Looking to take your customer experience to the next level? We’re bringing you a list of 35 best customer experience books that you can’t miss out on (and a couple of bonus recommendations if you make it to the bottom of the list).
Let’s go!
1. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know
By Adam Grant
It’s a New York Times number 1 bestseller with rave reviews from Dare To Lead author Brené Brown, but that’s not the only reason this title deserves a look. At the heart of this book is the idea of rethinking what we think we know, and going against the comfortable certainty of our preconceived beliefs.
The skill of ‘unlearning’ may be one of the most important – and overlooked – professional and personal tools for our times. Organizational psychologist Adam Grant walks us through the how, why and what of learning to unlearn, reframing challenge and even conflict as fertile ground for new knowledge and stronger relationships at work.
2. Empathy in Action: How to Deliver Great Customer Experiences At Scale
By Tony Bates and Dr. Natalie Petouhoff
For authors Tony Bates and Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, technology and empathy aren’t opposing forces, but a dream team for scaling up relationships between businesses, customers and employees. They break down the ways in which technology can be used to enhance human connection instead of attempting to replace it with unconvincing automatic interactions.
Bates, a leading tech CEO, and Petouhoff, a researcher and CX expert, put forward a framework of listening, understanding, predicting and action that promises to accelerate businesses into a new mindset of customer and employee respect. They draw a clear line between business-centric technologies, which fail to emulate genuine connection, and customer-employee-centric models that scale up the authentic human experience.
3. A Complaint Is A Gift: How To Learn From Critical Feedback And Recover Customer Loyalty
By Janelle Barlow
Now in its third edition, this powerhouse of a title dives deep into the value of feedback – specifically, negative feedback received by businesses. Sweeping aside the instinct to defend or minimize customer criticism, Janelle Barlow reframes complaints as a form of freely-given market research and a point of connection with unhappy customers. Handled correctly, resolved customer issues can mark the turning point towards future loyalty.
Substantially rewritten for the current business climate, this latest edition reflects the heightened demands of customers and the predominantly online environment in which they consider, buy, review and indeed, complain to businesses.
4. Uncopyable: How To Create An Unfair Advantage Over Your Competition
By Steve Miller
Price, service, product… all these differentiators are destined to eventually be one-upped by the competition, according to Steve Miller. He believes that the key to enduring customer loyalty is to set aside the keeping-up mentality, take the focus off your competitors and concentrate instead on creating a unique relationship. Just as humans form unique bonds with one another, so brands can form what Miller calls ‘Uncopyable Attachments’ with their customers.
How is it done? You’ll have to read the book to find out all the interesting details, but the headlines are that a unique blend of brand, experience, innovation and storytelling lie at the heart of the uncopyable customer experience. ‘Competition breeds conformity’, he says, urging us to step away from watching what everyone else is doing and create something that’s entirely new and unique.
5. Do B2B Better: Drive Growth Through Game-Changing Customer Experience
By Jim Tincher
Customer experience thinking often seems to revolve around the consumer perspective. Jim Tincher’s book shifts the emphasis to the B2B landscape, where customers are fellow businesses. Here, relationships are more complex and the standard of CX tends to lag behind that of the B2C world, meaning there’s plenty of opportunity to make changes that have a big impact on your B2B customers.
Tincher’s book is built around the CX Loyalty Flywheel, a model for B2B CX management that moves businesses from a standing start to a state of continuous improvement, with senior buy-in and ROI helping drive things forward. He developed the model based on his own years of experience and research interviews with hundreds of CX professionals.
6. The Cult Of The Customer
Author - Shep Hyken. (Council of Peers Award for Excellence, Hall of Fame Award, 30000+ followers on LinkedIn)
Website:- https://hyken.com/
Shep Hyken does not believe in simply satisfying customers. If there was just one thing you can learn from him (and there are a lot), it would have to be that you need to go above and beyond, amazing your customers instead of simply satisfying them.
