You've probably heard one of the more famous -isms in the world before: "The customer is always correct."

But you probably also know that "the customer is ever right," isn't the only key to making customers so happy they stick effectually. At that place are a diverseness of other philosophies, strategies, and tools customer-facing professionals and teams can use to turn customers into loyal promoters and advocates.

But how do y'all learn everything you need to know to plough yourself -- and your team -- into a high-performing customer happiness engine?

There are a lot of things you lot can learn on the job when you piece of work in client service. But sometimes, it's faster to learn from an expert, so you can take their learnings after years of research and experience, and immediately implement them in your own workflow.

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Peruse this book list to learn from the experts near customer service, client success, leadership, and writing. All of these books contain valuable insights for anyone working in a customer-facing role, so option one to get started on improving your noesis so you lot can become an expert, likewise.

20 Top Customer Service Books

Client Service Books

Read these books to larn nearly how to create an exceptional customer feel -- featuring real-world case studies and fourth dimension-tested methods created by manufacture idea leaders.

1. Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business

Authors Frances Frei and Anne Morriss fence that, in guild to provide exceptional customer service, you need to do other things less-than-exceptionally. That's correct: The authors advocate for underperforming in i area of your business in order to excel at customer service -- because, they argue, you lot tin can't do everything well.

The authors encourage businesses to place what their customers value almost, prioritize excelling in that business function, and accept that this prioritization will consequence in underperformance in other areas. They argue that customer service will become a competitive differentiator for customers trying to choose among many dissimilar options, then this tough truth is also a necessary one.

ii. The Nordstrom Way to Customer Experience Excellence: Creating a Values-Driven Service Civilisation

Nordstrom has set the standard for customer happiness in the sea of its other department shop competitors, so authors Robert Spector and BreAnne O. Reeves literally wrote the book on how they did it.

Key insights from Nordstrom include empowering self-motivated employees to get the extra mile to make customers happy, to prioritize ease-of-use for your customers across every touchpoint they have with your brand, and to always call up like the customer to build a customer-centric brand on every squad and function within your business.

3. The Amazement Revolution: 7 Client Service Strategies to Create an Astonishing Customer (and Employee) Feel

Authored by customer service idea leader Shep Hyken, this volume offers seven practical strategies to improve customer happiness and loyalty, including cultivating partnership with customers, providing unique membership awards, and building customs with customers.

This book is all steak and no sizzle, with tons of practical ideas and strategies supported past real-world examples that readers can have into work with them as soon every bit they read.

4. Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers

Writer Jay Baer wrote Hug Your Haters for a modern customer service organization that isn't just built on the phone or email, but on social media and on messaging apps, besides. Baer implores readers to build their customer service organization effectually these digital channels, where the bulk of customers share their rave reviews -- as well as their complaints.

In the book, Baer teaches readers how to handle your haters and your trolls, how to measure client service productivity, the impacts of non addressing client complaints, and how to use his frameworks for responding to customers complaints across a diversity of online channels.

5. The New Gold Standard: v Leadership Principles for Creating a Legendary Customer Experience Courtesy of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company

If you're non familiar with the Ritz-Carlton's famous customer service policy, it's pretty legendary: Every single employee, no matter what their part, has the discretion to spend upwardly to $2,000 per 24-hour interval to better customer experience.

This policy, and the principles and foundations behind it, have built the brand a legion of loyal customers, and in this book, author Joseph Michelli explains how other brands can build a similarly memorable make and customer experience -- using principles similar "empower [employees] through trust," "leave a lasting footprint," and "ascertain and refine [the feel you want customers to accept]."

6. The Cheers Economy

Marketing mogul and author Gary Vaynerchuk regularly talks well-nigh the importance of 1:ane communication in marketing -- and his philosophies extend to the client service world, too.

In this book, Vaynerchuk writes that the era of small courtesies is returning to the concern world, at present that social media has enabled businesses to communicate more than intimately across different channels. He also writes that, if businesses don't pursue 1:ane customer care and engagement, they'll lose business to their competitors. This volume will make you think about how to use the ability of technology to more effectively grow and scale relationships with customers around the globe.

seven. What Customers Crave: How to Create Relevant and Memorable Experiences at Every Touchpoint

Author Nicholas Webb has some things to say about the electric current state of customer feel: "Permit's face it: Today, virtually customer experience programs are a disaster."

