Dominika Babulicová

The term "omnichannel" treads on thin ice—some see it as just a marketing buzzword, while for others, it has been a game-changer in saving their business. I believe this mixed perception exists simply because many entrepreneurs misunderstand the concept. While in the past, all businesses operated through a single channel; today, it seems natural that every brand is “everywhere”.

Omnichannel customer experience is about integrating all sales and communication channels into one interconnected ecosystem. A customer can start shopping online, continue in a mobile app, complete the purchase in-store, and even return the product via courier—all without losing context, information, or convenience.

However, many brands enter multichannel customer service the wrong way and for wrong reasons. Sometimes, they do it to mimic competitors ("We immediately need an app, too!"), other times, it’s an attempt to jump on a potentially trending channel ("Trust me, voice assistants are THE future!"). And more often than not, brands view omnichannel as a cost-cutting measure—trying to automate customer support, reduce in-store staff, and so on.

Omnichannel is about value addition, not cost reduction.

— Harvard Business Review

The real value of omnichannel only emerges when customer interactions across all platforms are designed to create a smoother overall journey. Those who implement it correctly are not just building a sales system but an ecosystem where customers feel comfortable and want to come back.


The core (customer) problem

The American brand Warby Parker launched in 2010 as an e-commerce platform aimed at providing an alternative to expensive prescription glasses. Customers could choose five frames, have them delivered to their home for five days, and return the ones they didn’t like. By eliminating intermediaries in the purchasing process, the brand significantly lowered frame prices, and its customer base grew rapidly—but not just because of the cost savings. The Home Try-On concept addressed a fundamental customer pain point that competitors had overlooked: How do you choose frames from home when glasses look entirely different on a real face than on a model? If you wear prescription glasses, have an asymmetrical face, or a crooked nose (like me), you know the pain is paining.

A few years later, when traditional eyewear giants were questioning whether to maintain physical stores in the age of growing e-commerce, Warby Parker did the opposite—it opened its first physical store. Today, they operate nearly 300 stores with a goal of reaching 900. This seemingly counterintuitive move wasn’t about following competitors but about meeting unfulfilled customer needs. Conversations with customers revealed that many wanted to buy from Warby Parker but lacked a valid eye prescription. This insight led the brand to invest in physical locations—not because competitors had them, but because competitors were failing to meet market expectations. The eye diagnostics service, added to the low frame price, further strengthened Warby Parker’s competitive advantage. After its success in stores, the brand also designed an eye diagnostics alternative for its app, removing the last barriers to purchase for fully digital customers.

Warby Parker develops other services in its omnichannel experience based on the challenges faced by significant customer groups. For example, they discovered that three-quarters of in-store visitors had previously browsed the online shop. Store associates noticed that customers would bring handwritten notes with frame names—or, conversely, would save links to glasses they liked in-store as notes or in an app to consult with someone or check their insurance coverage. In response, the brand better connected the customer and sales environments. Store associates can see which products a customer has added to their favorites and send links to selected frames or face photos via email. All of this contributes to Warby Parker’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 86, the highest in the segment and far above other categories.


Two examples from Slovakia


NAY

We tackled a similar situation with NAY, Slovakia’s largest electronics retailer. The brand had two key advantages: knowledgeable and helpful sales staff with deep product expertise and a wide network of stores, making expert consultation easily accessible. Customer research confirmed that visiting a store was a crucial part of the decision-making process. Buying electronics is often a major investment, so customers wanted to compare specifications, weigh options, and get expert recommendations.

However, the purchasing decision didn’t always end in-store—customers often needed time to discuss their choice with a partner, consider financing, or decide on extra services like transport and installation. This clashed with sales staff incentives, as their commissions depended on in-store purchases. If a customer left undecided, they were often left without further assistance, disrupting the customer journey. To address this, we redesigned the sales application to integrate seamlessly with the online store—similar to Warby Parker.

Now, sales staff could email customers their selected products, allowing them to complete the purchase online with one click while still earning a commission for the assisted sale. In-store sales platform revenue doubled, upselling of additional services grew by 101 % and total year-on-year revenue across all channels increased by 20 %. Learn more in the full case study on NAY’s service design.


Martinus

Our collaboration with Martinus, the most popular bookstore in Slovakia, started from the opposite end. The brand wanted to redesign its online store to align with the experience of its physical bookstores, for which Martinus has been renowned and still is. To gather inspiration, we went directly to the stores—talking to customers and shadowing the staff to design an online store that functions like a knowledgeable librarian.

This led to the creation of thematic book collections curated by experts in different genres. We revamped the catalog, search function, reviews, and alternative product recommendations to make discovering new books as effortless as it is in a physical bookstore. Additionally, we improved the implementation of supplementary services, such as selecting a book format or sending it as a gift, which were previously lost in the old design. As a result of the redesign, mobile conversions increased by a quarter, upsell in the shopping cart grew by 160 %, and in-store order reservations surged by 380 %. You can read the detailed process in the case study on Martinus’s e-shop redesign.


