Omnichannel
One channel
Stores and websites are only 'omnichannel' when they share a customer record. Everything else is two businesses with the same logo.
10 Dec 2025 · 1 min read
Most brands describe themselves as omnichannel the day they open a store. That is not what the word means.
A store and a website are one channel when a purchase in either lands on the same customer record, earns the same membership perks, and can be returned in the other. Until then, you are running two businesses with the same logo and a spreadsheet between them.
What it takes
- One customer identity. The phone number at the counter is the email at checkout.
- One order history. Store orders and online orders in the same place, distinguishable but not separate.
- One promotion engine. A discount should not depend on which door the customer walked through. One of the first tools I built was a calculator that splits a discount fairly across a store bill and a home-delivery bill.
- A point of sale that speaks the same language as the website. When the off-the-shelf one could not, we built one with a partner.
The payoff
The visible result is a customer who does not have to explain themselves twice. The invisible result is that every number, retention, ad returns, conversion, finally describes the whole business instead of half of it.
By Nikhilendra Pratap Singh Deo. Facts here come from public sources or my own posts.