If you’re trying to improve customer happiness, I bet that you’re reading a lot on the topic. You can find several great books about customer service out there. We chose 5 essential customer service books for you. Each book contains original commentary from Amazon Reviews. Our list is a mix of timeless classics and books with a fresh attitude.
1. The Customer Support Handbook: How to Create the Ultimate Customer Experience for Your Brand
by Sarah Hatter
If you run a support out fit big or small, this book will help you get your s#%t together (excuse my french). We run a 24-hour support operation that deals with inbound calls, emails, and chats. We used this book to first help us identify things we were doing that was not beneficial to our customers, then to train our agents on better ways to handle customers and situations.
I ended up using the book a guide for one helluva training session and I’m making it a required reading for all of the support supervisors. If you deal with customers, buy this book!
See the book on Amazon!
2. The Effortless Experience: Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty
by Matthew Dixon, Nick Toman and Rick DeLisi
Too often, we’re solving the wrong problem! We think customers want a delightful customer service experience. We design our processes, train our people, measure them on delighting the customer.
But is this really the right problem to be solving? Is this what customers really want. Yes, they absolutely want to be treated well, by skilled and polite people. But more then anything else, they want their problem solved as quickly and effortlessly as possible.
This book turns much of our traditional thinking about customer service upside down. It provides data challenging old thoughts about a “delighted customer” is a loyal customer both spending more and recommending you more. This is a must read and think book for anyone in Customer Service.
See the book on Amazon!
3. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
by Tony Hsieh
“Delivering Happiness” has become the trade phrase for Zappos. In this hard-to-put-down book, Tony Hseieh (CEO of Zappos) tells the story of how his life became entangled with the life of Zappos. Along the way, Tony explains how he learned business lessons from a summer fling with playing poker in Vegas. One of those lessons was to figure out what he really wanted to get out of life.
Tony talks about company culture and how he lead Zappos to invest their time, money and resources into 3 areas: customer services, culture, and employee training. Tony lists a great “Top 10 ways to instill customer services into your company” and explains (in great detail) the 10 core values of Zappos culture.
Overall a highly enjoyable book, very nicely written in an informal style, with a great story and good pointers to further resources. Highly recommended.
See the book on Amazon!
4. How to Win Friends & Influence People
Dale Carnegie explains that by appealing to the other person’s highest ideals, remembering the other person’s name, letting the other person do most of the talking, speaking in terms of the other person’s interests, allowing the other to save face, by “throwing down a challenge,” etc., you can make a friend out of just about anyone.
The advice is largely sound, but I think the reader should keep in mind the context within which this book was written. “How to Win Friends and Influence People” was written in the 1930’s and intended primarily as a companion book to Dale Carnegie’s classes on how to be a good salesman.
See the book on Amazon!
5. The Thank You Economy
Gary has done a great job of speaking directly to community managers, marketers and anyone who thinks they understand Social Media. Although most companies and community managers will tell you they completely understand what they’re doing, they don’t. There is way too much pushing and not enough intentional listening. I’m not trying to say that Gary invented the Thank You Economy but he completely understands the concept and is pushing it farther than most.
A large number of companies think they are practicing it, but all too many just go through the motions without caring about their actions. Relationships are everything today and you need to understand how to better connect with your customers to enhance these relationships. If you’re interested in elevating your company to the next level reading the Thank You Economy would be a great start!
See the book on Amazon!
I’m sure these 5 customer service books will help you to level up your service. It’s your turn now. Tell us which books you’ll recommend us to read?
Cover photo by www.foundanimals.org
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