Omnichannel support software solves the problem of disconnected support channels. Omnichannel support software lets support teams manage customer conversations across multiple channels — email, chat, phone, social, SMS, etc. — in a single unified workspace, so reps have full context regardless of how a customer reaches out.
This post covers what omnichannel support software is, the key features to evaluate, and how to build a strategy around it.
What is omnichannel support software?
Customers expect fast, connected help. Omnichannel support is a centralized customer service approach that creates a more efficient experience for customers and support teams. Omnichannel support software is the platform that unifies all customer support channels into a single shared inbox. Email, phone, live chat, SMS, and social media tickets flow into a single workflow, so reps can manage cross-platform conversations without losing context, and customers don’t have to repeat themselves.
In traditional multichannel support, customers can contact service teams in multiple ways, but those channels run as separate queues. Omnichannel support software connects all communication channels to create seamless support, tying every support interaction to the customer record regardless of the channel it came through. Tools like Service Hub support omnichannel support with shared conversations, automation, and reporting.
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Multichannel Support vs. Omnichannel Support
Multichannel support and omnichannel support both give customers multiple channels for contacting support (email, phone, social media, SMS, live chat), but multichannel support keeps those channels siloed as separate queues and support tickets. Omnichannel support operates within a single shared inbox to provide connected, timeline-based support.
Must-Have Features in Omnichannel Support Software
Unified Conversation Timeline & Shared Inbox
Omnichannel support software like Service Hub unifies customer interactions from different channels, from email to social to in-store and live chat, into one space so support teams can work from the same customer data and context.
Customer contact records condense support conversations in an easily digestible timeline across channels. HubSpot’s Help Desk consolidates cross-channel support tickets organized by channel, urgency, category, status, and more.
Deep CRM Integration & Customer Context
CRM integration powers omnichannel support. It provides the data layer that connects support interactions across channels to the single source of truth: the customer. Service Hub is powered by Smart CRM, giving reps full visibility into the customer record, including all support interactions, previous tickets, and account information at the start of every conversation.
Omnichannel Coverage
An omnichannel platform supports every channel that customers use, including email, phone, SMS, live chat, and social media. It consolidates conversations from all these channels into a single shared inbox, eliminating repetitive information and tasks, tool-switching, and loss of context.
Intelligent Routing & SLAs
Conversations should automatically route to the right rep or team based on availability, skill set, or ticket type, with SLA tracking to maintain consistent response times across channels. HubSpot’s ticketing system supports automated routing and AI-powered intelligent assignment.
AI and Automation
The best omnichannel support solutions offer deeply integrated AI features and automations that improve workflows. Tools like Service Hub offer AI ticket summarization, intelligent routing, agent assist tools, and AI chatbots that can automatically deflect customer inquiries.
Pro tip: Although the best omnichannel support software includes robust AI features, it’s essential to keep humans in the loop and build in escalation paths so customers can always reach human reps when needed.
Self-Service & Knowledge Base
An effective knowledge base and self-service resources should let customers solve issues on their own without ever needing to contact a rep. It saves customers time, reduces incoming tickets, and frees up reps to focus on high-value and complex tickets. Service Hub’s knowledge base has AI-powered search and AI insights to surface content gaps.
Pro tip: A knowledge base is a valuable resource for reps and customers. Today, HubSpot’s knowledge base agent can automatically identify content gaps and draft new documentation based on resolved tickets.
As a former HubSpot support rep, I referenced our self-service resources daily when troubleshooting and sharing solutions with customers. I worked in support before tools like this existed, and a system that automatically closes documentation gaps would have saved me hours every week.
Reporting & Analytics
Cross-channel dashboards should track CSAT (customer satisfaction scores), first-contact resolution, average handling time, and SLA compliance so managers can identify gaps and make staffing decisions based on real data.
Pro tip: Teams can use reports in Service Hub to measure CSAT scores and resolution times to discover which reps or workflows may need more training or resources.
Security, Compliance & Role-Based Access
SOC 2 (Systems and Organization Controls 2) compliance, data residency options, and granular permission controls are a necessity for enterprise support teams.
Scalability & Customization
The best omnichannel support platforms offer scalability and customization, so teams can continue to grow and support more customers without increasing headcount. Multi-brand support is important for companies with multiple products or brands that have separate support teams, and a large integration library helps keep the platform up to date as new tools or APIs are added to a company’s stack.
