3 common mistakes to avoid when setting up an omnichannel strategy for contact centre

More and more brands are choosing to offer multiple contact channels. For web visitors: an instant‑messaging chat; for new consumers: WhatsApp or Instagram; for more complex complaints: a dedicated email address or a phone number.

Having many channels gives the image of a company that “is there whenever it’s needed”, but that isn’t everything. Enabling these contact points without an effective strategy — or without an omnichannel contact centre software — can mean that your investment does not translate into better service or a better customer experience.

In this article we outline the 3 most common mistakes</strong) companies make when implementing an omnichannel strategy without putting the customer at the centre.

COMMON MISTAKES WHEN IMPLEMENTING AN OMNICHANNEL STRATEGY IN THE CONTACT CENTRE

1. NOT HAVING ALL CHANNELS CONNECTED TOGETHER

Some companies enable digital channels without stopping to consider the best way for all those messages to be managed by the customer‑service, technical‑support or sales team.

If you can’t manage different contact points from the same platform, it becomes chaotic. Each channel ends up working like an island: what the customer says via WhatsApp isn’t visible to the web‑chat team, emails don’t show up when they call by phone — and so on.

If you’ve also outsourced services to different providers, complexity increases even further.

Ideally, you should use omnichannel customer‑service software that allows you to manage all key contact channels from a single environment.

CUSTOMER BENEFITS

• No need to repeat information at each interaction.
• No need to send the same documents twice.
• Receive a quicker response.
• Not to feel frustrated.

CONTACT‑CENTRE TEAM BENEFITS

• Have a unified interaction history within the platform.
• Archive conversations that have already been resolved via another channel.
• Maintain a clear traceability of previous contact reasons — helping you anticipate why the customer is reaching out again.

When channels aren’t managed from a single platform, and there’s no unified history of previous interactions, the customer often feels like they’re starting from scratch every time they call support or customer service. If you can’t guarantee they’ll get the same agent each time — at the very least — you can avoid making them repeat themselves.

2. NOT HAVING REAL AGENTS AVAILABLE ACROSS ALL CHANNELS

Another very common mistake is assuming that having a bot on WhatsApp or web‑chat means you’re “covering” that channel. On paper it sounds good: quick replies, 24/7 availability, less burden on the team. In reality, when the customer faces a real problem — a defective product, an incident, an incorrect charge — what they need is to speak to a person.

The problem surfaces when all roads lead to a bot that only handles FAQs. The customer explains their issue, attaches a photo, outlines the problem… and receives “this channel doesn’t offer human support”. The frustration is enormous: the channel exists, but is useless for their situation.

Bots are very useful to filter simple queries, collect basic data, give generic information or complete certain processes. But if some types of queries aren’t escalated to human agents, you’re bound to leave the customer feeling frustrated and ignored.

Having human agents available across all channels doesn’t necessarily mean offering 24/7 support (unless your product or service demands it) — but it does mean defining clear boundaries: what the bot handles, what gets escalated to a human, what hours people are available, and making that clear from the outset.

What matters most is that, when customers face certain issues, they can find a real person on the other end. If that doesn’t happen, the outcome is that they’ll feel like no one is taking responsibility.

3. FAILING TO PROVIDE A CLEAR SOLUTION FOR THE MOST COMMON ISSUES

If you’re an online retailer, chances are many of your calls and messages will relate to delivery problems: late shipments, defective items, wrong products, etc. These calls or chats are rarely isolated — they tend to be the norm for your agents.

If you know what the most frequent queries are, failing to state clearly on your website or in your confirmation emails that, in case of delivery issues, customers should contact a specific channel — makes life unnecessarily difficult for them.

The problem is worsened when you offer several contact channels. From a customer’s perspective, logic is simple: if there’s web‑chat, WhatsApp, email and phone, it doesn’t matter which one they choose — support should be the same. When that doesn’t happen, each channel they try that doesn’t solve their problem becomes a friction point.

It’s understandable that as a brand you may not want to expose a “sensitive” email to avoid spam. But the key question should be: is it really worth protecting that inbox if it risks undermining your whole customer experience?

REAL‑WORLD EXAMPLE: WHEN OMNICHANNEL IS POORLY EXECUTED

Picture this: you buy something online and, for whatever reason, the item arrives defective. You look for the order confirmation email and find a button to trigger a return. But — surprise — you learn you must pay for the return shipping.

Since the item arrived broken, you decide to contact customer service to request a free pick‑up.

You open the store’s app (or website), head to the support section, and see they only answer by phone between 9:00 – 18:00. If you finish work at 18:00, that option is off the table.

You are relieved to see they have digital channels available: WhatsApp and an instant‑messaging chat. Checking both, you see that the chat is only available until 19:00, so you go for WhatsApp.

You start the conversation, explain what happened, attach the photo showing the defect — and get a bot reply telling you there’s no human support on that channel, that it’s only for FAQs.

You return to the app and open the chat, hoping they’ll resolve the issue in the remaining half‑hour. You copy and paste the previous message — but now can’t attach the photo. You immediately get an automated reply saying there’s a high volume of requests, and to wait for an agent to become available.

A couple of minutes later, an agent asks for your email address. You provide it — and receive no confirmation of receipt. After a few minutes, the chat times out and closes, with no way to recover it.

You open another chat. You copy‑paste your message again and once more get the automated response. Shortly afterwards you chat with a different agent, who asks for your order number, full name and email (again). You comply; they say they’ll check and get back to you.

Ten minutes before the agents’ shift ends, you start worrying whether the issue will be resolved. Eventually the agent replies saying you must send an email to a specific inbox with a photo attached.

You send the email — but receive no automatic acknowledgment of your request.

WHAT DOES THE CONSUMER FEEL — AND WHAT IMAGE DO THEY GET OF THE BRAND?

• That they wasted almost an hour trying to make contact over a quality‑control issue that wasn’t their fault.
• That the brand they purchased from doesn’t offer customer service adapted to their needs.
• That the brand could have told them this upfront — before making them try every channel.
• That the brand’s omnichannel offering is more façade than substance: lots of channels, but no real integration.
• That they didn’t use a channel like WhatsApp to resolve the issue swiftly — even though it offers text and image sharing.
• That there’s no basic automation in place for what is supposed to be the main support inbox.
• That next time they might prefer buying from another store — where, if something goes wrong, they don’t have to fight so hard just to get support.

FINAL THOUGHTS

No matter what business you’re in — we’re all consumers: we buy things, we subscribe to services, and at some point most of us experience an incident.

When deploying an omnichannel strategy in any customer‑facing department, you must start from a very simple idea: if you don’t clearly state the purpose and hours of each channel upfront, customers will assume they can receive the same level of support everywhere.

It’s not essential to offer the same level of support on all channels, but it is crucial to communicate this before the user picks their preferred channel — so they don’t realise too late that they can’t use it for their request. The more transparent you are, the less friction you’ll create.

DON’T KNOW OUR OMNICHANNEL CONTACT CENTRE YET?

Our contact centre software lets you manage calls, chats, WhatsApps and emails from a single platform. It also integrates with key business tools to keep information automatically up to date — and comes with AI for voice and chat that detects intent, automates replies and, at the same time, helps agents with internal support queries in real time.

If you’d like to see how our omnichannel solution works for customer‑service, support and sales teams, fill in the form to talk to our experts: