Happy Friday! Here’s our five picks for the best customer service, customer experience and mobile articles of the week, in no particular order.

How to Maintain Top-Notch Customer Service While Your Company Rapidly Grows by Ellevate

Growing your company to be successful at scale can be a daunting task. You need to hire the right people, make sure they’re trained properly, and that they have the necessary tools to do their job. But sometimes, things like customer service can get left by the wayside—a customer is put on hold for too long, an important email is never answered, a problem goes unresolved. The Ellevate Network had this exact problem, and in their Forbes article, they wrote about how to get around this problem. One of the ways they suggested was to get rid of the department-based view of customer service.

Customer service should no longer be viewed as an island within your company. Everyone in your organization should be trained in customer service and feel comfortable emailing, calling, or contacting clients on a regular basis.

The Ellevate Group is spot-on here—customer service is everyone’s responsibility, as each employee has a part to play in defining the customer journey and the overall experience.

Read the full article on Forbes.

10 Tips for Preventing Customer Complaints for the Coming Year by Fonolo

The holiday season is supposed to be the happiest time of the year, but unfortunately that isn’t always the case. Presents don’t get shipped in time, gifts get broken on their journey to family members or even get stolen from front porches. Though it may not explicitly be the company’s fault (and some companies do a great job to make up for this) It’s enough to make customers complain, and rightly so. Luckily, there are some ways to address customer complaints before they even start. In a recent blog post, Nicolina of Fonolo outlines 10 tips for preventing customer complaints, one of which is to empower your staff.

Your employees are your biggest asset and they can easily walk out on you. This affects everything from staffing, operations, and overall service levels, the result: customer complaints. Give your staff a reason to come into work every day. When your staff is happy, they’ll treat your customers better because the company’s success directly affects their own success (and their job security).

By treating employees well, you’ll ensure that they’ll pass that goodwill onto customers and provide great customer service, something extremely important during the holiday season.

Read the full article on the Fonolo blog.

Customer Service; Customer Experience; Customer Centricity – what is the difference between them? by Ian Golding

People like to throw around the words “customer service” and “customer experience,” but what do they really mean? Can they be used interchangeably, do they mean the same thing, or is one part of the other? In addition, what does customer centricity mean, and how does it factor in to customer service and customer experience? In his article for CustomerThink, customer experience expert Ian Golding outlines the difference between these phrases, but more importantly, why the difference between these three customer-centric phrases are so important.

Despite their increasing use, it is important that no-one assumes the people using them understand their real meaning. So often I hear one or all three being incorporated into business presentations, but it is sometimes clear that there is a lack of understanding of their true meaning.

These words are commonly used, but for them to be used intelligently, there needs to be more in-depth understanding of what each one actually means.

Read the full article on CustomerThink.

5 Predictions Shaping the Future of Customer Experience for 2016 by Blake Michelle Morgan

As the year draws to a close, we often take a look back at how things went: what was good and bad, what made us smile and made us cry, what we did and wish we’d done. However, the end of the year is also a great time to look forward and predict what’s to come next year. With regards to customer service, what new and exciting trends can we expect in 2016? In her Forbes article, customer experience expert Blake Michelle Morgan lists several predictions. One of them is that big data will have an even bigger role to play in the customer experience this coming year.

Without data and measurement it’s likely you have no idea what’s actually happening with your customers. Data helps companies identify service issues early on, lessoning the damage by early detection. Additionally data provides valuable customer feedback that is fed to engineering, product, and marketing.

We’ll have to wait and see if this trend comes to fruition in 2016, but given all the data on big data, it’s very likely to happen.

Read the full article on Forbes.

Don’t Confuse Customer Services with Customer Service by Bill Quiseng

Technology has become increasingly pervasive in customer service. Every company is trying to use the latest and greatest technology to provide a superior customer experience, and they should be commended for that. However, at what point do the technologies (customer services) overtake the human interactions of customer service? In his guest post on Hyken.com, Bill Quiseng highlights the important distinction between customer service and customer services, as well as the effect it can have when you confuse the two.

Businesses may have reduced labor costs by offering hi-tech customer services, but by reducing human interaction with their customers, they inadvertently have jeopardized customer loyalty. As a result, customer services may help to keep customers, but rarely does it increase sales.

Technology can only go so far in defining the customer experience. To truly stand out from competitors and drive repeat business, you need to develop a personal connection with customers.

Read the full article on Shep Hyken’s blog.

Agree with our picks? Sound off in the comments on any articles we might have missed, and don’t forget to download our ebook on providing a great omnichannel experience.