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

Ode to Canned Responses and Out-of-Channel Resolution by Tamar Frumkin

Being bounced from channel to channel without any resolution makes for a bad customer experience. What makes it worse is having to start your conversation all over again. Perhaps that’s why over 85% of customers today demand an omnichannel experience from businesses. Unfortunately, some companies aren’t delivering on that expectation. In her article for Business 2 Community, marketing expert Tamar Frumkin explains her understandable frustration with one fitness clothing company’s customer experience, sending her from channel to channel without ever getting a decent response. Here’s hoping that that company learns to resolve issues within the channel they’re contacted on, or at least track the interactions across channels so customers don’t have to start over.

L.L.Bean, Amazon And Nordstrom Are Customer Service Champions by Pam Goodfellow

There are some companies that you just associate with the phrase “good customer service”: Amazon, Nordstrom, L.L. Bean, etc. They’re willing to go above and beyond for their customers, whether they’re offering free shipping, exclusive member perks, or just a great ambiance. In addition, as consumer analyst Pam Goodfellow points out in her list of top 10 brands, business don’t necessarily need to have a physical storefront to provide a great experience for customers.

How to Build or Break the Customer Experience with Relationship Routing by Carly Burdova

In the digital world, it can be a little trickier to provide customers with a great, personalized experience. There’s no one there to greet you at the door or make friendly conversation as they scan your items. There’s also no one there that remembers the last time you came in and what you purchased. That’s where omnichannel service comes in. As Brand Embassy’s Carly Burdova points out in her excellent blog post, by continuing a conversation you’ve already started with a customer (ie their purchase history or Twitter interactions), you can build a relationship with them. Maybe it’s not so tricky after all.

How to ensure your omnichannel strategy doesn’t become an omnishambles by Nicola Millard

When customers contact you, they don’t think about the fact that different channels are often managed by different departments. To them, your business is one unified entity—whatever channel they contact you on, they should be able to get the help they need. But as Nicola Millard points out in her MyCustomer post, businesses often think in terms of silos and don’t realize the impact this has on the customer experience. To get around this, she recommends making sure channels are integrated, all while letting customers choose what information they let companies have access to.

To learn more about providing customers with a seamless omnichannel experience, download the whitepaper here.