Webb things just businesses that offer "optimal" client service will survive -- and that virtually businesses are a long manner off from achieving that. The main reason, Webb argues, is because the technological innovations of the last few decades accept made information technology easier for businesses to treat and review customers similar data points, instead of treating them like real people.

Webb calls for reviewing each touchpoint a customer shares with your business, and evaluating what yous can exercise, both online and offline, to improve each pace of that experience. Optimizing each stage of the customer experience, instead of making broad-strokes changes, volition satisfy individualistic customers who won't be satisfied by the bare minimum.

Customer Success Books

These books are nigh taking customer service to the next level -- into customer success. Once you've started solving your customers' issues and helping guide them toward other solutions and strategies for achieving their goals with your production or service, you tin can start building a customer success plan -- ane that helps your customers succeed so your business succeeds, and turns your happy customers into your loyal advocates and evangelists.

8. Customer Success: How Innovative Companies are Reducing Churn and Growing Revenue

Authored by some of the pioneers of the customer success movement, this is the definitive book to read to go the lay of the customer success land -- focused squarely on improving customer loyalty, decreasing churn, and adapting to the advent of the subscription economic system.

The volume focuses primarily on subscription-based, software-every bit-a-service (SaaS) businesses, only the principles and ideas they explore are relevant to whatever industry or business. A fundamental concept that'due south explored again and again is customer loyalty -- and specifically, behavioral vs. attitudinal loyalty. Attitudinal loyalty, the authors explain, is loyalty when customers dearest a detail brand or product, and it'southward ideal -- but hard to achieve.

9. The Loyalty Consequence: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value

This book is authored past Frederick Reichheld -- one of the creators of the Net Promoter Score® -- the landmark customer happiness and loyalty metric many businesses use today. And similar the NPS, the ideas originally published past Reichheld back in 1996 are some of the most widely-shared behavior in the client service and success spaces today.

Main amid his findings and arguments include the finding that loyal customers are cheaper to service than non-loyal customers, that loyal customers are typically more willing to pay higher prices because of their satisfaction with the brand and the products, and that loyal customers are valuable marketing agents, every bit their recommendations to friends and family provide costless referral business.

x. Principal Client Officeholder 2.0: How to Build Your Customer-Driven Growth Engine

Author Jeanne Bliss is a thought leader on the function of client leadership -- similar the Chief Customer Officeholder, for case. Her book outlines the five competencies she uses to evaluate and coach client-driven executives to plow customers into a growth engine -- only they're useful principles to utilize as guiding north stars, no matter what stage of your career:

  • Honor and manage your customers as avails
  • Align around client experience
  • Build a customer listening path
  • Proactive experience reliability and innovation
  • Leadership, accountability, and civilization

11. Client Loyalty: How to Earn It, How to Keep It

In this book, author Jill Griffin delivers really applied, easy-to-implement advice about, well, what the title suggests: how to earn and maintain customer loyalty. Each section focuses on a unlike phase of the customer feel, and how to prioritize loyalty in each stage -- such as how to turn a get-go-time buyer into a echo customer, how to prevent client loss when you notice signs of churn, and more.

12. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

Authored by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness is some other case study of a company made successful by its exceptional customer service. The book chronicles Zappos' one-of-a-kind company culture and delivery to customer experience that's made it equally large as information technology is today.

Hsieh actually believes that visitor culture is a determining gene and predictor of your business' success -- and the kind of service your customers volition receive. Like the authors of Uncommon Service, Hsieh advocates for choosing one thing to do exceptionally well, instead of trying to be average at everything. And that i thing, he argues, should be customer service.

Leadership Books

These books aren't written strictly for customer-facing professionals, but they offering valuable lessons for leaders at the head of customer-facing teams, as well as ideas for influencing and building trust with the customers y'all serve.

thirteen. The Hard Truth Virtually Soft Skills: Workplace Lessons Smart People Wish They'd Learned Sooner

"Hard skills" are technical skills and expertise, but writer and career jitney Peggy Klaus things "soft skills" are even more than important to career growth -- skills similar workload management, giving and receiving feedback, developing a brand, and more than.