This book helps you understand the traits that help brands form their tribes and even shows you how you can create spectacular customer experiences.
Find the book here
7. Chief Customer Officer 2.0
Author - Jeanne Bliss (4x Bestseller, 24000+ followers on LinkedIn)
Website- https://www.customerbliss.com/
If you’re looking to serve your customers better and create great experiences for them, you can’t miss this book by the godmother of customer experience. She uses a five competency model to show you how you can improve your customer experience initiatives.
Find the book here
8. Customer Understanding
Author - Annette Franz (CCXP) (18000 + followers on LinkedIn)
Website - https://cx-journey.com/
Annette Franz writes about how you should keep your customers at the core of everything you do - decision making, meeting conversations, design and all the other aspects of your business. She explains customer journey mapping and shows you how you can understand the challenges that your customers face and come up with solutions to these issues.
Find the book here
9. Winning At Social Customer Care
Author - Dan Gingiss (11000+ followers in LinkedIn)
Website - https://dangingiss.com/
Social media has plays an enormous role in customer support, and Dan Gingiss shows you to do it right in this book. He helps you pick the best social media platforms to engage your customers over and even shows you how to emulate the strategies of brands that are killing it with their social media customer service. The book even has a pretty thorough explanation of how you could pull off social media crisis management.
Find the book here
10. The Guaranteed Customer Experience
Author - Jeff Toister (40000+ followers on LinkedIn)
Website - https://www.toistersolutions.com/
While trying to dazzle your customers is great, it won’t do you much good if you aren’t giving them what you promised them. According to Jeff Toister, failing to do what you say you’re doing to do is the one problem that universally frustrates customers.
False advertising, defective products, and unresolved customer queries can cause your customer base to erode. Jeff’s book shows you how you can retain (and even earn) more customers by simply providing a consistently and predictably good experience every time.
Find the book here
11. The Experience Economy: Competing for Customer Time, Attention, and Money
Authors - B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore
Website - https://strategichorizons.com/
This one helps you understand the elements that make experiences memorable and enjoyable (like customization and cohesion). It explains why customer experience is critical for business today and even guides you on how you can create experiences that your customers will remember and cherish.
Find the book here
12. Hug Your Haters
Author - Jay Baer ( 35000+ followers on LinkedIn)
Website - https://www.jaybaer.com/
We’ve all heard people saying ‘Ignore the haters’. Here you have a New York Times best-selling author of six books telling you to embrace them. How’s that going to work out? Why should you love your haters?
Jay Baer explains what he calls “The Science of Complains”. According to him, negativity is everywhere and backlash is inevitable. Whatever you do, there’s probably going to be someone, somewhere with complaints. He shows you how to handle negative feedback and convert complaints into a positive influence.
Find the book here
13. The Effortless Experience
Authors - Matthew Dixon, Nick Toman and Rick DeLisi
Website - https://dixonspeaks.com/
This book is great for customer service leaders. While wowing your customers is great, you can’t have a half-decent customer experience if you aren’t delivering on basic promises and solving the problems that your customers are facing. The premise is that you need to make the customer experience as seamless as possible. You want to be reducing customer effort and creating frictionless experiences.
Find the book here
14. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
Author - Tony Hsieh
Tony Hsieh, the late CEO of Zappos, essentially ran one of the most customer-centric businesses in the world, so you can’t afford to miss out on reading a book written by this legend. In this book, he explained how you can build up a company culture that both your employees and your customers love, allowing you to drive great success for your company.
Find the book here
15. CX Design book
Author - Rajat Chawla
This book is great for people who are just getting initiated into the world of customer experience. It helps you get a strong grasp of the basics and fundamentals of customer experience. This book is particularly useful for professionals who intend to register for the CCXP course.