How to Build an Omnichannel Support Strategy
An omnichannel support strategy creates a smooth customer experience with faster resolution times and higher customer satisfaction. Customer expectations have increased over the past few years, and a thoughtful omnichannel support strategy ensures teams can keep pace and deliver the personalized, secure, AI-assisted, and always-available support customers expect.
Map the customer journey.
Teams should start by mapping the customer journey to identify common pain points and bottlenecks and to anticipate the issues support will most likely need to handle.
In addition, support leaders should analyze customers’ preferred support channels to uncover where volume will come from and make staffing decisions accordingly. For example, ecommerce businesses are likely to experience heavier volume in live chat queues, while SaaS companies may need to prioritize email and phone support.
Omnichannel support ensures teams can handle incoming tickets from all channels, but it’s still important for teams to focus training on the most popular queues.
Adopt the right tools.
An omnichannel support strategy requires an omnichannel support platform that can serve customers at scale. Tools like Service Hub help teams meet customers across all channels, including phone, email, live chat, SMS, messaging apps like WhatsApp, and social media. Service Hub consolidates communication and tickets across all these channels into a unified workspace.
The best web-based customer service tools give reps real-time access to all customer information, context, interaction history, and preferences. Since Service Hub is built on HubSpot Smart CRM, support teams get a 360-degree view of all customer data from the contact record directly in each ticket, which helps reps personalize their support and anticipate customer needs.
AI-powered customer service automation is another powerful advantage. Support teams can leverage AI chatbots to handle routine queries, freeing agents to focus on complex cases. HubSpot’s omnichannel platform also includes AI-driven ticket assignment and routing, AI tools that identify knowledge base gaps and automatically draft new documentation, and AI reply recommendations, which draft replies based on ticket information and customer context.
As a former HubSpot support rep before the AI era, I can only imagine how much time these AI support tools would have saved me. I spent a lot of my time drafting replies by hand and tracking down the right documentation when ours fell behind. Omnichannel platforms like HubSpot handle a good chunk of that now, freeing up reps to focus on customers instead of busywork.
Free Help Desk & Ticketing Software
Keep track of customer requests in one unified help desk that connects to your CRM database.
- Provide personalized, AI-powered support to your customers
- Save time, reduce errors, and streamline service processes
- Improve rep efficiency & time to resolution
- And more!
Maintain consistent branding and messaging.
Consistent branding and messaging across every support channel reinforce brand identity and build trust. Website copy, knowledge base articles, emails, social media profiles, and chat interfaces should all reflect the same brand voice, style, and values. Consistent branding across channels helps customers recognize the brand and strengthens their connection to it.
Pro tip: Brand voice should be consistent, but it doesn’t need to be identical across every channel. Social media support can be more casual and conversational, while email and phone support often call for a more formal tone.
Empower agents with training and tools.
Support rep training and onboarding is the foundation of a great omnichannel customer experience. Guidelines for tone, language, and response time should be specific to each channel rather than applied as one blanket standard.
Pro tip: Have experienced support reps shadow new hires on calls. Hands-on, in-the-moment feedback is more useful than dense, documentation-based training most of the time.
Empowering reps with the right customer care tools is also crucial. Service Hub gives reps a unified support inbox that consolidates tickets from all channels, keeping the team aligned. It also has AI automation features like automated ticket classification and a customer agent that resolves routine queries and escalates to reps when needed, which reduces overall cross-channel workload.
Leverage unified data and analytics.
Data and analytics help support team leaders surface patterns in customer behavior and preferences, and illuminate which channels are healthy and which need additional training or staffing. Customer service tracking software ties CSAT scores, feedback, and common questions together, showing where the support experience breaks down. Support leaders can use those insights to identify gaps and adjust strategy on an ongoing basis.
Integrate channels.
Omnichannel support software helps teams integrate separate support channels. The right platform eliminates silos and creates a unified experience where customers don’t have to repeat themselves or start a ticket again from the beginning. Customers who start a support conversation via live chat should be able to pick up exactly where they left off when switching to email or phone later because the rep already knows what’s going on.
A CRM data layer that connects customer records enables an omnichannel customer support experience. Service Hub is built on top of Smart CRM, so all incoming inquiries are automatically associated with the correct customer record, including complete historical context of past interactions, preferences, and company info.
Monitor and iterate.
Customer service leaders should track response time, first-contact resolution, and customer satisfaction scores across all channels and use these insights to adjust processes. HubSpot’s Service Analytics comes packed with out-of-the-box reports for rep productivity, average ticket response time, post-support survey scores, and overall support volume. A unified platform like HubSpot brings support inquiries from all channels into one place, allowing leaders to analyze performance across channels without switching between tools.
