Retail Can’t Fix CX Until It Fixes How Its People Communicate
6 minutes de lecture
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
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:
Here's a stat that should make every retail executive pause: only 17% of retailers rate their unified commerce capabilities as mature.
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.
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:
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.
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:
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."
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:
Here are some examples of how it all breaks down:
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.
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
GVP, Sales & 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.
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