Deliver a seamless customer journey through omnichannel orchestration

Omnichannel orchestration is now a key component of high-performing customer service strategies. With customer journeys increasingly fragmented across physical, phone, and digital touchpoints, businesses must ensure continuity, fluidity, and consistency at every interaction. This guide provides you with the essential insights to understand the challenges and effectively structure and optimize your omnichannel approach.

The customer can start an interaction on one channel and continue it on another without having to repeat their information, the context is seamlessly transferred. For example, they might ask a question via a chatbot on the website; the orchestrator detects an urgent request and routes it to an advisor who calls them back, already aware of the interaction history. This personalized support relies on real-time data synchronization across different systems (CRM, contact center, engagement platforms...) and close collaboration between marketing, customer service, and sales teams.

This orchestration is often powered by an AI-driven conversational agent capable of detecting the intent behind each customer interaction. Depending on the nature of the request and the company’s routing rules (agent availability, business hours, priority level...), the agent can either deliver an automated response or transfer the conversation to a human advisor (via phone or live chat), while maintaining the full interaction history to ensure a smooth handover.

These three approaches are often confused, but they reflect very different levels of integration:

Multichannel involves using several communication channels (website, social media, phone, physical stores, print catalogs...), but in a disconnected manner. Each channel is managed independently and does not share information with the others. As a result, customers often have to repeat their information when switching channels, leading to a fragmented experience and potential frustration.

Cross-channel takes it a step further by linking channels together to streamline the customer journey. For example, a customer might start a purchase online, choose in-store pickup, and then contact customer service by phone. Information flows between channels, ensuring some level of continuity. This approach often relies on tools like CRMs, contact centers, or order management systems.

Omnichannel takes this logic to the highest level: all channels are synchronized in real time and share a single, unified customer history. The customer can switch from one channel to another without ever losing the thread of the interaction. For example, a customer starts with a phone call to report an issue. They are directed to an interactive voice response system (IVR) that collects initial information and identifies the reason for contact. Depending on the complexity of the request, the interaction is then routed to an AI-powered conversational agent, and if needed, escalated to a live chat with a human advisor, who instantly has access to the entire history gathered by the IVR and the chatbot.
This level of synchronization relies on interconnected systems and strong collaboration between teams to ensure a seamless, personalized, and consistent experience.

Learn more about these differences in our article: Multichannel, cross-channel, and omnichannel: what’s the difference?

71% of customers expect companies to collaborate internally to avoid making them repeat themselves. Achieving this level of seamless experience requires a gradual approach to omnichannel strategy. It begins with a thorough analysis of existing touchpoints to identify the strengths and pain points of the current customer journey. Then, customer data must be centralized in a single source of truth (often a CRM), accessible to all relevant teams: marketing, sales, and customer service.

It’s also essential to rely on robust technological tools such as CRMs, omnichannel orchestration platforms like DialOnce, and marketing automation solutions that can synchronize data in real time while ensuring data privacy and security. Beyond technology, omnichannel success also requires internal transformation: fostering a customer-centric culture, breaking down silos between departments, and embedding continuous improvement into the organization’s mindset.

Discover how Vattenfall implemented an omnichannel orchestration platform to manage its entire customer journey. By directing each contact to the most relevant resolution path (website, phone, email), the platform centralizes intent and promotes first-contact resolution, all while simplifying the overall customer experience.

To be effective, an omnichannel strategy relies on five essential pillars, combining technology and organizational alignment:

Implementing an omnichannel customer relationship strategy is not something that can be improvised. It requires a structured set of steps to ensure a smooth, consistent, and effective transition to this new approach:

• Map your current customer journeys: start by identifying all the touchpoints your customers use. The goal is to detect friction points, underutilized channels, and redundancies. Also analyze contact reasons to better understand expectations based on customer profiles.
• Design a customer-centric strategy: it’s not just about adding more channels, but about understanding needs, recurring pain points, and key steps in the journey. This analysis helps prioritize optimizations that will directly improve efficiency and customer satisfaction.
• Centralize data: it’s essential to connect all channels to a unified database (CRM or CDP) to provide a real-time, comprehensive view of each customer. Centralization makes it easier to intelligently route requests to the most suitable channels.
• Select the right tools: orchestration platforms, AI solutions, and automation systems must integrate smoothly with your existing tools and workflows. They should also support the sorting, prioritization, and routing of requests, especially during peak periods.
• Align and train teams: marketing, customer service, IT,  all stakeholders must be involved from the beginning. Targeted training helps ensure smooth adoption of new tools and practices while fostering a culture focused on responsiveness and service personalization.
• Monitor and adapt: once the system is in place, track key performance indicators (transfer rates, response times, first contact resolution...) and regularly adjust your processes to ensure continuous improvement. The goal is to make each channel not only available, but also relevant, at the right time and for the right request.

