What Omnichannel Success Looks Like in 2026

Have you ever been the victim of a frustratingly disjointed shopping experience? For example, explaining an issue to a service rep, only to have to re-explain yourself when your call or chat gets passed along to someone else. Or have you added items to your basket on mobile only to have them disappear when you view the same basket on desktop? The solution to these subpar experiences is an omnichannel strategy.

Customers expect every interaction with your company to be part of a singular, cohesive experience, rather than a siloed, repetitive one. In fact, disconnected experiences are consumers’ top frustration . When a business successfully implements omnichannel commerce, the customer feels like every interaction is in sync with the larger experience.

So, how do you create engaging omnichannel experiences that attract customers, increase sales, and build brand love? Here’s what you need to know about omnichannel strategies, how AI is changing the game, and the ecommerce software you need to get ahead.

• What is omnichannel?
• Why omnichannel outperforms multichannel
• How omnichannel drives better business results
• Where customers shop and engage with brands in 2026
• The building blocks of a strong omnichannel strategy
• How technology powers connected customer experiences
• How AI can lift your omnichannel experience
• How leading brands deliver connected experiences
• The metrics that show your omnichannel impact
• Start building your omnichannel experience
• FAQs

Omnichannel is a strategy for ecommerce businesses where you connect all your online and offline touchpoints so customers get a smooth, consistent experience wherever they choose to interact with you. It typically applies to three key areas: marketing, retail, and customer service.

In practice, this means that your website, store, app, social channels, and customer support all work together, making it easy for shoppers to move between them without repeating information or being served irrelevant products.

Here are three examples of how different industries can benefit from having an omnichannel strategy.

• SaaS: A customer sees a social post, signs up on your website, gets in-app guidance, and reaches support through chat, where your team can view their full journey.
• Retail: A customer finds a product on Instagram, checks store stock in your app, and visits in person. Staff can see their online activity and recommend the right items.
• Hospitality: A guest books through your app, receives personalised pre-arrival emails, and checks in smoothly because staff can see their preferences and past stays.

While many use the terms ‘omnichannel’ and ‘multichannel’ interchangeably, there’s a notable distinction between the two.

Omnichannel focuses on providing a unified customer journey. It ensures that every shopper experiences a consistent, uninterrupted flow of communication, regardless of their chosen channel. For instance, a customer can seamlessly transition from a live chat conversation on a website to a phone call and then continue the same discussion via email. Throughout this process, they don’t have to repeat information or re-explain their concerns.

On the other hand, multichannel simply involves maintaining a presence across different channels. Businesses with a multichannel strategy may not prioritise integrating these different channels or creating a cohesive experience for customers as they transition between them.

The inherent advantage of an omnichannel approach is that it’s customer-centric. By putting the customer at the heart of your strategy, you can build truly meaningful experiences that meet the ever-important expectations for consistency, cohesion and convenience.

It’s hard to overstate how important an omnichannel strategy is for your business. Your ability to acquire customers, keep them engaged and sell to them on various channels is directly correlated to revenue growth. Consider these statistics:

• On average, companies with omnichannel customer engagement strategies retain 89% of their customers
• A large majority of customers (71%) prefer different channels depending on context
• 83% of shoppers are more loyal to companies that deliver consistent interactions across departments

Below, we break down the benefits for both customers and businesses.

When your channels actually work together, customers feel it immediately. Everything becomes easier, faster, and more relevant.

• A consistent experience: Shoppers can move between channels without repeating information or restarting.
• Enhanced personalisation: Recommendations reflect what they’ve browsed, clicked, and purchased.
• Greater accessibility: Customers can choose the channel that suits them in the moment.
• Convenience at every step: Switching between social, app, website, or in-store feels natural, not disjointed.
• More confidence: Clearer messaging and connected support reduce frustration and build trust.

Omnichannel doesn’t just improve the customer experience. It also sharpens your operations and lifts your bottom line. More touchpoints, more engagement, more opportunities to sell.

• Increased sales and revenue: Meeting customers on multiple channels opens more paths to conversion.
• Improved loyalty and retention: Consistency, convenience, and personalisation keep customers coming back.
• Deeper customer insights: You can see the full journey, not single interactions, which improves decision-making.
• Better inventory management: Connected systems reduce overselling and missed sales.
• Stronger brand identity: Every channel reinforces the same story, tone, and experience.
• More efficient operations: Teams work with the same data, reducing manual work and improving outcomes.

In 2026, customers are using more channels than ever, and their expectations for consistency are only increasing. According to our latest research, shoppers now use an average of 10 channels when engaging with brands, and 53% use social platforms to discover new products.

To stay competitive, businesses need a mix of channels that support browsing, buying, service, and ongoing engagement. The goal is not to be everywhere, but to choose the channels where your customers are most active and make sure those touchpoints work together.

Here’s a look at the key channels shaping customer experience in 2026.

Many companies already have a handle on multichannel presence. But if you want to build customer experiences that grow loyalty and truly differentiate your brand, it will require deep integration between channels. Here are a few things to consider as you develop your omnichannel strategy.

Remember that the purpose of an omnichannel approach is to build more meaningful relationships with your customers. With that in mind, use data to uncover insights about which parts of the customer journey you can optimise or what types of experiences your customers value most.

Commerce experiences include every aspect of shopping online: finding products on a search engine, browsing items on a digital shop front, scrolling through a brand’s social media accounts and making purchases.

Omnichannel commerce is what allows you to keep these experiences cohesive, no matter where a shopper interacts with your business. It also enables you to collect data (like shopper behaviour and trends) across all touchpoints.

The ability to reach shoppers with the right messages at the right time on the right channels is invaluable.

Consider this scenario: A high-value customer walks into one of your brick-and-mortar shops. In-store shopping may not be a digital channel, but with an omnichannel approach, you can blend the digital with the physical. If a customer has your retail app and consents to share location data, you can send a tailored promotion to use at checkout via a push notification straight to their mobile device. That’s the power of omnichannel marketing.

When customers feel understood and valued, they are more likely to develop a deep connection with your brand. Personalised interactions transform customers into brand advocates.

Seventy-four per cent of shoppers say it takes no more than three bad experiences for them to abandon a brand. As you implement new channels, it’s crucial to get the customer service element right on each one.

Customers expect timely and efficient assistance when they seek support, whether they keep in touch with you through a direct message on social media, a chatbot on your website or a phone call. Businesses that prioritise rapid and effective responses demonstrate their dedication to customer satisfaction, strengthening the customer-brand relationship and fostering brand loyalty.

The successful implementation of an omnichannel strategy hinges on the right tools and technology. This is what allows you to integrate customer data, personalise interactions at scale, and streamline communication. By harnessing the power of technology, you can orchestrate cohesive, consistent customer experiences that delight customers and increase brand loyalty.

The right technology is essential for creating a seamless omnichannel experience. With the right tools, businesses can ensure their customers have a consistent and positive experience across all channels, whether they’re shopping online, in-store, or through social media.

Understanding your customers’ behavioural patterns and preferences is where it all starts. But that’s a tall order when you’re selling on so many different channels. Fragmented data and channel silos can make it difficult to build cohesive customer experiences. Enter: customer data platforms and customer relationship platforms. The foundation of an effective omnichannel approach begins with consolidating and harmonising customer data from all your touchpoints into a single source of truth.

These tools are critical because they give you a comprehensive view of each customer’s interactions and preferences. This makes it easier, faster and more cost-effective for your commerce, marketing, sales and service teams to deliver personalised interactions that resonate with each shopper’s specific needs. With Data 360, you can bring all your customer data into one real-time profile, giving every team a single source of truth to personalise the entire journey.

If you engage with customers and sell on multiple channels, a connected commerce platform is what makes it possible to manage all the different aspects and complexities. For example, a commerce platform connected to your inventory management system can aggregate all order data into a single dashboard, eliminating the need to manually check each channel for new orders.

Connected commerce also makes it easier to create cohesive payment experiences, no matter where or how a customer wants to make a purchase. Instead of managing separate payment gateways for each channel, a connected commerce platform integrates with multiple payment processors and consolidates them into a single interface.

Agentforce Commerce connects your storefront, inventory, orders, and payments in one place, making it easier to manage every channel and deliver consistent shopping experiences.

With the right marketing automation tools, your teams can easily manage campaigns across multiple channels. Consider this scenario: A customer browses your website on their desktop and adds a few items to their cart, but they leave without making a purchase.

Marketing automation makes it possible to target that same shopper on a different channel with ads featuring the same products in their cart. This is a cost-effective, efficient way to increase conversions and customer satisfaction. With Agentforce Marketing, you can automate campaigns across email, social, mobile, and advertising, reaching shoppers with the right message at the right moment.

AI brings intelligence to every channel you use. It connects data behind the scenes, predicts what customers need, and automates the repetitive work that slows teams down. The result is a more connected experience at every touchpoint.

Here’s how AI improves omnichannel in measurable ways:

• Carries context between channels: AI identifies the same customer across web, app, chat, social, and in-store systems, so every interaction can pick up where the last one dropped off.
• Builds individualised product paths: AI analyses real behaviour to recommend products, content, and offers that match each customer’s intent.
• Predicts what customers need next: AI can spot signals of interest or friction and trigger workflows, reminders, or support even before a customer requests it.
• Automates routine service work: AI handles common questions, processes requests, and surfaces answers instantly, reducing work for service teams.
• Speeds up complex cases: AI can send issues to the right person with all key details attached, cutting down handover time and improving the customer's experience.
• Turns cross-channel behaviour into insights: AI reads patterns in browsing, purchase, and service data to show where customers drop off, what they respond to, and which channels drive the most value.