Find the book here
16. Mapping Experiences: A Complete Guide to Creating Value through Journeys, Blueprints, and Diagrams
Author - James Kalbach
James Kalbach shows you that all types of customer feedback can be helpful. He helps you understand how you can gain actionable insights from any feedback that you receive and use those insights to improve your customer experience. He employs an “alignment diagram” that helps you create visual maps of existing customer experience so that you can identify disconnects between what customers expect and what they actually get.
Find the book here
17. More Is More
Author - Blake Morgan
You always hear that less is more, but when it comes to customer experience, more is definitely more. Blake Morgan shows you why shouldn’t be doing just enough. She lets you know how you can go above and beyond. The book even helps you identify and fix the hidden factors that are being detrimental to your customer experience.
Find the book here
18. Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business
Authors - Kerry Bodine and Harley Manning
14 years of Forrester research has gone into this book. It introduces the concept of a ‘Customer Experience Ecosystem’, which the authors use to show you how every single interaction ties into a bigger customer experience picture and helps you see how you can use that to create CX magic. This book gives you a foundational approach to CX, using values developed over a vast amount of expert experience and research.
Find the book here
19. Customer Experience Management: How to Design, Integrate, Measure and Lead
Authors - Nihat Tavsan and Can Erdem
This works well as an academic resource, but it’s also a book that busy CX professionals should definitely read. It starts from the very basics of customer experience but goes on to give you a rather broad understanding of customer experience as a whole. It comes with a lot of insights, case studies, and action points that you can use to make significant changes in your business quickly.
Find the book here
20. The Power of Customer Experience
Author - Martin Newman
Website - https://martinnewman.co.uk/
Even today, a lot of businesses look at customers as a cost center rather than a profit center. Martin Newman aims to debunk this myth in his book, showing you the value that great customer experience can bring to your business and your bottom line. This book even brings you a ton of case studies about brands that got great value from delivering great customer experiences.
Find the book here
21. The Customer of the Future
Author - Blake Morgan
Website - https://www.blakemichellemorgan.com/
Blake Morgan outlines easy-to-follow customer experience guidelines that integrate technology with strategies to combat disconnected processes, silo mentalities, and a lack of buyer perspective.
Find the book here.
22. The Customer Rules
Author - Lee Cockerell
Website - https://www.leecockerell.com/
Lee Cockerell knows that success in business--any business--depends upon winning and keeping customers. In 39 digestible, bite-sized chapters, Lee shares everything he has learned in his 40+ year career in the hospitality industry about creating an environment that keeps customers coming back for more.
Lee Cockerell shares what he has learned in 40+ year career about how to create an environment that wins and keeps customer coming back for more.
Find the book here
23. Would You Do That to Your Mother?
Author - Jeanne Bliss
Website - https://www.customerbliss.com/
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“Make Mom Proud” companies give customers the treatment they desire, and employees the ability to deliver it. They turn “gotcha” moments into “we’ve got your back” moments by rethinking business practices, and they enable employees to be part of the solution to fix customer frustrations.
Find the book here
24. Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless
Author - Jeffery Gitomer
Website - https://www.gitomer.com/
Nationally syndicated columnist and sales trainer, Jeffrey Gitomer shows you how to convert satisfied customers into loyal customers.
Find the book here
25. Customer Centricity Playbook
Author - Peter Fader & Sarah Toms
The most successful companies understand their best customers. The customer centricity playbook helps you see your customers as individuals rather than a monolith, so you can save resources by chasing down product sales to each and every consumer.
Find the book here
26. Never Lose a customer again
Author - Joey Coleman
Website - https://joeycoleman.com/
Award-winning speaker and business consultant Joey Coleman teaches audiences and companies all over the world how to turn a one-time purchaser into a lifelong customer. Coleman's theory of building customer loyalty isn't about focusing on marketing or closing the sale: It's about the First 100 Days after the sale and the interactions the customer experiences.
Find the book here
27. Winning her business
Author - Bridget Brennan
Website - https://bridgetbrennan.com/
Brennan talks about how women drive majority of the global consumer spending and that they are key to success in the modern economy.
