Your customers do not think in channels. They start a conversation on your website, continue it through your app, and finish it on the phone. They browse in-store, compare prices on their phone, and purchase through your e-commerce platform. Yet most businesses are structured around channels, not customers, and the result is an omnichannel customer experience that feels anything but seamless.
At Meraki Research, we research the reality of how customers move across your channels and touchpoints. We reveal where the experience breaks when a customer switches from one channel to another, where context is lost, where effort multiplies, and where your competitors are delivering a more cohesive journey. Our research gives you the evidence to design an omnichannel strategy that works the way your customers actually behave.
We have helped businesses across industries understand the gap between their intended omnichannel experience and the one customers actually encounter. The findings consistently unlock improvements that increase satisfaction, reduce service costs, and strengthen customer loyalty.
Our Approach: The Omnichannel Reality Method
Most organizations think they deliver an omnichannel experience because they offer multiple channels. But offering channels is not the same as connecting them. Our Omnichannel Reality Method measures the actual experience across every transition point.
Phase 1: Channel Ecosystem Audit
We begin by mapping your complete channel ecosystem: every way a customer can interact with your business, including websites, mobile apps, physical locations, contact centres, social platforms, email, chat, and emerging AI-powered channels. For each channel, we document the capabilities, the data that flows between them, and the handoff points where customers transition from one to another.
Phase 2: Cross-Channel Journey Research
This is the core of our approach. We study how real customers navigate across your channels during actual interactions. Using a combination of diary studies, journey intercepts, behavioral tracking, and in-depth interviews, we capture the full cross-channel experience. We focus specifically on transition moments: what happens when a customer moves from digital to physical, from self-service to assisted service, from one platform to another.
Phase 3: Friction and Consistency Analysis
We analyse every channel transition for three dimensions: friction (how much effort the transition requires), consistency (whether the experience feels like the same brand), and context retention (whether the customer has to repeat themselves or start over). We quantify these across customer segments, journey types, and channel combinations. The result is a precise map of where your omnichannel experience works and where it fractures.
Phase 4: Competitive Omnichannel Benchmarking
Consumers compare your omnichannel experience to every other business they interact with. We benchmark your cross-channel performance against key competitors and best-in-class brands from adjacent industries. This reveals where you lead, where you lag, and where the biggest competitive opportunities exist.
Phase 5: Strategic Recommendations and Prioritization
We deliver a prioritized set of strategies to close the gaps identified in the research. Recommendations span channel design, data integration, customer service model, and technology infrastructure. Each recommendation is tied to a specific customer outcome and scored by impact, feasibility, and cost.
For example, we worked with a national retailer that believed its omnichannel experience was strong because customers could buy online and pick up in store. Our research revealed that while that single pathway worked well, virtually every other cross-channel journey was broken. Customers who started a return online and brought it to a store had to re-explain the issue. Customers who asked a question via chat and then called received conflicting answers. Loyalty points earned in-store did not appear in the app for days. By mapping and prioritizing these fractures, we helped the retailer build an 18-month roadmap that systematically closed each gap, resulting in a 31% improvement in cross-channel satisfaction scores.
When Omnichannel CX Research Is the Right Fit
This service is designed for you if:
- Your business operates across multiple customer channels and you suspect the experience between them is inconsistent
- Customers are complaining about having to repeat themselves, restart processes, or navigate disconnected interactions across platforms
- You are investing in new channels, such as AI, chatbots, or app features, and need to understand how they will fit into the broader customer journey
- Your CX strategy calls for omnichannel excellence but you lack evidence of where the real gaps are
- Customer service teams report that cross-channel handoffs are a major source of customer frustration
This may not be the right fit if:
- Your business operates in a single channel with no cross-channel customer journeys
- You need to evaluate a single digital channel in depth. Our Digital Customer Experience research focuses on individual digital touchpoints.
- You are looking for technology implementation rather than research. We provide the customer evidence; your team or partners build the integrations.
What We Deliver
Our deliverables are designed for CX leaders, operations executives, and the cross-functional teams responsible for delivering a connected customer experience.
- Omnichannel Journey Maps: Visual representations of how customers actually navigate across your channels, with every transition point documented for friction, consistency, and context retention
- Channel Transition Scorecard: A quantified assessment of every major channel-to-channel handoff in your business, rated by customer effort, satisfaction, and completion rate
- Cross-Channel Friction Report: Detailed findings on where the omnichannel experience breaks down, with root-cause analysis and customer verbatims that bring the data to life
- Competitive Omnichannel Benchmark: How your cross-channel experience compares to key competitors and best-in-class businesses, identifying specific ways your approach falls short or leads
- Segment-Level Analysis: How different customer segments experience your channels differently. Power users, infrequent customers, and high-value consumers often have very different cross-channel patterns.
- Strategic Recommendations and Roadmap: A prioritized action plan for closing omnichannel gaps, sequenced by impact and feasibility, with clear ownership assignments
- Executive Summary: A narrative presentation designed for leadership and board-level discussions
Industry Applications
Retail
Retailers manage some of the most complex omnichannel ecosystems in any industry: e-commerce, mobile, in-store, marketplaces, social commerce, and customer service across all of them. We help retailers understand how consumers actually shop across these channels and where the transitions create friction that costs sales and loyalty.
Financial Services
Banking customers expect to start a mortgage application online, continue it in a branch, and track it on their phone. Insurance customers want to file a claim digitally and get updates wherever they are. We research whether these cross-channel interactions work as seamlessly as customers expect.
Healthcare
Patients interact with healthcare systems through portals, phone, in-person visits, telehealth, and messaging platforms. We study how the experience holds up across these transitions, particularly around scheduling, records access, and care coordination.
Telecommunications
Telecom customers switch between app, website, store, and phone support constantly. We research where these transitions break, particularly around account management, troubleshooting, and service changes, and which improvements will have the greatest impact on satisfaction and retention.
Travel and Hospitality
The travel customer journey spans research, booking, pre-trip communication, on-site experience, and post-trip engagement across multiple channels and platforms. We map how travelers actually move through these stages and where the omnichannel experience fails to meet expectations.
Government and Public Services
Government agencies are expanding digital channels alongside in-person and phone services. We research how citizens experience these channels, with attention to accessibility, clarity, and the ability to complete processes without starting over when switching channels.