Artificial intelligence (AI) now plays a strategic role in optimizing omnichannel orchestration. It enables, in particular:

• Pre-qualification and intent detection: by analyzing behavioral and contextual data, AI understands customer intent (quote request, complaint, cancellation...) and instantly suggests the most relevant journey. This reduces unnecessary transfers and maximizes first-contact resolution by delivering immediate answers to simple inquiries and routing more complex ones to the right agents.
• Instant responses to simple requests: AI agents and chatbots can handle a large volume of recurring questions 24/7. When a request is too complex to answer directly, the AI orchestrates its transfer to a human advisor, who seamlessly takes over with all context already available.
• Dynamic channel orchestration: AI determines the most suitable channel in real time based on customer habits and the nature of the request. For instance, with a visual IVR, an incoming call can be instantly redirected to a digital selfcare option (like a relevant FAQ) when it allows for resolution without human intervention. This smart redirection reduces the workload for advisors and improves customer engagement.
• Harmonizing human and automated interactions: by centralizing interaction history, AI ensures seamless continuity across different levels of support. When a human agent takes over, they are assisted by an Augmented advisor natively integrated into internal tools via API. This assistant automatically contextualizes the request, generates summaries of previous exchanges, and suggests the next best action. This support allows agents to be more efficient, relevant, and responsive when handling complex requests.

This transformation must be designed in alignment with the operational realities of your teams: Which tasks can be handled by AI ?Which interactions should remain human?
How can information flow seamlessly between both? Well-designed orchestration helps balance responsiveness, efficiency, and personalization,  while preserving the essential role of human agents in high-value interactions.

To go further, download our white paper on Customer Excellence and Omnichannel Orchestration, 2025 Edition, co-authored with BearingPoint.

Banking & Insurance

Banks and insurance companies are facing growing and increasingly diverse volumes of customer requests, from advice and claims to contract management and urgent incident handling. These requests come through various channels (phone, branches, email, mobile apps) and require fast, consistent responses.
Omnichannel orchestration helps standardize access to customer information, streamline transitions between channels, and better allocate advisors to handle complex queries. Here are two real-world use cases:

• BNP Paribas Epargne & Retraite Entreprises redesigned all its contact channels to handle activity spikes by routing customers to the right journeys from the very first interaction while maintaining a high standard of service.
• Crédit Agricole Normandie-Seine enhanced its digital customer service by implementing an automated request routing system, making it easier to access the right resources and reducing wait times.

Energy

In the energy sector, providers often face spikes in customer contact volumes, typically driven by billing cycles, contract activations, or subscription change requests. Omnichannel orchestration helps distribute these demands more efficiently by offering tailored digital solutions for simple queries and involving human agents only when their expertise is truly needed.

• Vattenfall reduced its operating costs by 35% by implementing a visual IVR that routes incoming calls to the most appropriate digital solutions.
• ENGIE improved its accessibility by promoting automated digital channels and optimizing the management of incoming flows.

Retail / E-commerce

In the retail sector, the challenge is to deliver a seamless customer experience across e-commerce platforms, physical stores, and customer service channels. Omnichannel orchestration centralizes customer history, automates recurring requests, and ensures human intervention only when truly needed.

• Fnac Darty implemented an omnichannel contact strategy combining automation with human support, significantly reducing costs while improving customer satisfaction.

Tracking the right KPIs is essential to evaluate the performance of an omnichannel strategy. It’s not just about collecting data, it’s about turning insights into concrete actions to continuously improve the customer experience.

• NPS (Net Promoter Score) and CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score): these indicators measure perceived satisfaction and a customer's likelihood to recommend the brand. They help identify pain points across the entire customer journey.
• First Contact Resolution (FCR): this metric reflects the ability to resolve a customer request during the first interaction, without follow-ups or channel switching. In an omnichannel context, FCR is especially important to assess the effectiveness of AI agents, visual IVRs, and automated systems.
• Channel Transfer Rate: this measures the percentage of interactions that must be escalated to another channel (e.g., from an AI agent to a phone call). A high transfer rate may indicate poor initial routing or a lack of autonomy in digital channels.
• Abandon rate on digital channels: this metric tracks the number of users who leave a digital channel (such as a chatbot or form) before receiving a response. A low abandonment rate indicates a clear interface, well-designed journeys, and fast answers.
• Average handling time (AHT): this helps assess the efficiency of teams and the smoothness of request processing, while also identifying potential bottlenecks.
• Digital channel usage rate: this indicates the adoption of digital solutions by customers and the company's ability to ease the load on human-assisted channels.

Cross-analyzing these indicators tailored to customer profiles and various contact reasons becomes a powerful driver of continuous improvement. The goal is to simplify journeys, reduce friction points, and optimize resource allocation to deliver a smooth and high-performing customer experience.

Omnichannel orchestration has become essential for companies aiming to deliver a simple, seamless, and efficient customer experience. By connecting channels, leveraging data and artificial intelligence, and aligning teams around shared goals, businesses enhance their ability to understand customer expectations, respond quickly, and provide tailored solutions. Omnichannel strategy thus becomes a true driver of long-term performance and a key differentiator in meeting the needs of increasingly demanding customers.