Are we delivering consistency across all channels, or just adding noise?

Too many channels without alignment often lead to fragmented experiences that frustrate customers instead of supporting them.

What’s our weakest touchpoint — and how badly is it damaging our brand?

Your experience is only as strong as its weakest link. One broken channel can define the entire perception of your customer journey.

Are we building a customer experience — or just a diagram?

Many teams fall in love with multichannel diagrams and flows, but overlook whether those models actually help customers accomplish what they need.

What’s our ‘hero channel,’ and are we making it exceptional?

Focusing energy on your most impactful channel — rather than all channels equally — can yield better ROI and a more meaningful customer experience.

Do our internal teams collaborate as well as our channels pretend to?

A disconnected org chart often results in disjointed customer journeys. Seamless experience begins with internal unity.

You Think in Channels, and That Frustrates Your Customers

The Gist

Multichannel confusion. Having more channels doesn't mean you're providing a better experience. It often adds noise and inconsistency.
Fix the fundamentals. Your customer experience is only as strong as its weakest point. Broken links define the brand more than polished ones.
Focus over flash. A good omnichannel strategy means simplifying, not expanding. Choose fewer, better-connected touchpoints that serve real needs.

Our customers couldn't care less about our "seamless journeys" and about our lovely and witty martech diagrams. They just care about getting things done easily. Still, many brands are focused on how to expand or even re-do their "frictionless" channel experiences.

Here is the uncomfortable truth. You are not building a multichannel experience; you are creating a multichannel spaghetti. That's expensive to maintain, and it’s costing you a lot.

The Multichannel Delusion
Think Like a Friend
Simplicity Takes Real Work
Omnichannel Strategy Isn’t Always Worth It
How to Cut Through the Channel Noise
Better Conversations, Not Just More Channels
Core Questions About Omnichannel Strategy Overload

The Multichannel Delusion

I've been in those rooms many times, in those conversations in which everybody is excited and stimulated. “We want to cover all channels.” “We have the journey prepared.” “We have the CX and UX figured out.” Right after that, I'll see those neat channel plans, CX flows and martech diagrams. In most cases, I'll see a drawing with eight or so icons for email, SMS, WhatsApp, mobile push, web, social and call center. There are a lot of connected arrows to a CDP, CRM and DXP. Everything looks so good. It almost looks easy.

Yes, you may have reached the multichannel level, but that doesn't mean you are delivering an omnichannel experience. In fact, you might be doing the opposite. You might be creating more loud and expensive noise that dilutes your relationship with your client.

The Weakest Link Defines You

Think of a retailer whose Instagram DM support is lightning fast, but their email team takes 48 hours to respond. Or a bank whose nice app flags suspicious activity immediately, but the fraud department calls from an unknown number asking you to verify your information. Or the hotel that didn't hold your reservation on a third-party site. In all of these cases, the weakest link will be the baseline of your digital experience. And that baseline is a broken experience.

Think Like a Friend

Take a different perspective, and imagine how you communicate with your friends. You text them a quick question. Days later, you send them a voice note. A week later, you email a link that you liked. And when it's important, you call. You never stop to think if it’s the right channel or if you’re texting too much but calling too little. That’s because you couldn't care less about the channel. You care about the communication, the conversation and the context across interactions. And if your friend doesn't have "a channel,” say Telegram, you don't ask her to download it. You use whatever she already has. Most importantly, the moments we enjoy the most are those with friends. The more valued connection is human.

The same should apply to your brand. You shouldn’t care about the channel; you should care about the conversation, both digital and offline. Too often, the way an organization is built shows up in the experience it delivers. You can even see it in the structure of its website. In large organizations, those eight icons will have eight directors overseeing them, but their teams rarely truly connect. One team manages the contact center, and one team manages web communications. If internal teams don't communicate effectively, how can we expect to communicate seamlessly with our clients?

Simplicity Takes Real Work

Not long ago, I was speaking with a respected designer, and part of our conversation touched on the old challenge that designers face in creating something simple. A clean web design, a streamlined app, a focused checkout flow or a clear dashboard. When done right, it looks effortless. But it’s anything but effortless. It's hard. It requires a lot of iterations. And it pays off.

It's easy to keep adding buttons, features and layers. But true UX mastery comes from knowing what to suppress and having the courage to eliminate those cool features for the sake of the essential ones. Simplicity is not about doing less. It's more about leaving only what's necessary and making it beautiful. That requires trimming, refining,and letting go, until what's left is clear and intentional. The same mindset should apply to your omnichannel strategy.

Just because there are more channels at our reach, it doesn't mean that you have to pursue them. This sensation of being better by having more channels is doomed. Having more channels than necessary can damage your experience and ultimately harm your brand. There is even the extreme on optichannel, in which you simply give up on all the other channels

Omnichannel Strategy Isn’t Always Worth It

Another reality is that, in many cases, brands are not ready to be omnichannel, even if they would benefit from it. Although omnichannel may appear friendly and easy in diagrams and sales pitches, it’s not. It is complex and expensive, and in many cases, it’s not worth the investment. You must align multiple platforms, teams, vendors and partners. Acing three channels is already complicated; aligning eight is a feat. And in many circumstances, it’s just not necessary (try finding Amazon’s WhatsApp or Telegram).

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t care about all channels, but sometimes it’s better to focus all your efforts on just a handful. That’s the optichannel approach. Think about the experience, the expectations and the human-machine mix.

What comes to mind for me is the case of a QSR client. During the pandemic, they heavily invested in a new app for their online ordering. It made all the sense in the world. They thought that a revamped app would facilitate and increase orders. It did. At the same time, as a side project, they experimented with orders through WhatsApp. Without marketing and with minimal noise, the WhatsApp channel began to sell more. They thought their app was not good enough, because WhatsApp caught up so quickly, and they were tempted to double the investment in the app to "fix" it, until they realized what their customers were telling them. They would rather order from WhatsApp than download your app. So they decided to double down on that channel, and it paid off.

How to Cut Through the Channel Noise

Considering these factors, your expensive “omnichannel" set of platforms might be a problem rather than a solution. These tech beauties promise channel unification. But without proper architecting and implementation, they often just deliver surface-level polish. Yes, you get a clean web design, a streamlined app and a focused experience. But you also get 360-degree customer views that are really 10-degree snapshots, “seamless” handoffs that require five internal teams to coordinate and integration costs that can outweigh the CX benefits.

Before considering changes to your martech infrastructure, it may be time for a quick intervention.

Action	Description
Conduct a channel autopsy	Map every touchpoint and identify where context gets lost. You can use something like the Dynamic Experience Framework to get you started.
Run the ‘friend test’	Would your interaction feel natural in a personal relationship? Are you forcing conversation on a specific channel?
Identify your hero channel	What’s the impact of your biggest channel or channels? Does it account for more than 75% of your revenue? If so, you know where to focus.
Build contextual bridges	Remember, it’s not about the channel; it’s about the conversation. Don’t try to preserve context for every interaction—just the ones that matter most. Identify those bridge opportunities and make them great.
Start small, then expand	Identify the broken handoffs, and lay out a plan to fix them. Don’t try to fix them all at once—focus on the ones hurting your revenue and brand the most.

Better Conversations, Not Just More Channels

The goal isn't omnichannel perfection. The goal is to have a conversation and remove friction from our customer experience. No amount of targeting is going to make your customer hear and value you. What matters is your intention. Just like friends forgive an unanswered call if you’re present in the conversation, customers respond to real connection.