Find the book here
28. Ignore your customers (and They'll Go Away)
Author - Micah Solomon
Website - https://micahsolomon.com/
Many companies lose their business because they miss out on delivering great customer service and customer experience. Ignore your customer helps you craft a customer service culture and customer experience so powerful that they’ll transform your organisation and boost your company’s bottom line.
Find the book here
29. Customer Empathy
Author - Alex Allwood
Website - https://alexallwood.com.au/
Most Companies fail in providing excellent customer experience practices. Alex Allwood shows her customer-centric framework, methods and tools to switch on and scale customer empathy that can be used to solve the common customer experience management problems of low organisational commitment, poor alignment of cross-functional teams, and competing agendas and priorities.
30. The Disruption Mindset
By Charlene Li
What if disruption wasn’t the cause of growth, but the result? If growth creates disruption, what does that mean for CX? Charlene Li argues persuasively for a fresh perspective on disruption, showing how it goes beyond just innovation. Instead, she provides a roadmap to help you take the power of disruption forward into the future of your business. She describes three crucial phases – strategy to help you meet the needs of your future customers, leadership that creates direction and movement towards sustainable transformation, and a culture that not only survives but thrives on change and disruption.
31. Customer Experience Management: How to Design, Integrate, Measure and Lead
By Nihat Tavsan
Nihat Tavsan’s comprehensive work leaves no stone unturned when it comes to CX practice and theory. Doubling as both an academic resource and a handbook for the busy professional, it offers a global view on everything CX, starting from first principles. And while it’s broad in scope, it’s not short on practical and relatable details, providing takeaways, case studies and action points you can use to make immediate, valuable changes in your organization. What’s more, the author offers more than just a one-size-fits-all approach, building in flexibility to help you adapt the tools provided to suit your unique business goals.
32. Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business
By Kerry Bodine and Harley Manning
Based on 14 years of Forrester research, Kerry Bodine and Harley Manning’s book is rightly considered a classic resource. It provides a foundational approach to customer experience based on core values developed through hundreds of moments of expert analysis and experience. Introducing the idea of a ‘Customer Experience Ecosystem’, the authors show how every interaction is linked to a bigger CX picture, and how you can turn this knowledge to your advantage using their complete roadmap for CX success.
33. The Power of Moments
By Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Not only a source of valuable insights about business, Chip and Dan Heath’s compelling work is full of truths about human nature and above all the power of experience. Through vivid storytelling, the best-selling authors illustrate the qualities that make certain experiences unforgettable, and offer guidance on how to harness the experiential qualities of elevation, insight, pride and connection in your life and work. Blending business know-how, research-backed knowledge and a personable style, this is a must-read whether for work or pleasure.
34.The Four CX Pillars To Grow Your Business Now
Author: Adrian L. Brady-Cesana | Buy the book here
“I wanted to get all of the things written down that I learned during my journey building a variety of CX teams at a number of VC backed startup companies in New York City”
“This book is for customer-focused business leaders looking to learn more about CX and how they can leverage their teams, tools, process and feedback to grow their business”.
35. Journey To Centricity: A customer-centric framework for the era of stakeholder capitalism, by the amazing Ilenia Vidili.
Coming from Sardine, Italy, this is a great read on understanding what is customer-centricity. Managers and leaders know that customer centricity means providing positive customer experiences. But what if that’s not enough in the 21st century?
In the current age, where Millennials and Generation Z are shaping the very fabric of society and business, to remain relevant, organisations must provide more than occasional good experiences. A narrow focus on short-termism, excessive tech automatisation and outdated product mentalities are a liability to customer-centricity. We need businesses that are willing to radically change, embrace a long-term, customer-focussed perspective, and are able to create value for all stakeholders.
That's a wrap on 35 of the best books on customer experience!
Check out this interesting list of artificial intelligent books you need to read in 2023.
