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The Omnichannel Playbook

91ÖÆƬ³§ an omnichannel strategy that fixes CX friction fast and delivers cross-channel consistency

Bridging the gap from omnichannel strategy to execution

Customer experience (CX) expectations have fundamentally changed, but most operating models haven't. Today's customers move seamlessly across digital and physical touchpoints, yet the organizations serving them remain structured in silos.

The result? Experiences that feel inconsistent, disconnected, and increasingly out of sync with what customers demand. While most firms have an omnichannel strategy in teory, few have a functioning system in practice.

Focus your omnichannel strategy on solving specific, tangible pain points across channels, not on creating a broad CX vision. Omnichannel success comes from fixing targeted gaps in continuity and consistency and driving measurable improvements in the customer journey, not from redefining your entire customer experience strategy.

This research helps organizations move from aspiration to action. It offers a practical execution roadmap to align people, data, and decisions across departments around a unified experience vision – a roadmap that's measurable, repeatable, and capable of producing results in 90 days.

Terra Higginson
Principal 91ÖÆƬ³§ Director
91ÖÆƬ³§

Overcome the omnichannel execution challenge

91ÖÆƬ³§ Insight

Omnichannel might feel like an old buzzword, but making it work is still a major challenge. The key isn't reinventing your entire customer experience; it's about identifying and fixing the specific high-impact gaps that break continuity. That's where the real, measurable impact happens.

Keep up with the expectations of customers in the omnichannel era

Missed expectations are not simply marketing or service problems; they're execution failures stemming from disjointed omnichannel systems, misaligned roles, and unclear ownership. Consistency isn't just about quality. It's about trust. And trust erodes silently with every inconsistent moment.

Inconsistent Experiences Erode Trust, Quietly and Quickly

Inconsistent Experiences Erode Trust:

• Customers don't see your internal structure; they feel its consequences. And they don't complain loudly; they just don't come back.

Customers Encounter Common Friction Points:

• A product that is priced one way online, another in store.
• A loyalty program that doesn't sync across touchpoints.
• A "personalized" recommendation that misses the mark.

Execution Stalls Inevitably When:

• Teams don't know what "good" looks like at each touchpoint.
• Functions interpret customer data differently.
• Feedback loops break down before they reach action.

Nieman Marcus case study: The cost of inaction

Fragmented omnichannel execution can topple even the strongest brands.

When a Weak Links Break: The Neiman Marcus Omnichannel Failure

Malcolm Gladwell contrasts strong-link systems (where top performers carry the burden) with weak-link systems (where overall success depends on shoring up the lowest-performing parts).

Omnichannel is an example of a weak-link system: Every touchpoint and handoff must work reliably, even the weakest link, to deliver a seamless customer experience.

A Luxury Retail Cautionary Tale

• Burdened with debt and physical stores, the Nieman Marcus Group filed for Chapter 11 in May 2020, not just because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but from long-term digital misalignment.
• Despite Nieman Marcus' reputation for luxury and significant tech investment, execution gaps in omnichannel, especially between online browsing, inventory visibility, and in-store service, eroded customer trust and transactional reliability.
• The company emerged stronger, but only after a $500 million tech investment and structural overhaul. This was a repair job caused by neglecting execution gaps.

Omnichannel Outcome

Brands that build omnichannel alignment into their operations can systematically close experience gaps, build long-term resilience across channels, and prevent weak links destroying the value of the entire system.

Execution Failures vs. the Omnichannel Winning Playbook

Source: Forbes, 2020

Why even the best omnichannel strategies fail to execute

Behind every broken experience is a broken operating model. This is not from lack of effort, but from a lack of orchestration across channels.

The four pillars of omnichannel marketing

A strong omnichannel strategy requires more than presence across channels. It demands a unified, customer-first approach built on these four pillars:

1. A Unified Customer View
Customers expect brands to know who they are. Every interaction should reflect a complete picture of their journey, including what they've done, what they need, and what they care about.

2. Integrated Channels
Switching between channels shouldn't feel like starting over. When channels are connected, customers can move seamlessly between them. Brands can respond in real time, wherever customers show up.

3. Consistent Messaging
Different teams shouldn't sound like different companies. Messaging that feels coordinated builds trust, reinforces your brand, and helps customers feel understood across every touchpoint.

4. Measurement & Optimization
A great customer experience isn't one and done. Tracking what works and what doesn't keeps teams aligned and focused on what matters most. It's how you make every interaction better than the last.

Image source: Sora, July 2025

Activate a unified customer view

A unified view of the customer creates a single source of truth.

Customer Intelligence
Ensure that teams from marketing to sales to service to product can access this unified view. Strategy sits at this layer to connect tech into actionable insights and revenue drivers.

Contextual Identity
Move from static segments to behavior-driven personas and real-time data to see where customers are at in that moment and use AI to predict where they are headed. Digital analytics platforms excel in dynamically creating cohorts.

