A conversation with Mike Riess, VP of Unified Commerce at CQL
For many customers, the omnichannel experience still feels disconnected. Inventory doesn’t sync correctly, returns become fragmented across channels, and customer context disappears between online and in-store experiences.
That’s the gap Rise.ai and CQL solve together.
CQL helps enterprise retailers unify commerce operations across every channel. Rise.ai powers the loyalty and retention infrastructure that keeps customer experiences consistent wherever shoppers engage with the brand. Together, the two teams help retailers manage the growing complexity of modern commerce and the touchpoints where omnichannel experiences most often break down.
We sat down with Mike Riess, VP of Unified Commerce and Managing Director of EMEA at CQL, to discuss where omnichannel experiences fall apart as retailers scale, what it takes to fix them, and how to build commerce experiences that stay connected across every touchpoint.
Why omnichannel still feels disconnected
According to Harvard Business Review, 73% of consumers use multiple channels throughout their purchase journey. Yet for many retailers, the customer experience still breaks in surprisingly familiar ways.
A customer buys online and can’t return in-store. A gift card purchased in-store does not work online. Inventory shows as available on the website, but store associates cannot find it.
According to Mike, the problem isn’t the channels themselves:
“Omnichannel doesn’t break because the channels are hard. It breaks at the cracks brands create for themselves: tools that were never built to talk, bolted together, and business processes teams are not willing to bend.”
These gaps tend to show up where information has to move between systems, teams, and channels.
The root cause: A Frankenstein stack
Most retailers stitch together eCommerce platforms, POS systems, loyalty tools, returns software, and marketing platforms that were never designed to function as one. The systems may technically integrate, but inventory, customer identity, orders, returns, and rewards still operate in separate silos.
This disconnect compounds as you scale. The biggest breakdowns tend to cluster around three areas:
- Inventory drift: Products show as available online but can’t be located in-store, undermining trust in ship-from-store and BOPIS.
“Customers feel the pain with wrong stock, refused returns, and orders associates can’t find.” - Lost customer context: Browsing history, loyalty balances, purchase intent, and store credit disappear the moment a shopper moves between online and in-store experiences.
- Data that never reaches marketing: In-store interactions rarely reach the systems powering email, CRM, or personalization, making campaigns less relevant and customer experiences harder to coordinate.
The systems collecting customer data already exist. The challenge is making it available across channels, so that information captured online can still be used in-store and vice versa.
How Rise.ai creates a connected experience
For customers, unified commerce should feel invisible. The underlying systems may be complex, but the experience itself should feel consistent, regardless of where or how they shop.
For example, a customer sees an item online, confirms it’s available at a nearby store, and picks it up the same day. Weeks later, they return the item at a different store location without needing a receipt because their purchase history is available across the business. All their information stays updated and consistent whether they’re shopping online, in-store, or through a mobile app.
Unfortunately, one of the places the customer experience breaks down most often is around rewards, store credit, and gift cards. Customers expect credits earned in one channel to be visible and redeemable in another. When they aren’t, the experience quickly becomes fragmented.
Rise.ai solves this with a unified digital wallet that brings together store credit, gift cards, cashback, referrals, loyalty, and membership perks into one connected experience across channels, automatically syncing balances, rewards, and redemption across online and offline touchpoints.
“Modern solutions like Rise.ai enable merchants to have gift cards, store credit, and loyalty work seamlessly across channels. Customers want to see what’s happening with their store credit: how they got them, when they expire, and where they redeemed them. Rise.ai gives them that.” – Mike Riess @ CQL
The impact shows up in performance: Rise.ai merchants see a 32% repeat purchase rate, 18% lift in average order value, and 40% redemption rate.
But rewards are only one piece of the omnichannel experience. Even the strongest loyalty experiences fail when the underlying commerce infrastructure is fragmented. Inventory mismatches, disconnected customer profiles, and orders spread across separate systems create friction long before customers ever get to redeem rewards.
That’s where CQL comes in.
How CQL solves the commerce infrastructure layer
As a Shopify Platinum Partner with more than 30 years of commerce experience, CQL helps retailers align the infrastructure that powers omnichannel commerce: eCommerce, POS, fulfillment, customer data, and the integrations that keep them synchronized.
When systems stop communicating, CQL identifies where the friction exists and builds solutions around how the business actually operates.
According to CQL, four foundational systems have to stay aligned for omnichannel experiences to work:
- One source of truth for inventory, so the website and store locations never disagree.
- One customer identity, so the same profile follows customers across eCommerce, POS, and marketing systems
- Order and returns interoperability, so any channel can support orders created in another.
- One shared ledger for rewards, so gift cards and store credit can be redeemed seamlessly across every touchpoint, regardless of where it was earned.
CQL’s strategy-first approach looks at how a retailer’s existing systems, business processes, and team workflows interact to identify where friction actually exists. That often means speaking with the teams closest to day-to-day operations, not just leadership.
“It is very common for us to hear one thing from HQ, only for the frontline staff to confess that no one does it that way in real life because it’s too hard or causes other issues.” – Mike Riess @ CQL
CQL’s work spans the full commerce stack, from platform strategy and ecommerce and POS implementation to integrations across CMS, OMS, PIM, and ERP systems, performance optimization, and ongoing support.
For retailers navigating unified commerce, that depth of experience matters because the hardest problems rarely sit inside one system. They emerge in the places where systems, teams, and processes fail to stay connected.
Build a unified commerce experience that customers actually deserve
Unified commerce only works when inventory, customer data, orders, and rewards stay connected across every channel. When they do, retailers create smoother customer experiences, stronger retention, and more efficient operations.
Together, CQL and Rise.ai help retailers close the gaps that most often break omnichannel experiences, connecting the systems behind commerce with the loyalty experiences customers actually interact with.
For Shopify merchants scaling across physical and digital retail, that means one consistent experience wherever customers shop.
Request a demo to see how Rise.ai, together with CQL’s commerce expertise, helps retailers create more seamless experiences across every touchpoint.
Request a demo
See how Rise.ai, together with CQL’s commerce expertise, helps retailers create more seamless experiences across every touchpoint.
