Customer Experience 
Customer experience books can offer a lot of inspiration. Managing customer experience (CX) is a tricky task for businesses, as consumer expectations and behavior evolve constantly. Many authors have thoroughly researched the topic of CX and created sources of information that give professionals actionable insights into how to create memorable experiences for their customers.
This article provides details about several good books that can serve as reliable sources for improving your CX offerings. Take a deep dive into this list of CX books to pick up when you want to take your customer experience program to the next level.
1. The Power of Moments by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
This book discusses how business owners design experiences that customers cherish forever. The Power of Moments is all about these experiences.
The authors share interesting anecdotes to introduce complex concepts. For example, they highlight how the Magic Castle Hotel in Los Angeles turns ordinary moments into memorable ones with a fun “popsicle hotline” kids can call to order free popsicles in their favorite flavors. This unique touch allows the hotel to practice what the authors call “EPIC,” which stands for ”elevation, pride, insight, and connection.”
This book shows how you can use small gestures to build customer connections. Each chapter contains real-life examples of organizations crafting defining moments.
2. Chief Customer Officer 2.0 by Jeanne Bliss
Chief Customer Officer 2.0 by Jeanne Bliss helps organizations build a customer-centric culture. Bliss draws from her experience and accomplishments to offer readers a clear framework for developing robust customer experience strategies.
She introduces a five-step competency framework to help readers build customer-centric cultures at their own businesses.
- See customers as assets: Focus on acquiring and keeping customers and caring about their growth, or you may lose them.
- Align around experience: Understand the customer’s journey so you can deliver consistent experiences.
- Build a customer listening path: Create a system to proactively collect customer feedback, map it to the customer journey, and offer on-time resolution.
- Be proactive about experience, reliability, and innovation: Hold yourself accountable for company-wide KPIs to ensure consistent experiences and solve problems before customers reach out about them.
- Prioritize company accountability, leadership, and culture: Have a clear purpose so your team can own its CX metrics and take action to deliver exceptional CX.
You’ll also find several industry case studies showing how companies apply CX competencies to meet business goals and improve customer satisfaction.
3. The Customer of the Future by Blake Morgan
In The Customer of the Future, Blake Morgan suggests forward-thinking strategies a company should adopt to meet its customers’ changing needs. She highlights key trends, including AI, automation, and ethical business practices, and predicts they will be the future of CX.
In her writing, Morgan inspires readers to become proactive rather than reactive about technology. When you implement her ideas, you’ll recognize tech’s value in efficiently creating personalized CX. Data analytics work behind the scenes to offer CX based on customers’ preferences and behavioral patterns.
The book includes several case studies to help you apply practical strategies for improving CX. You’ll love the transformational roadmap for organizations seeking to engage digitally savvy customers.
4. The Effortless Experience by Matthew Dixon, Nick Toman, and Rick DeLisi
In this book, Matthew Dixon, Nick Toman, and Rick DeLisi present new ways companies can achieve customer loyalty by reducing customer effort. Dixon disproves a widely held belief that satisfaction leads to loyalty. Instead, he and the other authors suggest that making things easier for customers is a better route toward keeping them loyal.
The book asserts that exceeding customers’ expectations is one of many ways for organizations to garner their loyalty. It claims that the best approach to customer loyalty is reducing the effort the customer must exert to place an order or resolve a problem.
The authors also discuss the customer effort score, which measures how hard it is for customers to solve their problems. This score will naturally decline if you focus on making things easier for your customers. If you do this, you may be able to elevate customer satisfaction and loyalty simultaneously.
The book discusses four elements that are essential for building a low-effort CX:
- Proactive service: Anticipate and solve customer problems before they occur.
- Self-service: Provide self-service and user-friendly solutions that enable customers to answer questions independently.
- Seamless integration: Integrate different service channels into a seamless customer journey.
- Human touch: Let CX professionals support customers when necessary.
You’ll love this book if you’re seeking practical advice and suggestions that you can use right away.
5. Setting the Table by Danny Meyer
Danny Meyer’s Setting the Table discusses the principle of enlightened hospitality. The book talks about establishing solid relationships with employees before extending that hospitality to guests, suppliers, and investors.
Meyer based this book on his experiences in building and managing famous restaurants like Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, and Shake Shack. It’s a must-read for the hospitality sector. After reading this book, you’ll be able to link your internal company culture with the creation of memorable guest experiences.
The principle of enlightened hospitality is simple: when employees are treated well, they serve the customers better, which, in turn, feeds the whole business. Meyer expands on this concept by explaining the value of customer feedback and how it helped him craft his business.
He tells stories not just of his success but also of the lessons learned from his mistakes, especially from the early days of Union Square Cafe. You will see exactly why he values emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills when hiring his staff.
