experiences. 

In the first post-launch year, Bentley recorded 129% year-over-year revenue growth, a 74% lift in online sales, and a 17% lift in POS transactions.

👉 Read Bentley’s story. 

Why is an omnichannel customer experience important?

Offering an omnichannel experience can drive customer satisfaction and long-term business success. Specifically, it can help you:

1. Improve customer satisfaction

Meeting customers’ expectations for simple and streamlined shopping experiences boosts customer satisfaction and increases customer retention. When you make it easy for customers to interact with your brand across channels, you reduce friction, and customers are more likely to stick around. 

2. Solidify brand image

Omnichannel marketing ensures customers receive cohesive messaging, branding, and service quality across all channels. Offering a consistent brand experience reinforces your brand’s identity and values, which builds customer loyalty with existing customers and increases brand awareness with potential customers. 

3. Save time and money

An omnichannel customer experience can save you money by collapsing information silos for sales, marketing, and service, centralizing data and offering customers superior service. Your employees' interactions with customers are more productive because clearly visible data provides a complete view of each customer's journey—from their first interaction with your brand to their current service call. 

4. Map the customer journey

An omnichannel customer experience strategy tracks customer behaviors across platforms. You can pinpoint exactly where a customer first came in contact with your brand and when they first decided to make a purchase. 

Using an omnichannel dashboard to study how customers interact with your business allows you to view customer journey maps so you can identify pain points where you may be losing people in the sales funnel. 

📚 Read: Omnichannel vs. Unified Commerce: Which is Better? (2025)

Omnichannel vs. multichannel customer experience

Omnichannel retailing strategyfeels fluid and personalized. It combines every touchpoint on one real-time platform, and lets data and context follow the shopper from TikTok to checkout effortlessly. 

Multichannel puts a brand on many channels, but each runs in its own silo. Information, inventory, and service may drift out of sync, leaving customers with a fragmented and repetitive experience. 

Best practices for a successful omnichannel customer experience

Creating a successful omnichannel customer experience requires careful planning and execution. Here are nine best practices to consider:

1. Map the customer journey

Offering an omnichannel consumer experience doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be on every platform. Examine your target audience and choose the channels where you’ll reach those customers. 

Plot every touchpoint (social ads, product detail pages, reviews, physical displays, post-purchase emails) on a single timeline. Look for moments when customers switch devices or channels. For example, TikTok discovery → desktop research → in-store try-on.

Shopify’s omnichannel point-of-sale software allows you to sell your products on channels like Google and Facebook, as well as in-store and on your ecommerce website.

2. Centralize customer data

Store customer data in one place for a unified view of each customer and their journey. This enables you to personalize customer interactions and anticipate customer needs. Shopify already unifies orders, returns, and customer engagement data in one profile so you can act instantly.

You can also use a Shopify-compatible customer relationship management (CRM) system, such as Gladly, Zendesk, or Kustomer to organize customer interactions from multiple channels. 

3. Be consistent

Maintain consistent branding across all your channels. Visual elements, tone, and messaging should feel cohesive on both online and offline channels, whether that’s social media or physical stores. Creating a consistent experience can reinforce your brand identity for customers as they interact with your business across different touchpoints.

Shopify Magic, Shopify’s native AI text- and media-generation suite, lets you establish a brand voice and use it consistently across your entire store. 

When you pick a tone (e.g., “confident,” “approachable,” or a custom label), Shopify Magic remembers that choice and applies it by default to every new piece of copy you generate—product descriptions, blog posts, email subject lines, and even Shopify Inbox auto-replies.

4. Enable AI-powered personalization

Generic messaging is hurting your customer experience. Attentive’s 2025 Consumer Report found that 71% of consumers are frustrated by irrelevant messages in which brands fail to personalize outreach. 

More than three out of every four surveyed respondents also said they’re likely to purchase from a brand when they get relevant product recommendations. To make this happen, brands need to collect and use customer data. 

Shopify already unifies first-party data in each customer profile. The next step is activating that data with an AI engine built for commerce. Nosto’s Shopify app plugs straight into those profiles to channel that information into real-time product recommendations, dynamic content blocks, and personalized search results.

Use Nosto’s drag-and-drop widgets to place personalized “Inspired by your browsing” messages on product detail pages, thoughtfully curated “Frequently bought together” bundles in carts, and geotargeted banners in emails.

5. Connect online and in-store inventory 

Product data must travel as freely as customer data. Shopify POS syncs every SKU across ecommerce, marketplaces, and brick-and-mortar in real time. Retailers that use Shopify’s unified commerce ecosystem report a 1% improvement in annual GMV through integrated inventory management alone.

Enable local pickup and ship-from-store so that nearby shoppers can reserve items online and collect them on the same day, while floor staff fulfill web orders to clear overstock. No more oversells, “phantom” inventory, or lost sales.

6. Optimize for mobile

With over 63% of shoppers using mobile devices, it's essential to optimize your omnichannel strategy for retail on the move. 

Ensure your website, apps, and communication channels are mobile-friendly and provide a smooth and intuitive user experience, allowing customers to engage with your brand conveniently from their desktop or mobile devices, with no loss of depth, detail or speed they’d experience on a larger screen. 

7. Offer self-service options

A self-service portal can empower customers to find answers and resolve issues themselves. This can include FAQs, video tutorials, community forums, and AI-powered chatbots. Self-service options are convenient, reduce customer effort, and free up resources for more complex inquiries.

8. Collect and implement customer feedback

Seek customer feedback across channels to identify areas for improvement. Regularly analyze customer feedback data, conduct surveys, and monitor social media to gather insights. Use this information to make data-driven improvements to your omnichannel strategy and address pain points.

9. Measure your success

Define your goals and corresponding metrics to measure the success of your omnichannel strategy. Track customer satisfaction, customer lifetime value, conversion rates, customer service response and resolution times, and channel-specific analytics. Regularly analyze the data to identify areas of improvement and optimize your approach.

Example of effective omnichannel customer experience

Cocomelody sells affordable gowns, including wedding dresses and bridesmaid dresses. The company has a handful of brick-and-mortar stores across the US but also has a robust online presence. 

To bring the experience of a physical store to customers shopping online, Cocomelody offers the option to try on gowns at home for just $25 per dress. It also offers easy return options, provides fit guides, and hosts a Facebook group where more than 35,000 members provide shopping tips and reviews. Customers who abandon their cart are notified of these benefits via personalized emails and push notifications. 

By offering their online customers many of the benefits of an in-store interaction, Cocomelody provides an effective omnichannel experience.