Building a connected omnichannel experience

Imagine this: You’ve ordered a product and reached out on Instagram to ask why it hasn’t arrived. A helpful agent replies within minutes, checks on the delay and, to make up for the wait, sends you a discount code. But when you try to use it on the website, it doesn’t work. You email support, but the agent who replies can’t see the Instagram exchange or how the code was generated. After several back‑and‑forth messages, they eventually discover that the coupon was tied to your Instagram handle and wasn’t transferable to your account. You feel unheard, and agents have wasted time chasing context across silos. The result is frustration, escalations, and dwindling trust.

This scenario is all too common, and it shows why “omnichannel” can’t just mean being present on lots of channels. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface is where the real magic happens—connected data, seamless workflows, and a shared understanding of the customer journey. That’s what transforms multiple channels into a true omnichannel experience.

"Fragmented tools and a do‑more‑with‑less mandate have turned customer service into a maze,” notes Venki Subramanian, SVP of product management for CX at Freshworks. “The goals of support—fast resolutions, high‑quality assistance, and effortless experiences—haven't changed, but the path to achieving them must."

How omnichannel delivers results

Freshworks’ 2025 Customer Service Benchmark Report paints a stark contrast between teams that unify their service experience effectively and those that don’t. Top‑performing “trendsetters” deliver first responses in under 20 seconds across messaging channels and resolve most queries in under two minutes, achieving nearly 100% customer‑satisfaction scores. In contrast, lagging “aspirants” with disconnected systems can take more than a day to resolve similar issues, according to the same report. The report also notes that AI adoption has become a necessity: About one‑third of companies already use AI tools and nearly half of the rest plan to implement them in 2025. The difference isn’t marginal, it’s a distinction that creates competitive advantage.

So how can organizations move from fragmented to unified? Here are five building blocks of a modern omnichannel strategy.

1. Audit your channels and meet customers where they are

As we’ve seen before, omnichannel doesn’t mean being everywhere; it means being where your customers already are. A younger audience may expect support on Instagram, while B2B buyers might prefer email. Some industries might not need WhatsApp, unless local customers frequently message sales reps there. Formalizing that channel can improve consistency. 

Also consider timing: When are your customers most often reaching out? Do you need live chat on the weekends? Are customers forced to repeat themselves when they switch channels?

It’s better to manage a few channels well than to offer live chat that goes unanswered. Align your channel mix with your resources and growth phase.

Hobbycraft, the U.K.’s leading arts‑and‑crafts retailer, learned this firsthand. By shifting to an AI‑powered omnichannel platform, the company brought conversations from social, email, voice, and chat into one place. With all context in one view, first-contact resolution rose to 82% and CSAT increased 25%. 

As Hobbycraft’s experience highlights, taking a people‑first lens ensures you invest in channels that matter most to your audience and avoid adding noise.

2. Build an AI‑first foundation

The benchmark report shows that AI adoption is accelerating: 32% of companies already use AI in support, and another 47% plan to do so. With ticket volumes rising and headcounts holding steady, AI is no longer optional. Layer AI into your omnichannel strategy through two complementary roles:

• AI agents to handle routine questions such as “Where’s my order?” across all channels, check back‑end systems for status updates, and pass higher-level queries to humans with full context so the agent picks up seamlessly. "AI agents act rather than merely answer, updating orders, resetting passwords, and triggering back‑end workflows so customers are served outcomes, not wait times," notes Subramanian.

• AI copilots to support agents by summarizing, suggesting empathetic responses, providing sentiment cues in real time to reduce cognitive load and help agents respond quickly and accurately.

3. Unify conversations and data to flatten your CX stack

Having multiple channels is pointless if your team must switch between CRM, billing, and order‑management tools to find answers. Choose a platform that brings these systems together into a single inbox and maintains one customer profile, leaning on AI and automation to flatten your support stack: fewer screens, less toggling, and more time spent helping customers.

Digitrips, a travel company that manages hundreds of thousands of journeys each year, consolidated its fragmented support channels into a unified Freshdesk workspace. This cut first‑response times by about 75% and doubled the number of tickets agents resolve daily. 

4. Orchestrate the full journey with automation and smart routing

AI, people, and automation work best when they operate as a unit. After a query is triaged—whether by a bot or an agent—automation routes it intelligently based on sentiment, urgency, customer profile, and language. Workflows enforce service‑level agreements and ensure nothing falls through the cracks. Self‑service options such as knowledge bases, user communities, and FAQs empower customers to help themselves and reduce inbound volumes. The goal is to deliver a unified journey, not just to be present on every channel.

5. Put theory into practice: A fictional journey

Remember the customer who reached out over Instagram? Here’s how that same situation resolves in a unified omnichannel experience: The customer DMs the company on Instagram about a delayed order. But the reply comes from an AI agent in seconds. It checks the order status, sees there’s a shipping delay, and offers a coupon for the inconvenience. This time, though, the code works, and when the customer reaches out in the future, now over the mobile app, the AI agent recognizes them, references the previous conversation, and pre‑populates the exchange form. When the request falls outside of standard policy, it’s routed—along with full context—to a human agent who sees the entire history across channels.

The future of support is connected, people‑first, and AI‑ready

The iceberg metaphor reminds us that omnichannel excellence is built on unified data and intelligent tools beneath the surface. When companies audit their channels, adopt AI as a foundation, unify data, and orchestrate journeys, they move from fragmented experiences to seamless ones. The 2025 benchmark data makes clear that speed and simplicity are now table stakes—slow, siloed support is no longer acceptable. By investing in the right channels and a flatter support stack, businesses can deliver customer experiences that are effortless, efficient, and personal. The future of support is connected and people‑first; the time to build it is now.

“2025 can be a make‑or‑break year,” says Subramanian. “AI is no longer a nice‑to‑have but the foundation for fast, scalable support.”