The Retail Disconnect: Seamless Customer Journeys, Fragmented Employee Experiences

The omnichannel success story is a popular one. Picture this: a presentation at the National Retail Federation Conference. A retailer presents their seamless customer experiences, unified commerce platforms, and AI-powered personalization. Every touchpoint, every customer! Limitless and unified, from brick and mortar to web to mobile.

Everyone nods. Everyone applauds.

But take a peek behind the curtain, and the omnichannel experience doesn’t look so… omni. Contact center agents can't reach the warehouse supervisor. The store associate has no visibility into online inventory. The seasonal hire is using a different communication tool than the full-time team. The district manager is responding to messages on four different channels, but they’re missing critical context in all of them.

The truth is, the current definition of omnichannel might be too limiting for retail, according to Harley Finkelstein, President of Shopify. He discussed this shift during a talk at NRF: “When I look at the most important brands that are successful, they are not selling everywhere. They’re selling in the right locations for the particular demographic. When you look at both of your companies, all your channels are interconnected.” When companies truly understand their customers, they can match their channels to those customers more intentionally, rather than assuming that one size fits all.

And yet, retailers are building increasingly sophisticated customer experiences on top of fragmented, siloed communication systems for employees. And that's why most of them can't turn their aspirations into reality.

Retailers are building increasingly sophisticated customer experiences on top of fragmented, siloed communication systems for employees. And that's why most of them can't turn their aspirations into reality.

Joe McStravick

Global Vice President, Sales & Channel, 8x8

Two Separate Realitieslink to this section

The issue is, everyone in retail is looking at their customer-facing systems.

49% of contact center employees believe there are two separate cultures in their workplace: one for the customer-facing teams, and one for everyone else. In the end, it’s harder to deliver unified commerce to customers when your own organization operates in silos.

The breakdown is happening in the spaces between teams:

• Contact center and store teams
• Online fulfillment to in-store pickup
• Corporate and contact center
• Full-time and seasonal staff
• HQ/Back-office to store associates
• One department and another

Here's a stat that should make every retail executive pause: only 17% of retailers rate their unified commerce capabilities as mature.

• 35% of retailers cite inventory visibility and synchronization as their biggest cross-channel challenge
• 40% can't deliver relevant product recommendations across channels, and 32% struggle with pricing optimization
• 20% of retail contact center calls are from customers who already tried (and failed) self-service

And here's what makes this even more urgent: 72% of successful multi-location organizations take a hybrid approach that marries cloud and on-premises solutions. However, if your communications infrastructure isn't designed for this post-omnichannel reality, if store systems can't seamlessly communicate with HQ systems, you're stuck with spiraling complexity that builds walls between your teams.

Over time, the cracks in the system start to show.

The Stress Testlink to this section

When a rush comes, whether it’s during the holidays or thanks to a surprise spike, it exposes what’s already broken. 64% of retailers say demand forecasting is their top priority. But strangely, few are worrying about whether their teams can actually communicate fast enough to respond to what the data is telling them.

Here’s what gets exposed when teams are under pressure:

• Connectivity failures: Can your contact center agent instantly connect with a warehouse manager when a customer's order is delayed? Or does it take three emails, two chat messages, and 45 minutes? The internet evolved past dial-up speeds; your comms should too.
• Context gaps: Can your store associate see what a customer discussed with your chatbot 10 minutes ago? Or are customers forced to repeat themselves at each new contact point?
• Onboarding breakdowns: Do seasonal hires have the same access to communications as your year-round staff? Or are they locked out of the tools that keep teams connected?
• Decision latency: Can a district manager get an instant read on which stores need backup during a surge? If they’re forced to compile data from 15 different sources, there’s no way they can make quick, informed decisions.

The final outcome of these breakdowns? Unhappy customers. So while it might be tempting to think what’s going on behind the scenes doesn’t impact the customer experience, that simply isn’t the case.

Before you can deliver seamless experiences to customers, you need seamless operations with your teams.

The Inside-Out CX Principlelink to this section

Before you can deliver seamless experiences to customers, you need seamless operations with your teams.

Retail contact centers now prioritize managing competition and increasing sales, but that's a big ask if agents are isolated from the rest of the business. Setting people up for failure is not how you keep the best talent.

That’s why it’s so important to understand that the contact center isn't only a support function. It's a relationship hub: it’s helping with sales, representing the brand, and boosting customer loyalty.

But it can do all of the above only if it can actually connect to:

• Product teams (to share insights)
• Store operations (to solve fulfillment issues)
• Marketing (to understand campaign impact)
• Logistics (to answer "where's my order?")
• Leadership (to escalate systemic issues)

You're investing millions in unified commerce platforms. But are your teams using the same communication platform? Or are they juggling Slack, Teams, WhatsApp, email, SMS, and whatever else?

Remember: Companies with top-quartile employee experience are 2x more likely to achieve top-quartile customer experience. Keeping your employees happy and connected is how you do the same with your customers.

To achieve that kind of outcome, a mindset shift needs to happen. So, less focus on: "We have an omnichannel platform," and more focus on: "We operate as a connected organization, and every store and team can reach everyone else, instantly."

Adding Tools Isn’t a Strategylink to this section

Retailers keep throwing channels and tools at what is fundamentally a connectivity problem. Everyone's got blinders on; they’re too sharply focused on the customer's omnichannel journey. And the employee reality often gets ignored.

What the industry is doing:

• Piloting AI tools to replace previous-generation chatbots, without considering if the new tools actually deliver better results
• Building an omnichannel for the customer, without realizing that different teams managing different external channels still can’t coordinate with each other or see the full view
• Investing in employee experience programs to foster community (but not fixing the 15 disconnected apps that negatively impact that sense of community every day)

Here are some examples of how it all breaks down:

1. The "Smart Store" that can't talk to its contact center: Store associates have tablets showing inventory, but when they need to resolve a customer's online order issue, they're still sending emails and waiting for responses.
2. The AI chatbot that creates more work: Customer tries self-service, fails, calls the contact center. The agent has no record of the chatbot conversation. The customer has to start over. The agent can't easily escalate to a supervisor or loop in another department.
3. The surge nobody saw coming: Data shows a spike in demand. But by the time that insight travels through emails, meetings, and fragmented communication channels, it's too late to reallocate staff or coordinate with fulfillment.

These aren't problems that can be fixed by adding more tools. They're communications infrastructure problems that need to be fixed by adjusting how your tools are wired together.

Start With the Foundationlink to this section

You can't build unified commerce on fragmented communications. You can't deliver omnichannel CX when your teams operate in silos. You can't empower frontline employees when they're juggling 15 different communication tools. And no, the fix isn't another point solution or another AI pilot.

Start treating communications infrastructure as the foundation of every other initiative you're investing in. When every location, every team, and every conversation runs through one unified communications platform, you're building the operational foundation that makes everything else — omnichannel commerce, AI implementations, employee experience programs — actually work

Joe McStravick

Global Vice President, Worldwide Sales and Channel

Joe McStravick is Global Vice President, Worldwide Sales and Channel at 8x8, bringing 20+ years of experience in telecoms and IT to drive predictable growth through disciplined go-to-market execution, strong partner ecosystems, and high-performing teams.