In the world, "the customer always comes out on top."

But you know that "the customer is always right" isn't the only way to make customers so happy that they stay. There are a lot of other ideas, strategies, and tools customer-facing professionals and teams can use to make their customers into long-term fans and advocates.

But how do you learn everything you need to know to become a high-performing customer happiness engine?

It's possible to learn a lot about customer service while you work. But sometimes, it's better to learn from someone who has done a lot of research and practice, so you can take their advice and use it right away in your own work.

The best books on customer service, customer success, leadership, and writing are on this list. You can look through them to learn from the experts. There are a lot of good books out there for people who work with customers, so pick one and start learning so you can become an expert, too.

Top Customer Service Books

Customer Service Books

These books will help you learn how to give your customers a great experience. They feature real-world case studies and tried-and-true methods from thought leaders in the field.

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

Authors Frances Frei and Anne Morriss say that in order to give great customer service, you have to do some things that aren't so great. Right: The authors say that if you don't do well in one area of your business, you can still do well at customer service because you can't do everything well.

The authors say that businesses should figure out what their customers value most, focus on excelling in that business function, and accept that this will lead to underperformance in other areas. They say that customer service will be a big advantage for people who are trying to choose from a lot of different options. This is a hard truth, but it's also important to know.

The Nordstrom Way to Customer Experience Excellence: Creating a Values-Driven Service Culture

People who write about Nordstrom have literally written a book about how they did it. That's because Nordstrom has set the standard for customer happiness in the sea of other department stores.

It's important to let employees who are self-motivated go the extra mile to make customers happy, make it easy for them to interact with your brand, and always think like a customer to build a customer-centered brand on every team and function in your business. These are some of Nordstrom's top tips.

The Amazement Revolution: Seven Customer Service Strategies to Create an Amazing Customer (and Employee) Experience

Shep Hyken, a customer service thought leader, wrote this book about how to make customers happier and more loyal. It includes seven practical ways to do this, like cultivating partnerships with customers, giving unique membership awards, and building community with customers.

In this book, there is a lot of steak and no sizzle. It has lots of practical ideas and strategies that can be used right away, and real-world examples that show how they work in the real world.

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

He wrote the book Hug Your Haters for a customer service organization that isn't just built on the phone or email. It also uses social media and messaging apps. Baer tells his readers to build their customer service team around these digital channels, where most people share their great reviews and their complaints.

As part of the book, Baer tells readers how to deal with your haters and your trolls, how to figure out how well your customer service is working, and how not dealing with customer complaints can hurt your business.

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

It's pretty well known that every employee at the Ritz-Carlton can spend up to $2,000 a day on customer service. If you're not familiar with the policy, it's a lot of money.

In this book, Joseph Michelli talks about how other businesses can build a brand and customer experience that is both memorable and unique. These principles include "empowering [employees] through trust," "leave a lasting footprint," and "define and refine [the experience you want customers to have]."

The Thank You Economy

Gary Vaynerchuk, a marketing mogul and author, talks a lot about the importance of one-on-one communication in marketing. His ideas also apply to customer service, which is why so many people choose to work with him.

As a result of the rise of social media, Vaynerchuk says that small courtesies are making a comeback in the business world. This is not the only thing that he says. If businesses don't care about their customers on a personal level, they'll lose customers to their rivals, he says. There are a lot of ideas in this book about how technology can help you better connect with customers all over the world.

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

A book by Nicholas Webb has a lot to say about customer service. There are a lot of programs for customer service that don't work right now.

If a business provides "optimal" customer service, Webb thinks it will only be able to stay in business. Most businesses are still a long way from that, and Webb thinks this is why. Webb says the main reason is because businesses can now treat and review customers like numbers instead of real people. This is because of all the new technology businesses have had in the last few decades.

Webb says that you should look at every interaction a customer has with your business, both online and offline, and think about what you can do to make each one better. Optimizing each part of the customer experience instead of making big changes will make individualistic customers happy. They won't be happy with the bare minimum.

Customer Success Books

These books are about taking customer service to the next level. They talk about how to make your customers happy and keep them happy. Once you start solving your customers' problems and guiding them to other solutions and strategies for achieving their goals with your product or service, you can start building a customer success program. This is a program that helps your customers succeed so your business succeeds, and it turns your happy customers into your loyal advocates and evangelists who spread the word about your business.

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

Some of the people who started the customer success movement wrote this book. It's the best book to read to get a sense of what customer success is all about. It focuses on improving customer loyalty, reducing churn, and adapting to the subscription economy.

A lot of the book is about subscription-based businesses, but the principles and ideas it talks about can be used in any industry or business. A lot of people talk about customer loyalty, and in particular, the difference between behavioral and attitudinal loyalty. In their book, the authors say that "attitudinal loyalty" is loyalty when people love a certain brand or product. It's ideal, but it's hard to get.

The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value

This book is written by Frederick Reichheld, one of the people who came up with the Net Promoter Score®, which many businesses use to measure customer happiness and loyalty. A lot of people today believe in the ideas that Reichheld came up with in 1996, just like they believe in the Net Promoter Score (NPS).

Chief among his findings and arguments are that loyal customers are less expensive to service than non-loyal customers, that loyal customers are more willing to pay more because they are satisfied with the brand and the products, and that loyal customers are valuable marketing agents because their recommendations to friends and family bring in free business.

Chief Customer Officer 2.0: How to Build Your Customer-Driven Growth Engine

It's a thought that customer leadership can be important, like when a company hires a CEO for customer service. Jeanne Bliss is a thought leader on this. If you want to be a customer-focused executive, you should read her book. It lists the five skills she uses to evaluate and coach customer-focused executives and help them turn customers into a growth engine.

Honor and treat your customers as valuable resources.

It's important to unite around customer service.

This means that you need to set up a way for customers to talk to you.

Proactive experience, reliability, and new ideas

Leadership, accountability, and culture are the three things that make a group work well together

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