These soft skills are relevant for any customer service or success professional person seeking to grow their career, and somewhen, atomic number 82 a team.

14. Starting time With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Activity

Some other good read for anyone trying to build a career, author and speaker Simon Sinek'southward book details how successful leaders can inspire others to rally backside a cause or a mission -- and attain it.

Sinek believes in the importance of putting the "why" before the "how" or the "what." In other words, successful leaders should focus on getting everyone on lath with the purpose before diving into the process or production.

This is valuable guidance for leaders of teams and for customer-facing professionals in general. By focusing on the "why" of your customer, yous volition be able to more than effectively navigate conversations to build rapport and trust with them, which will allow y'all to build a mutually benign human relationship and inspire their loyalty -- to you and your brand.

xv. Emotional Intelligence two.0

You're probably already familiar with the concept of emotional intelligence -- the power to sympathize and manage the needs and feelings of others, as well as yourself, and to respond appropriately.

This book takes these concepts further, with authors Travis Bradberry, Jean Greaves, and Patrick Lencioni that provides helpful tools, tips, and frameworks for building your emotional intelligence components. It fifty-fifty includes a helpful interactive quiz, which identifies your strengths and areas for comeback so you can focus on making the biggest bear upon on your EQ as possible.

16. How to Win Friends and Influence People

Dale Carnegie'due south famous book still stands the examination of time, and it'south worth a read for anyone brushing up on their leadership and people skills -- at work, or in your personal life.

You lot can read a detailed summary of the book here, but below are some of the principles virtually applicative to someone building a customer-focused career:

  • Give honest and sincere appreciation.
  • Be a good listener.
  • Make the other person feel important.
  • If you are wrong, acknowledge it quickly and emphatically.
  • Attempt honestly to run into things from the other person's point of view.

Writing Books

No matter what your job, it'due south probable that information technology will involve a fair scrap of writing -- and even if y'all're only writing emails in your role, it's important to have a few skills in your back pocket earlier you press "ship." And customer-facing professionals have to spend a lot of fourth dimension emailing their customers. Hither are a few helpful books to read to brush up on your written advice skills:

17. Everybody Writes: Your Go-to Guide to Creating Ridiculously Skilful Content

Author Ann Handley's volume is my blogging must-read -- in fact, it sits on my desk at work. Her actionable tips and guides are easy to implement in your twenty-four hour period-to-day writing, as well every bit in your content creation (for example, if you write knowledge guide content or blog posts for a client blog).

This book is fabricated up of 74 short capacity, so it's easy to flip through while you're writing different things. Her suggestions for writing social media copy are specially helpful -- and she encourages making sure to arrange tone and content for each platform and use example.

18. May I Have Your Attending, Please? Your Guide to Business Writing That Charms, Captivates and Converts

Business writing doesn't have to be boring, according to author Mish Slade. This volume provides a ton of ideas and techniques for making every single give-and-take of your copy remarkable -- from your website to your social channels to your emails.

These tips are specifically almost trying to read customers' minds -- to answer their questions conspicuously and concisely, which is why they're likely looking at your website in the first place. Tips for clarity and writing with enthusiasm will be of item use for customer service professionals writing social media client service re-create, or knowledge base content.

nineteen. On Writing Well: The Archetype Guide to Writing Nonfiction

A staple for any nonfiction author, this volume by William Zinsser teaches readers that everyone can learn to write well -- and that the keys to writing well are communicating authentic personality and helpful data. The principles in this book will teach readers how to write clearly and effectively to share important data, while however beingness engaging and creative in the process.

xx. Several Short Sentences About Writing

Another quick-hits read, author and New York Times editorial board fellow member Verlyn Klinkenborg breaks down the minutiae of sentence structure to requite readers a helpful guide to storytelling. As the title might already suggest, she advocates for writing short sentences in social club to practise writing longer ones, so you can write content that'due south strong and counterbalanced, and non unwieldy.

This helps create reader clarity -- which is critical when y'all're using writing to brainwash and communicate with customers.

What are your must-read client service books? Share them with me on Twitter.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Internet Promoter Score, NPS and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Visitor, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.

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Originally published Mar xx, 2018 viii:00:00 AM, updated June 09 2021