What is omnichannel vs multichannel?
Multichannel means a business operates across multiple channels (chat, email, phone) but each runs on its own system. Omnichannel means the channels share customer history, context, and state in real time. The vocabulary is overused in marketing; the distinction is real.
Multichannel
Each channel has its own tool, its own queue, its own customer record. A customer who chatted yesterday and calls today is two unrelated rows. Common in legacy stacks where chat (Drift), tickets (Zendesk), and phone (Aircall) were bought separately and never integrated.
Omnichannel
All channels share a single customer record and a single conversation history. The agent who answers the call already sees yesterday's chat. AI grounding gets the customer's full cross-channel context. Reporting can ask omnichannel questions like "what is the resolution rate for customers who switched channels mid-issue".
The architectural requirement
True omnichannel requires merging at the data layer, not the UI layer. A unified dashboard over three separate databases solves the visual problem but not the data problem. message.com merges at the conversation primitive: see the unified inbox concept.
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