Recently I have to deal a lot with user experiences of services and products that live simultaneously on websites, microsites, mobile, in mail or social media, in-store and even in call centres. These services and products, to which we refer to as multichannel experiences, can be quite challenging to get right.

Thoughts about design as well as assessment characteristics relating to consistent multichannel experiences have recently been published via Foviance (here) and also got referenced in the UX Storytellers project (here) to support designers as well as researchers in the UX field dealing with these sorts of problems.

In a nutshell, the most relevant characteristics to consider when assessing or designing for consistent multichannel experiences are:

• Coherent - basic idea of the service is perceived as consistent across channels.
• Complementary - coherent service experience delights with specific benefits within chosen service channel.
• Simultaneous - benefits of service channel can be combined as needed.
• Shiftable - service adapts to customer flexibility and present needs.
• Synchronized - service allows shifting between channels and shared features across service a shared among channel.

Naturally, multichannel experiences design is far more complex. Consistency however has been observed to be one of the most important factors.