This book offers readers insights they can apply to any service-based industry.
6. The Ten Principles Behind Great Customer Experiences by Matt Watkinson
The Ten Principles Behind Great Customer Experiences by Matt Watkinson lays out the basic principles of creating great CX. The book helps you understand customers and design experiences that resonate with them.
After reading The Ten Principles Behind Great Customer Experiences, you’ll have a set of principles that you can use to create exceptional CX. Here’s a quick peek at them:
- Reflect customer identity: Personalize the experiences you create for your customers to reflect their identities and make them feel seen and heard.
- Satisfy higher objectives: Don’t settle for delivering just basic needs; tap into your customers’ most profound aspirations and values.
- Leave nothing to chance: Ensure your customers don’t experience uncertainty or dissatisfaction during their journey.
- Set and meet expectations: Be consistent when it comes to meeting expectations, as under-promising and over-delivering is preferable to the reverse.
- Be effortless: Ensure that every customer touchpoint is easy and intuitive so that consumers experience frictionless interactions with your brand.
- Create stress-free experiences: Minimize stress and anxiety while enabling customers to interact comfortably with your brand.
- Indulge the senses: Focus on making your customers happy by using thoughtful design and including sensory elements that create a better experience.
- Foster social engagement: Create opportunities for your customers to socialize with your brand.
- Empower customers: Give customers the tools and resources to own their experience.
- Consider emotions: Understand your customer’s emotional experience so you can design solutions that resonate with their aspirations.
Watkinson discusses the importance of mapping customer journeys to identify pain points and improvement opportunities. He also emphasizes creating value through collaboration across departments to encourage changes in the way they serve customers. Training staff members to adhere to these principles helps them deliver better services that align with the company’s focus.
When you finish reading this book, you’ll have a clear understanding of the customer-focused strategies that improve CX.
7. Hug Your Haters by Jay Baer
Jay Baer’s book Hug Your Haters addresses a relevant modern problem — the possibility that complaints about a product or service will go viral on social media. Baer strongly feels that, instead of ignoring complaints, companies should hug their haters, or, in other words, boldly acknowledge them.
Baer presents a new approach to dealing with unhappy customers by offering research-backed, actionable strategies. His advice can help you turn negative feedback into opportunities, allowing you to retain existing customers and improve your relationships with them.
Baer divides the complainers into two types:
- Offstage haters: Offstage haters use channels like email, customer hotlines, and phones to express their problems or their disappointment with your products. These people do not resort to public channels like social media to comment on their negative experiences. Addressing these problems quickly before they escalate is an effective way to handle the bad press.
- Onstage haters: Onstage haters are publicly vocal about their complaints and use social media platforms to spread the word about their negative experiences with a product. Openly addressing these negative comments becomes crucial, as it shows that you respond when your customers need you to and that you offer them support. When a review you’ve responded to picks up traction, this helps you avoid significant damage to your reputation.
Baer offers the following practical techniques for dealing with the haters:
- H.O.U.R.S. method for resolving complaints: The H.O.U.R.S. system proposed in Hug Your Haters provides a structured way to ensure effective customer-complaint servicing. H.O.U.R.S. stands for “hear, own, understand, respond, and solve.” When you listen, take responsibility, and understand the customer’s perspective, you can transform their negative experience into a positive one.
- F.E.A.R. method for winning back unhappy customers: The F.E.A.R. method focuses on the value of accountability and the importance of restoring your customers’ trust by resolving their issues. F.E.A.R. stands for “fixing the problem, empathizing with the customer, sincerely apologizing, and restoring trust.”
In his book, Baer discusses the importance of a strong customer service culture where all employees place equal importance on handling complaints. Baer shares real-world examples and case studies, showing how companies can turn haters into loyal customers and brand advocates.
Readers find Hug Your Haters to be an eye-opener, especially in a digital world where customer complaints quickly go viral.
By the end of the book, you’ll have takeaways about how to engage with even your harshest critics using a straightforward, no-nonsense approach.
8. What Customers Crave by Nicholas J. Webb
What Customers Crave by Nicholas J. Webb shows what customers love and hate and how they engage across touchpoints. It includes practical tools and insights for engaging customers, building loyalty, and driving sales. The book gives you customer engagement strategies that you can implement proactively, for example:
- Contact point innovation: Companies increase engagement by finding the critical touchpoints that impact customer satisfaction the most.
- Listening posts: CX leaders focus on gathering real-time feedback to adjust and improve their offerings based on customer insights.
The author also builds on the idea of co-creating experiences with customers and understanding their needs to develop innovative solutions for use cases. This book is a reliable guide for customizing CX based on your customers’ preferences.