A truly consistent experience

The goal of an omnichannel ecosystem should be to provide a consistent experience wherever customers naturally interact with the brand. However, consistency doesn’t mean using the same layout and brand elements across all channels, nor that services should be identical in all environments. Instead, they should be complementary—designed around the specific, and often surprising, expectations customers have for each channel or platform.

We’re surrounded by bad examples. Some traditional retailers simply turned their e-shop into a digital version of a paper catalog—without the functionalities customers rely on in the online space. Many companies have completely replaced customer support with chatbots that can’t handle complex issues, leaving customers frustrated. And my personal favorite—government services that allow you to start a process online but still require you to visit an office to complete it. That is not an omnichannel experience.

I believe that if brands focused more on understanding their customers' deepest needs and expectations, they could create better-connected services across all channels and assess the true value of their physical stores. They could also make better decisions about the relevance of their physical stores. And conversely—as Dave Gilboa, CEO of Warby Parker, highlights—one of the key benefits of operating a retail network is the wealth of customer insights a brand can gain through direct interactions.

If the role of physical stores is a pressing business challenge for you, join our discussion on the future of retail. On Thursday, February 20, at the Lighting Beetle* venue, strategic consultant Lucia Ciranová will present an analysis of emerging trends in retail and, in a panel discussion, will interview leaders of Slovak brands MTBIKER, Dr. Max, and Optika ZITA, who are successfully developing their brick-and-mortar stores even in the digital age.

Three case studies on omnichannel consistency

Viktor Šmidák

Dr. Max has the largest network of stores in Slovakia, but it is also known for bringing innovations. How do they manage the satisfaction of 1.5 million customers, how do they use data and what are their plans for the future?

Today's guest on the Minimum Viable Podcast is Jana Kutlíková, who is in charge of marketing and customer experience at Dr. Max.


Do you know your organization's CX maturity level? Find out in few seconds by answering these 6 questions.




Minimum Viable Podcast is brought to you by the CX design studio Lighting Beetle*. It's usually recorded in the Slovak language, however, you can read an English transcription of this episode below. For more English content, including case studies and handouts, visit our Journal.

To start, a little bit broadly, how big is Dr. Max and how many customers does it serve?

So overall Dr. Max consists of online and offline. Within offline, it's our pharmacies. Currently we have 421 and we can say that we are in every district, which we are very proud of. Then within online we have of course coverage within the whole of Slovakia in terms of delivery. In terms of the number of pharmacies, we are the largest in Slovakia.

How many customers do you serve?

We can measure this by the number of receipts. And then of course we measure how many customers we have in our loyalty program. An active customer for us is a customer who buys within twenty-four months and currently we are above the number of one and a half million. Customer care is a motto for us, we try to be number one in care and always bring something more to our patients and customers.

I hear a little bit in that that one of your goals is to cover the whole country, to have dominance in the market.

Yes, it is a long-term goal. Of course, the competition is still there and is big, but for us it's still like bringing something extra. For us it's availability, of course price and always bringing something extra in care. Currently, the pharmacy is the most accessible place of healthcare.

So when I'm sick and I have a runny nose, where do I go, I go to the pharmacy, only then do I visit the doctor. So this is how we approach it, that we are like the first entry point in case of illness.

What types of customers do you perceive, how do you categorize them?

We categorize online customers on the one hand. Secondly, there are our customers, whom we divide into 2 largest segments, namely prescription customers, then there are ordinary passers-by and last but not least, those who are dealing with some non-acute problem - they need nose drops, vitamins and so on. So we also have our pharmacies divided. We have pharmacies that you see on the street, then there are shopping pharmacies and then there are pharmacies that are in hospitals or clinics, so there is also a different group of patients there.

Do you also divide these customers socio-demographically, that you have them precisely named, that this is some kind of profile of his? Or are they rather shopping modes, that these people simply move from one mode to another?

When we talk about pure age, pensioners are more sensitive to the price. So we try to adapt the offer to them. But as for over-the-counter customers, we of course sort them into customer groups based on their shopping behavior, value and basket composition.

When the NPS is below 70, we really actively work with it

How do you know how to put together the product portfolio at a specific store?

So those outpatient pharmacies are more prescribed, there their stock availability is also adapted based on what doctors are in the given hospital. But on the other hand, when our pharmacies are in the shopping mall, we try to have a wider offer there and there, for example, we also place dermocosmetics and there the portfolio is larger. So we monitor the purchases of each pharmacy and we are also enabled by such a system that you can reserve medicines online with us.

This means that the pharmacist will issue it to you within an hour. There you can see which pharmacy has it and if there is a greater interest in some medicine, we will pre-stock this pharmacy.

