Stay-at-Home Customer Success Reading List

Many of us have been staying at home, protecting ourselves from the coronavirus and are no doubt looking for an escape. Turning to our TVs and phones does not always allow us a break, from everything that is going on, that we occasionally need. But unplugging from it all and diving into a good book can, if only for a little while.

These books might not be considered juicy beach reads, although if you can read them on a beach, six feet away from other sunbathers, you should, but we hope you find this list helpful in finding something new to read to provide useful knowledge to grow in your professional life during this time.

Enjoy this list of must-read Customer Success books. 

The Forever Transaction

A veritable blueprint for success in the new membership economy, this book is a must-have for organizations of any size. It’s a true game-changer. Baxter takes readers through every step of the subscription business process – from initial start-up or testing of a new model to scaling the operation for long-term growth and sustainability to revamping your culture so everyone works together to optimize the customer lifetime value.

It covers all the essentials like subscription pricing, Software-as-a-Service, digital community engagement, and freemium incentives as a way to turn casual browsers into cash-paying superusers. It also features first-hand insights into subscription superstars like Amazon and Spotify. Most importantly, it shows readers how to build lasting relationships with their customers that are the very foundation of business success – today, tomorrow, and forever.

Never Lose a Customer Again

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.

While new customers experience joy, euphoria, and excitement, these feelings quickly shift to fear, doubt, and uncertainty as buyer’s remorse sets in. Across all industries, somewhere between 20%-70% of newly acquired customers will stop doing business with a company with their first 100 days of being a new customer because they feel neglected in the early stages of customer onboarding.

In Never Lose a Customer Again, Coleman offers a philosophy and methodology for dramatically increasing customer retention as a result, the bottom line. He identifies eight distinct emotional phases customers go through in the 100 days following a purchase. From an impulse buy at Starbucks to the thoughtful purchase of a first house, all customers have the potential to experience the eight phases of the customer journey. If you can understand and anticipate the customers’ emotions, you can apply a myriad of tools and techniques – in-person, email, phone, mail, video, and presents, to cement a long and valuable relationship.

The Startup’s Guide to Customer Success: How to Champion the Customer at Your Company

Are you looking to start or grow a Customer Success team? Customer Success is no longer just for companies with large teams and resources. It’s a company mindset that can unlick the biggest opportunities in business. Customer Success can help streamline experiences, grow product engagement and loyalty, and more importantly – retain business. In The Startup’s Guide to Customer Success, Jennifer Chiang presents a guide on how to plan, execute, and grow your own Customer Success team and the actionable steps that you can take to champion the customer at your company.

What Customers Crave

Think you know your customers? You better be more assured than just thinking you do, because your success depends on it! The best companies in the world first research exhaustively what their customers desire, and then they deliver it in memorable and deeply human experiences–resulting in success previously believed to be unachievable. So once again, how well do you know your customers? In a hyperconnected economy that is radically changing consumer expectations, this vital expectation for any successful business is not always easy. But in What Customers Crave, author and business strategist Nicholas Webb simplifies this critical task into being able to confidently answer two questions: What do your customers love? What do they hate? Jam-packed with tools and examples, this must-have resource helps businesses reinvent how they engage with customers (both physical and virtual).

The Customer Catalyst: How to Drive Sustainable Business Growth in the Customer Economy

The Digital Revolution has changed the business landscape in remarkable ways and will continue to do so. Organizations across industries and around the world are being disrupted and digitized at increasing pace – putting far more power in the hands of both customers and end-consumers. The traditional inside-out, functionally-siloed business model, typical of the product and sales-led growth era is over. The Customer Catalyst shows how organizations can put customers truly at the heart of their business and catalyze genuine, sustainable growth. 

Future business models are no longer about functions – they are beginning to revolve around customers. Customer-led companies will, over time, unpack their static functional activities and transform their structure. Customer advocates already wield massive influence in a customer’s buying process, and this is only set to increase. This is already changing the role and nature of business functions and Sales is no longer seen as the only source of growth. The Customer Economy is placing greater demands on businesses and offers greater rewards to the businesses that meet and exceed customer expectations. 

Customer Success Around the Web

• Who Should Own Renewals and Upsells– Check out this hot debate on whether Sales or Customer Success Managers should own expansion opportunities. 
• The Ultimate Guide to CSM Compensation Plans– Explore the available compensation plans, the right framework for thinking about CS compensation and best practices. 
• The Big Bold Secret to SaaS Growth in 2020– Find out how to fix the broken SaaS model to drive growth this year.

Fighting Churn is a newsletter of inspiration, ideas and news on customer success, churn, renewal and other stuff and is curated by ChurnZero.