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

Why Self-Service Still Needs Human Support for Success by Shep Hyken

At OneReach, we’re big fans of self-service via voice and text message, but despite our love for automation, we know customer service still sometimes needs a human touch. Machines won’t always have the answer to complex questions, and they won’t be able to recognize when a customer needs help based off their emotions. Customer service expert Shep Hyken understands this, and in his MyCustomer post, recounts a few instances where getting help from a human was just what the situation needed to get a customer from struggle to success.

5 Reasons to Reimagine How You Offer Customer Support by Leyla Seka

Customer service has evolved a lot in the past few decades. Support interactions used to be limited to just a phone call, but now customers can reach a company over email, social media and even text message. And as channel offerings have expanded, customers now expect to reach a company anytime, anywhere. So how can companies provide service when customers need it? As Desk GM Leyla Seka explains, one of the best ways is to incorporate a support center into your website and product. That way, customers can get the help they need when they need it.

3 Reasons Facebook Chatbots Are Good For Customer Service by Blake Morgan

If you’ve been paying attention to the goings-on of a lot of big tech brands lately, you’ll know that chatbots are all the rage. Facebook and Kik just rolled out bot stores where companies can design their own bots, and several organizations like Spring and CNN are already using them to interact with customers and readers. But can chatbots really provide great customer service? According to customer experience expert Blake Morgan, yes they can. One of the reasons they’re great for customer service, she says, is because they automate responses to common questions.

The Top 10 CX Challenges for 2016 by Annette Franz

Over 80% of companies say they want to differentiate on superior service and customer experience, but unfortunately, only 8% of customers think they’re actually doing that. Part of the reason could be because companies don’t have a customer-centric culture. As customer experience expert Annette Franz outlines in a recent blog post, not having a customer-centric culture really comes down to commitment issues. Companies need to have an investment in customer success if they want to provide the experiences customers are after.

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