Consolidated Customer Profiles
Bring together data from web, mobile, brick and mortar, service desk, and third-party to create a consolidated customer profile. Often this is done using CRM and CDP solutions.

Move from fragmented to omnichannel

Current State: Disjointed and Disgruntled
Disconnected channels emphasize the organization's processes rather than the customer's, and messages are inconsistent. It is a fragmented customer experience that creates inefficiencies and frustration.

Future State: Integrated and Enlightened
Channels are unified, with the customer at the center. Consistent, personalized messaging is delivered at the right time, on the right channel, every time. A unified view provides consistency, insight, and effective interactions.

Image source: Sora, July 2025

91ÖÆƬ³§ consistent messaging with content planning in omnichannel

The 91ÖÆƬ³§ing Blocks of a High-Performing Omnichannel Content Plan:

1. Clear Branding
   Your unique value proposition, tone of voice, and core messaging pillars are clearly defined and consistently applied.
2. Defined Audience with Channel Preferences
   You have a well-defined audience or persona, with a strong understanding of their pain points, preferences, and the channels they prefer for communication.
3. Mapped Customer Journey With Key Messaging
   Your content aligns to key moments across the customer journey. Each stage is supported with relevant content types and clear messaging tied to specific objectives.
4. Centralized Content Calendar
   A master content calendar ensures alignment in timing, themes, and ownership across all channels, and never forget the call to action for each piece.
5. Aligned Messaging Across Teams
   Marketing, sales, and service teams are aligned on audience insights, messaging priorities, and key themes. Messages are adapted (not reinvented) for each platform's style while staying consistent.

Multi-touch attribution is the flat earth of marketing measurement

Many jobs have been lost trying to perfect multi-touch attribution, a long and often impossible task. Until the day we have chips in our brains that capture everything we see, hear, and feel, true attribution will remain a difficult and unsolved puzzle.

Multi-touch attribution is overly simplistic for today's complex, omnichannel reality. It ignores the true complexity of human decision-making and how customers move non-linearly across touchpoints.

Instead of chasing perfection in multi-touch attribution, we recommend marketing mix modeling (MMM). MMM provides a high-level statistical view over time to help understand which combination of channels drives long-term growth and ROI. It controls for external factors and offers a more reliable foundation for strategic decision-making.

If running regression models isn't feasible, focus on customer-centric metrics like:

• Net Promoter Score (NPS)
• Retention
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

These metrics provide clear, actionable insights tied directly to business performance, without the false precision of attribution models.

Stop measuring clicks, start measuring completion

Too many omnichannel initiatives are measured with the wrong metrics, such as clicks, impressions, or lagging NPS scores. These offer insight, but not action. What's needed is a shift from output measurement to confidence measurement. These are the signals that tell you if the system is working in real time.

Journey Completion

95%

Can the customer actually finish what they came to do?

3.5 min

Resolution Time

Are there consistent experiences across channels?

87%

Health Signals

These numbers are illustrative; your benchmarks and metrics will vary based on your industry and goals. If you need assistance establishing these metrics, please consult with an analyst.

Get to the omnichannel opportunities faster, destroy roadblocks, and build a strategy that works

Get to "go" faster. 91ÖÆƬ³§ your omnichannel strategy room.

1. Divide into cross-functional teams (Marketing, Product, Service, Sales, Ops) and each present a scenario (e.g. cart abandonment + store visit).
2. Ask each group the following questions:
   • What do you need for each team to do to ensure this customer converts?
   • What data/tools do you need from other teams?
   • How would you know it worked?
3. Debrief with a one-page Omnichannel Strategy Roadmap template from The Omnichannel Strategy Playbook Template.

Use agentic AI to accelerate omnichannel execution

Remember to automate responsibly.

AI is a copilot, not the driver.

Faster Journey Discovery

Map real customer behavior, not assumptions.

Outcome: Prioritize the right journeys and fix what matters most.

Tools: Qualtrics, Heap, Amplitude

Smarter Signal Prioritization

Use AI to extract themes from support chats, surveys, and behavior logs.

Outcome: Surface top friction points in days, not weeks.

Tools: Adobe Journey Optimizer, Salesforce Einstein

Targeted Personalization

AI adapts offers, content, or routing based on live context.

Outcome: Drive relevance without overengineering journeys.

Tools: Segment, Mutiny

Predictive Experience Metrics

Forecast churn, drop-off, or service failures before they happen.

Outcome: Take action earlier and reduce experience breakdowns.

Tools: Mixpanel, Totango

A true omnichannel CX requires a fully integrated tech stack

Fix what customers feel, not just what you see

Don't stop at analyzing the journey. Feel it from the customer's side.

1 CX Mapping + Internal Teams
Map customer journeys with internal processes that directly impact the touchpoints.

2 Critical Gap Analysis
Focus on high-impact breakdowns in the customer journey, identifying where breakdowns cause the most harm to the customer experience.

3 Agile Prioritization
Address one high-friction pain point first, then move to the next one. Be agile.