There is no time like the summer to kick back and read a good book on customer experience. My personal favorite this year was Bruce Craven’s Win or Die, an incredibly insightful and fun take on leadership lessons we can learn from Game of Thrones. It was fun to picture leading like Tyrion Lannister before heading back to the office.
But as the summer season winds down, why not spend what time is left with the right book that’s informative yet fun? I recently reached out to CX experts, leaders, and authors to see what is on their reading lists.
To hear their extended take on what to read this summer, stay tuned for our “CX Summer Reading” podcast coming out later this month at http://theCXPod.com.
Shep Hyken, CX expert and author of The Convenience Revolution
- Friction: The Untapped Force That Can Be Your Most Powerful Advantage, by Roger Dooley
Dooley’s book gives invaluable insight on the important of making convenient and easy interactions for your customers. - Why Customers Leave (and How to Win Them Back), by David Avrin
Avrin’s customer experience book is a fun take on the ways you can win and lose your customer base. It lays out 24 invaluable lessons for the reader to rethink their customer relationship. - Nincompoopery: Why Your Customers Hate You--and How to Fix It, by John R. Brandt
A hilarious lesson on customer service stories that fail, and how to grow from these often-silly mistakes. It’s a wakeup call to organizations to stop doing ridiculous habits that drive away customers. - Think Like Amazon: 50 1/2 Ideas to Become a Digital Leader, By John Rossman
Rossman, a former executive at Amazon, provides insight and experiences from one of the world’s largest and most powerful company.
Jeannie Walters, CEO of Experience Investigators, keynote speaker, and writer
- The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact, by Chip & Dan Heath
A classic customer experience book that helps leaders realize the value of treating customers the way they need to be treated at every moment of the journey-while understanding that some moments matter more than others. - The Hero Factor: How Great Leaders Transform Organizations and Create Winning Culture, by Jeffery Hayzlett and Jim Eber
A good culture is essential to any well-run organization. Great customer experience begins with leading a healthy workforce that is engaged and understands their mission and purpose in their organization leaders to memorable moments. - Thanks for Coming in Today: Creating a Culture Where Employees Thrive & Customer Service is Alive, by Charles Ryan Minton
Similar to The Hero Factor, this provides us an important lesson about serving your employees first to better serve your customers later.
Megan Burns, expert on culture and experience transformation
- Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics, by Richard H. Thaler
Customer experience starts with getting the culture right. Thaler’s book gives the reader a history of the behavioral economics field (an area he’s been pivotal in) and how it differs from traditional economics. One of these differences is how biases affect customers’ decisions and perceptions around your organization.
Adam Toporek, customer service expert, keynote speaker and founder of the blog Customers That Stick
- Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, By Cal Newport
A more unconventional CX book, Newport’s writing focuses on dealing with the distractions of today’s day and age- and how these factors can block a person’s ability to think deeply about their organization and the challenges that face them. Those who are going to win with customer experience and those who are able to think in depth about strategy and better mange their daily routines.
Paul Ignasinski, SVP, TTEC Digital
- The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact, by Chip & Dan Heath
Dooley’s book gives invaluable insight on the important of making convenient and easy interactions for your customers. - The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity, by Byron Reese
As AI continues to be more prevalent in business and society, The Fourth Age is about our relationship with these digital coworkers and how our lives will change alongside them in the present and the future. It presents an intelligent and even sided viewpoint on automations role in society. - Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, by Chip & Dan Heath
The third Heath brothers book cited covers change and transformation amongst legacy brands that want to get with the times. It’s invaluable coverage for organizations that want to evolve alongside their customer’s expectations and modern technology.