What data about customers do you process? How do you know they are satisfied? What are your pillars based on which you make action plans?

As part of our customers, we have the Dr. Max Club. Whoever is a member of the club, of course, receives benefits and we "interview" these members after each purchase through a satisfaction questionnaire. Based on this purchase, we ask him about the NPS, whether he was satisfied with the purchase and whether he would actually recommend this pharmacy to his friends. And then there are things like whether he was satisfied with the pharmacist's approach, whether the pharmacy had the product that she needed and so on and so forth. So we have it divided into larger sections.

I personally don't think that a pharmacy, for example, is the place where we would now place tablets. The goal is, of course, to convert as many patients as possible who are not members to become members so that we have data about them. Then we subsequently work more with the phase of those "detractors". We then communicate with those detectors through our call center.

What else can you do with the data other than calling detractors?

Each pharmacy has its own NPS and we are dedicated to improving it. When there is long-term dissatisfaction in some pharmacy, then of course we work with the regional director to continue working with that pharmacy and it is not just some kind of fluctuation. When the NPS is below 70, we really actively work with it to make it as good as possible. We talked a lot about the data and I'm interested in how important this data is for Dr. Max's top management. It's definitely the topic of the week and I can say that we have it in our annual goals.

We have a very nice example from the beginning of last year, when we were changing our loyalty club, while canceling the previous loyalty points. And by forcing those patients to apply points, it happened to us that we sent those x new customers to the pharmacy to apply those points so that they would not lose them. There, such a thing happened that those customers who shopped online were suddenly dissatisfied with the approach of that pharmacy. At that time, the NPS of pharmacies dropped and it turned out that it was because of online customers who were not used to waiting in line, they had to talk to the pharmacist...

Dr. Max Club has 1.5 million customers. What is the mechanics of how you got so many customers into the loyalty program?

Members have better prices, especially for medicines. Another benefit is our private label, where there are 2+1 promotions only with a loyalty card. They can also participate in competitions. However, the main motivator is the price of the product. Being a member brings benefits and based on the feedback data we can offer customers a tailor-made offer.

For example, if someone regularly buys vitamin C, we will send them information about the discount. The classics are birthday and name day discounts. At the end of the year, we send a summary email about the amount saved, which evokes a good feeling in people.

Is the main primary benefit for you customer data or do you track something else as well?

We definitely monitor commercial parameters. Then definitely also within the measurement of market share. I'm not saying completely, but we can look at it this way. You are making quite significant innovations at Dr. Max, at least that's how it seems to me. I will mention the new Super Dr. Max concept, you do sampling directly at the pharmacy, you have robotization...

Why are you actually doing these innovations?

To put it simply, these things you mentioned give us something extra for patients and secondly, time to devote to them. For example, the robotization of expedition work in our pharmacies. Our ROWA robot saves the pharmacist a trip to and from the warehouse, so he can take care of the customer. Secondly, there are examinations, again something extra.

When you go to the pharmacy, you can measure, for example, CRP and only then go to the doctor if the CRP is elevated. The service we would like to have is vaccination. It will also relieve doctors, because it is something we can do at those pharmacies. So when you go to pick up the vaccine, you can get vaccinated right away with us.

Is this more a matter of increasing revenue for you or is it more a matter of customer care?

We don't charge much for the services. It's really like offering the patient something extra.

We talked about these innovations, how do these innovations help you win in the competitive market?

In loyalty. We know how long the waiting times are for those doctors and when I decide that I'm going to solve some problem, I can solve it in one place and thus build loyalty. And on the other hand, we then have data about the customer, so we can always offer him something extra.

What are the responses to these extra services?

We managed to do the CRP, but the other tests still need time. It is a long-term journey and strategy that the pharmacy provides something extra.

I would like to go back to Super Dr. Max, because it is quite an exceptional concept. Try to tell us what it actually is.

Super Dr. Max is our pilot project of the pharmacy of the future. On an area of 715 square meters, we offer more than 6,000 products from various categories - in addition to medicines and nutritional supplements, there is dermocosmetics, children's products, healthy food, products for animals, electronics, sports aids and much, much more. It was also a test of what the customer and patient are willing to buy in that pharmacy, what wide portfolio can they go to.

We are still trying, rotating the products, looking at the customer behavior. There are consultation zones, we offer body composition analysis with the InBody device. Furthermore, what is there is an additional service of dermo-advice, where we do an analysis of the skin and hair. So it's a comprehensive care of my well-being, that you not only sell me a product, but also give me some analysis of how I'm doing.

What are the first reactions from customers? How do you evaluate Super Dr. Max internally now?