Omnichannel Support Examples
Omnichannel support transforms a disjointed customer experience into a seamless experience where customers are barely aware they switched channels. Below are examples of how an omnichannel support platform creates unified, positive customer experiences.
Live chat escalates to a ticket without losing context.
Unific, a HubSpot partner that builds ecommerce integrations, runs its support with Service Hub. Before HubSpot, the team used a third-party live chat tool with no way to organize or segment chats, so important customer issues got buried.
With HubSpot, Unific customers can reach out via live chat, where HubSpot’s chatbot can direct them to relevant knowledge base articles. Human reps can step into the chat if needed, and if an issue can’t be resolved in the moment, the team converts it to a ticket in HubSpot’s Help Desk. The ticket preserves all the context from the live chat, along with the customer information from Smart CRM. That way, a different rep can pick it up later, even on another channel like email, without asking for prior details.
One customer record connects support and success teams.
When I worked at HubSpot Support from 2015 to 2017, we used a third-party ticketing system alongside other disjointed tools. The phone and email queues lived in one system, social media support lived in a different platform entirely, and they didn’t connect. Moving a social media question over to our ticketing system meant I had to create a ticket and write a summary by hand. It wasn’t a great experience for me, and customer information fell through the cracks.
Sometime after I left, HubSpot migrated its support team to Service Hub, resulting in $2.3M in annual headcount savings and a 1.6x increase in productivity. Unifying tickets from all channels on a single platform was a big upgrade for the support team.
HubSpot also migrated nearly 400 customer success managers to the Customer Success Workspace in Service Hub. In the past, if a support rep needed to escalate a case to a CSM, it meant writing a handoff summary and losing details as they stitched together disparate tools. Moving both teams to Service Hub put support agents, CSMs, and contract managers on a single customer record with the same data, notes, and communication history. The result is an omnichannel experience for internal teams as well: Context follows the customer between departments the same way it follows them between channels.
I wish I could have been around to experience it, especially today with Service Hub’s AI features that surface past interactions, recommend solutions, and help reps respond faster.
Frequently Asked Questions About Omnichannel Support
What is omnichannel support software?
Omnichannel support software is a tool that unifies customer conversations across support channels. It consolidates customer inquiries from email, phone, live chat, SMS, messaging apps, and social media into a single shared inbox, creating a smooth customer experience where context carries across conversations. Customers (and support teams) who start in one channel can pick up in another without starting over.
What’s the difference between omnichannel and multichannel support?
Omnichannel support is a unified customer experience in which conversations from all channels (email, phone, live chat, SMS, messaging apps, and social media) flow into a single shared inbox, preserving customer context.
Multichannel support offers multiple ways for customers to reach out, but the conversations across channels are not connected. So customers may be able to reach out via email, phone, or live chat, but if they report an issue via live chat and later switch to email, the context from the original ticket doesn’t automatically carry over to the new channel.
What are the four pillars of omnichannel support?
The four pillars of omnichannel support are:
- Unified data.
- Consistency across touchpoints.
- Connected channels.
- Customer-centric insights.
Together, these pillars ensure that every customer interaction — regardless of channel — is informed by the same complete picture of the customer. When all four are in place, support teams can deliver seamless, personalized experiences at scale while continuously improving based on real performance data.
What should I look for in omnichannel support software?
Businesses should look for omnichannel support software that lets customers reach out via their preferred channels and ties tickets from every channel together via CRM data in a unified inbox.
The best omnichannel support software also includes AI features: chatbots that deflect routine inquiries, a self-updating knowledge base with self-service resources, and automated routing and assignment. Agent assist tools round it out by suggesting solutions, surfacing customer context, and helping reps respond faster.
Get started with omnichannel support.
Customers judge support by problem resolution, not which channel they used. Omnichannel support software makes it seamless for users: one shared inbox, full context on every ticket, and a customer record that follows the conversation across channels and teams.
Support leaders who map the customer journey, pick a platform built on unified customer data, and keep measuring performance across channels put their teams in a position to resolve issues faster and keep customers around longer. Service Hub is built for exactly that — connecting every channel, rep, and customer interaction on a single CRM-powered platform so your team can focus on resolution, not coordination.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in August 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
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Keep track of customer requests in one unified help desk that connects to your CRM database.
- Provide personalized, AI-powered support to your customers
- Save time, reduce errors, and streamline service processes
- Improve rep efficiency & time to resolution
- And more!