9. Uncopyable: How to Create an Unfair Advantage Over Your Competition by Steve Miller
Uncopyable by Steve Miller explains how your business can stand out in a crowded market by creating unique attributes. Miller defines true competitive advantage as building an uncopyable attachment that isclearly differentiated by branding and customer relationships and that empowers businesses to develop their identities. This becomes hard for customers to replicate.
The author discusses what sets you apart from the competition while offering suggestions on messaging and branding. He introduces the concept of orange marketing, a strategy that uses bold and creative approaches to shape a unique identity.
When you read this book, you’ll discover that it’s all about creating differentiation that’s not easy to copy. It encourages you to think beyond the typical brand playbook.
10. The Experience Economy by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore
The Experience Economy by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore discusses the role of experiences in leaving lasting impressions after customer interactions are complete.
The book outlines the transition of economic value through four phases. The agrarian economy gave value to raw materials or agricultural products. In the industrial economy, the focus shifted to efficiency and standardization for mass production. The focus moved from operations to customer service in the service economy. Businesses started concentrating on personalization and customer interactions while delivering intangible product value.
Then came the experience economy, which values giving customers a feeling that they remember you through. With a focus on memorable CX, businesses put customers first and make customers a priority.
The authors introduce the idea of staging experiences, which they compare to theater. In these experiences, every interaction improves the customer journey. The book recommends that every customer and business interaction should be carefully planned and executed to create a memorable and impactful experience.
11. The New Gold Standard by Joseph Michelli
The New Gold Standard by Joseph Michelli talks about the best practices of customer service as demonstrated by The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. Michelli reveals the leadership principles that have driven the brand’s success, emphasizing the importance of excellence, employee empowerment, and a strong organizational culture. The book talks at great length about the value of culture and employee empowerment in making CX not just memorable but legendary.
The author describes the Ritz-Carlton’s five main leadership principles as:
- Defining and refining: Establish clear standards and consistently ensure your service meets those expectations.
- Empowering through trust: Make employees feel accountable by trusting them to make decisions on their own.
- Realizing it’s not about you: Don’t lose sight of the fact that the guests’ needs should be prioritized over your own agenda.
- Delivering the wow factor: Focus on creating moments that exceed customers’ expectations and leave lasting impressions.
- Leaving a lasting footprint: Make sure your customers are loyal and engage in repeat purchases by creating memories worth returning to.
Each principle in The New Gold Standard is accompanied by real-life stories from Ritz-Carlton employees that show how they apply these concepts in their daily work. This book provides practical examples that will inspire you to deliver world-class experiences while creating a brand rooted in customer care and excellence.
12. How Hard Is It to Be Your Customer? by Jim Tincher and Nicole Newton
Ever put yourself in your customer’s shoes? If your answer is yes, you’ll love Jim Tincher and Nicole Newton’s How Hard Is It to Be Your Customer?
This book shows how understanding customer challenges can create loyal and satisfied customers. The authors discuss customer journey mapping, a tool that helps businesses visualize and analyze customers’ steps when interacting with a product or service. This reveals their pain points and allows you to improve your processes to increase customer satisfaction.
This book stands out for its focus on the customer’s perspective, its practical advice about improving service, and its emphasis on empathy.
13. Woo, Wow, and Win by Thomas A. Stewart and Patricia O’Connell
Woo, Wow, and Win by Thomas A. Stewart and Patricia O’Connell offers a practical formula for companies to increase customer involvement and loyalty by connecting with them on an emotional level.
The authors feel that it’s time to shift the focus from traditional perceptions of marketing and instead try to hook customers with memorable experiences. The concepts of “woo,” “wow,” and “win” help build relationships that not only attract customers but also transform them into brand advocates.
The book outlines three significant areas of customer engagement:
- Woo: Attract customers through compelling stories and brand narratives.
- Wow: Deliver an experience that exceeds customer expectations.
- Win: Focus on building lasting relationships that inspire loyalty.
The book’s practical lessons and case studies make it easier to apply these concepts to business.
Upping Your CX Game? Consider Nextiva
The ideas and perspectives in these books will inspire you to level up your CX game. However, you need to put this inspiration into practice while optimizing your CX strategies and tactics. Moreover, you have to track and measure CX to see what improvements you should make rather than optimizing things without a clear vision of what’s needed.
A unified CX platform like Nextiva offers a tactical solution for monitoring and optimizing your organization’s CX offerings. It delivers reporting and analytics that allow you to see improvements while delivering workflows that put a considerable chunk of your CX activities on autopilot.
Learn more about Nextiva and understand how it can help take your CX to the next level.
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