For us, it was a test of the assortment, what we learn and what we don't learn. And I can still say that we are still trying. It was quite a challenge for us to grasp and sell it in terms of marketing, that we have such a thing at all, because customers in Slovakia are not used to it at all, which is the opposite abroad. In the future, we will then open something between a classic pharmacy and Super Dr. Max.

What is the primary mode of purchase? Who is the e-shop for?

For everyone. Of course. But what works very well for us and I can say that it is growing are precisely those reservations at pharmacies, where it is a classic omni channel approach. This means I order online and have it in the pharmacy within an hour. Furthermore, we launched Marketplace in May of last year. There we are still learning what is and what is not, how to do it. We also offer reservations for prescription drugs.

Are you also thinking about expanding services within digital?

We have the Dr. Max consultation, where you can ask the pharmacist a question. It's not instant, but a real pharmacist answers you. Even our articles, which are all on the web, are written by experts. We would never let some copywriter or AI write it.

Do you plan to continue to perhaps bring the pharmacist closer, have a faster response, bring the online space closer to the offline one?

My personal goal is to have a pharmacy in the Metaverse. Today, the legislation will not let go, but definitely yes. We also try to involve pharmacists on maternity leave, and this is not possible in the offline space. So this is how we try to motivate the staff to stay with us, even when they go on maternity leave. We would definitely prefer to have it online 24/7, but currently, in terms of capacity, this is the maximum we can give to patients.

What is your biggest challenge that you would like to solve somehow? We call it a design challenge, i.e. a complex problem that stands before you and you would like to get through it.

As I mentioned, to have a pharmacy in the Metaverse. So for that you need a dose of better legislation. If the legislation wasn't so discouraging, that one could really get carried away and make some kind of pharmacy of the millennium, where everything would be grasped in a different way, that would be very nice in terms of what you nicely called design character and so that our pharmacies really offer something extra, so that patients go there for those services.

So that we are the first choice, that I don't just go for some of my vitamins and for some of my prescriptions, but that I go there because I want advice. I want care and it's also a more pleasant environment than in the doctor's waiting room. Raise the awareness of the pharmacy to a higher level as well. It's more than just a pharmacy, but it's somewhere where that comprehensive care is provided for our patients.

Minimum Viable Podcast is brought to you every two months by the design studio Lighting Beetle*, which focuses on creating an exceptional customer experience.

In Minimum Viable Podcast, we use relatable language to dive into customer experience design. We invite unique guests to chat about how Customer Experience influences business success. A special thanks to Mojmír Procházka for his production support.

We are looking forward to every listen, follow, share, and suggestion for improvement. You can send us your tips for interesting personalities with whom we can talk about design to podcast@lbstudio.sk.

Enjoy!

Minimum Viable Podcast #29: Future of pharmacy

The way consumers experience the world has changed significantly over the past five years, impacting how they interact with brands. New competitors have entered the traditional purchasing journey: global marketplaces are pushing on price, AI is further accelerating giants, and social commerce is turning even consumers themselves into competitors.

To understand the change in purchasing decisions, we analyzed dozens of renowned studies on today’s customers and compared them with indicators of success of leading brands. In respondents' statements, we identified how they now develop brand affinity and created the concept of Experience identities.


Brands need to redefine their role in people’s lives

Experience identities help brand leaders (whether they are company directors or managers at the product – marketing intersection) understand how the new reality has transformed consumer purchasing behavior. They represent a model of thinking that allows us to view current expectations of future customers and spot opportunities to address them amid the mix of new competitors.

We’ve gathered dozens of examples of successful brands that define their role in people’s lives through a well-designed portfolio of services and a consistent customer experience identity. Our report offers recommendations on how to conduct a managerial reflection on your consumer brand and choose steps to take.


In this report, you will learn:

 * what the new customer journey looks like after turbulent years (COVID, war, inflation, online marketplaces, AI...);
 * how brand experience and brand perception influence purchasing decisions of today’s consumers;
 * which identities the most successful brands adopt to redefine their market position;
 * the role customer experience and service portfolios play in this mix;
 * what makes four Experience identities stand out: the Problem Solver, the Empathetic Expert, the Responsibility Enabler, and the Magic Maker.









Get The new consumer expectations report, including our Experience identities framework


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Customer experience
that drives your business

Our services create true business value

Service
Design

Digital
Product Design

CX Transformation

We are Lighting Beetle

Journal

Three case studies on omnichannel consistency

Minimum Viable Podcast #29: Future of pharmacy

Experience identities: How to react to the new consumer expectations

Customer experiencethat drives your business

Our services create true business value

ServiceDesign

DigitalProduct Design

CX Transformation

We are Lighting Beetle﻿

Journal﻿

Three case studies on omnichannel consistency

Minimum Viable Podcast #29: Future of pharmacy

Experience identities: How to react to the new consumer expectations

Customer experience
that drives your business

Service
Design

Digital
Product Design

We are Lighting Beetle

Journal