Want to see how AI can strengthen your omnichannel strategy? Using Agentforce, you can personalise every customer journey, automate service across channels, and give customers consistent experiences at scale. Watch the demo here to learn more.

Need some inspiration as you hit the ground running and develop your approach? Take a cue from a few brands that have found omnichannel success.

Bunnings is a standout in Australia and New Zealand for how well it connects its channels. Customers can browse online, check stock at their local store, and use click-and-collect for fast pickup. Their AI virtual assistant also supports 27 languages, making help accessible to more customers.

They also meet shoppers where they spend time, with helpful how-to content on YouTube and short, practical DIY clips on TikTok.

Plus, for in-store customers, the experience remains unique, including the famous community-driven sausage sizzle, giving people an extra reason to visit.

Fisher & Paykel delivers a premium omnichannel experience that matches the luxury of its appliances. People can research products online, compare models, and use design tools at home, then walk into a showroom and pick up right where they left off because staff can see what they viewed earlier. After they buy, support stays consistent whether they reach out through the app, on the phone, via chat, or during an in-home visit.

Fisher & Paykel does this by using Data 360. The software gives them a single view of each customer, while Agentforce Marketing personalises recommendations and follow-up journeys based on browsing and buying behaviour.

Agentforce Commerce also powers a connected storefront that links browsing, orders, and fulfilment in one place.

Lastly, with Agentforce, customers receive faster, more accurate support through AI-driven guidance, lifting self-service rates to 65%. The result is a smooth, high-end experience from the moment customers start exploring their options.

L’Oréal is the world’s number one beauty company, with 35 global brands selling six billion products every year. So how does the business create individualised omnichannel experiences for each and every customer?

“It’s about making each consumer happy and satisfied with the products and services we deliver, each time they come into contact with L’Oréal,” says CEO Nicolas Hieronimus.

Truly personalised omnichannel experiences require connecting data from each touchpoint into a single source of truth about each consumer, all while respecting data privacy. L’Oréal uses Agentforce Commerce to provide the foundation for connected online shopping across more than 200 of its D2C websites.

At Currys, a market-leading technology retailer in the UK, omnichannel shoppers are 27% more likely to shop again compared to those who only use one channel. Currys also knows that 80% of its customers start their journey online; as a result, Currys started its omnichannel transformation with its website.

This meant creating cohesion between 500 applications and complex digital journeys across multiple sites and brands. Another challenge? Finding the right balance between legacy technology and new investments.

Keeping simplicity and the customer experience at the heart of its transformation, Currys designed one digital experience and aligned multiple back-end systems under an Agentforce Commerce shop front. In less than 12 months, the new website went live, and Currys had its most successful peak period ever, handling millions of interactions and hundreds of thousands of orders without a hitch.

Once your channels are connected, the next step is tracking how well your new experience is performing.

You’ll want to see whether customers are moving through your channels smoothly, staying engaged, and coming back. The following metrics help you see what’s working, what’s not and what to do next.

• Customer satisfaction: Track any changes in your CSAT, which is the percentage of customers who rate their experience as “satisfied” or “very satisfied”.
• Customer loyalty and advocacy: Look for any movement in your NPS, which is the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors.
• Customer lifetime value: Measure any changes in your CLV, which is the total revenue you expect to earn from a customer over time, often calculated as average order value x purchase frequency x customer lifespan.
• Customer retention: Track your customer retention rate, which is the percentage of customers who continue buying from you over a set period.
• Customer loss: Keep an eye on your churn rate, which is the percentage of customers who stop buying or cancel a subscription in a given period.
• Sales performance: Track your conversion rate, which is the percentage of visitors or leads who complete a purchase or key action.
• Journey health: Review your cross-channel journey analytics, which show where customers start, how they move between channels, and where they drop off.
• Revenue per order: Monitor your average order value (AOV), which is your total revenue divided by the number of orders in a set period.
• Checkout friction: Keep an eye on your shopping cart abandonment rate, which is the percentage of customers who add items to their cart but leave before completing their purchase.
• Social engagement: Track social engagement metrics, which include likes, shares, comments, saves, click-throughs, and purchases coming from social platforms.
• Website performance: Watch your website analytics, such as bounce rate, time on site, product page views, and on-site search terms.
• Email performance: Track your email metrics, including open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, and unsubscribe rate.

Having these metrics as a baseline and tracking for a metric-wide lift or dip will quickly show you the results of your changes. Using Tableau, you can gather all these metrics in one place and share them between departments.