Offering great customer service is key to running a successful business. If your customers have a great experience with your organization, more often than not, they will be happy to become a loyal customer as well as recommend you to others.

Digitalization has allowed customers to be much more proactive than ever. They have more control over their purchasing experience, and often conduct research before making a purchase. They are also quick to share their experiences with others, such as on social media outlets and review pages, should it not meet their expectations.

As the customer’s role in the purchasing process changes, so too must your business, adapting and ever-evolving to ensure that your customer’s experience is a good one. Modern technology is also changing the way in which we connect with our customers, and it’s important to keep up with the ways in which people want to connect with you.

Offer a More Personal Experience

These days, more often than not, customers want to be treated more personally. They want to feel like they’re more than just another customer. They also want to buy from people, rather than a faceless organization. This means that it’s important to establish a level of familiarity, as early as possible, in order to achieve this more personal connection.

Your “About Us” page on your website is a fantastic opportunity in which you can convey your company’s ethos and best practices. The opportunities for your customers to contact you should also be varied, offering your potential clients multiple ways in which they can get in touch with you.

We spoke to some of the industry’s top professionals to put together a reading list of the best customer service books for you to improve your skills and practices. These recently published books come highly recommended for those who want to stay ahead of the game in customer service.

Best Customer Service Books

Libérer l'excellence : le guide complet du service client ultime

De nombreux auteurs vous expliquent pourquoi un excellent service client est important ; Yanovitch et Snow vous montrent comment y arriver.

Rich Stamberger

PDG/SmartBrief, Inc.

Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service

Short, simple, highly effective.

Vivek Garipalli

Founder/Clover Health

The Customer Rules: The 39 Essential Rules for Delivering Sensational Service

At Zappos, many of our business decisions revolve around the customer. Lee Cockerell understands the importance of a great customer experience and shows you how to Deliver Happiness to your customers.

Tony Hsieh

CEO/Zappos

Amaze Every Customer Every Time: 52 Tools for Delivering the Most Amazing Customer Service on the Planet

At Zappos, we aim to deliver WOW through service. This book illustrates how important it is to WOW and AMAZE Every Customer Every Time!

Tony Hsieh

CEO/Zappos

The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence: The Handbook For Becoming the “Nordstrom” of Your Industry

The Nordstrom Way shows the direct link between empowering your employees and creating a long-term relationship with your customers. More businesses should follow Nordstrom's example.

Howard Schultz

Chairman/Starbucks

The Service Culture Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Your Employees Obsessed with Customer Service

Though research continues to uncover the astonishing impact of customer-focused cultures on customer loyalty and business results, few organizations know how to get there. Jeff Toister unlocks that mystery through this practical (and fun to read!) guide to developing a culture that really works

Brad Cleveland

Former CEO/International Customer Management Institute

Uplifting Service: The Proven Path to Delighting Your Customers, Colleagues, and Everyone Else You Meet

Uplifting Service gets to the bottom of what every great business should be, and then uplifts it. Ron's message is timely and the architecture he provides for building a service culture is timeless. This is a necessary book for every business.

Anne Rhodes

Exceutive VP/Jet Blue

Offrir le bonheur : un chemin vers les bénéfices, la passion et le but

I chose this book because it taught me how important it is that your business represents you and that you passionately believe in it. I also learned from it the importance of organizational culture, and that the endpoint of a sale should always be customer's happiness, not the money-product/service exchange.

Robert Hajnal

Fondateur/Trail Running Academy

L'audit cérébral : pourquoi les clients achètent (et pourquoi ils ne le font pas)

Ensuite, quand il s'agit de raconter des histoires et de mettre les choses ensemble dans une structure, "The Brain Audit" est un bon livre ; "Then Coffee and Kale Compete" - il s'agit de tâches à accomplir ; "La méthode Ask" - c'est aussi une autre très importante, assez bonne quand il s'agit de rassembler vos pensées et de mettre en place des modèles de marketing, comme des pages de destination, quelque chose comme ça.

Louis Grenier

Podcaster en chef/Tout le monde déteste les spécialistes du marketing

Social Media ROI: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization (Que Biz-Tech)

One of the five books Jeff recommends to young people interested in his career path.

Jeff Gibard

Chief Brand Officer/From The Future

What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services

Being outcome-driven enabled us to grow our market share in the angioplasty balloon market from less than 1 percent to over 20 percent and to create the stent, which became a billion-dollar business in less than two years.

Rick Faleschini

VP Marketing/Johnson & Johnson

Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice

As for my favorite business book, I'd probably say Competing Against Luck. It talks about the "Jobs to be Done" mindset when you're thinking about why your customers buy your product. I found that it puts you in the right mindset to understand the perspective of your customers so you can serve them better. It's surprisingly hard to understand the reasons why people buy things and this book helps you look at it from a much better angle.

Chris Olivier

Founder/GoRails

Traction : un guide de démarrage pour attirer des clients

This book lays out a framework to help any startup brainstorm ways to gain more customer traction.

Parc Gunhee

Co-Founder/Populum

Building a Big Small Business Brand: How to Turn Your Brand into Your Most Valuable Asset

This book belongs in the hands of every small business owner serious about beating their competition and becoming more successful than ever imagined. Building a Big Small Business Brand shows how with real-world examples and plenty of eye-candy to make it worth reading over and over again. It also belongs in the hands of every graphic designer, providing tools to help communicate to their clients the ever increasing importance of branding.

Glenn Taylor

Owner/ChromaGraphics

Uncontainable: How Passion, Commitment, and Conscious Capitalism Built a Business Where Everyone Thrives

There's an amazing book by the Container Store CEO.

Jilline Helman

CEO/Realty Mogul

The Heart of Hospitality: Great Hotel and Restaurant Leaders Share Their Secrets

A spectacularly useful look at what determines success in the hospitality industry, packed with the insights of great leaders and practitioners from our industry, put together by Micah Solomon, one of today's preeminent thought leaders on where hospitality, customer service, and customers themselves are heading.

Hervé Humler

COO/The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company

The EQ Edge : l'intelligence émotionnelle et votre réussite

The EQ Edge by Edward Book is an excellent book about emotional intelligence with different exercises of how to deal with irrational thoughts in a rational manner. The exercise is called the ABCDE system I use it as part of my coaching technique & with practice it becomes a natural skill that helps us to avoid unnecessary fears and illusions.

Nadia Al Cheikh

Founder/Deal’n

Big Bang Disruption : stratégie à l'ère de l'innovation dévastatrice

Downes and Nunes provide some very thought-provoking guidance to existing businesses about how to compete, innovate, and win in this new world of the disruptive startup.

Michel Dell

CEO/Dell

Badass : Rendre les utilisateurs géniaux

Comment faire des produits incroyables. Super amusant à lire aussi.

Lewis Smith

Entrepreneur & Développeur/BodyTracker

La nouvelle vente de base de puissance : maîtrisez la politique, créez une valeur inattendue et des marges plus élevées, et déjouez la concurrence

Power Base Selling a été le guide le plus pragmatique et le plus efficace de ma carrière dans les services professionnels. Le nouveau concept de valeur inattendue de Jim et Ryan est fondamental pour différencier votre produit et défendre vos marges.

Patrick Nicolet

CEO/Infrastructure Services

Humain + Machine : Réinventer le travail à l'ère de l'IA

Lisez des livres merveilleux et instructifs cette année.

Doug McMillon

PDG/Walmart

Vache violette

Puis, toujours quand j'étais plus jeune, au début des années 2000, Purple Cow de Seth Godin et The Cluetrain Manifesto étaient deux ouvrages auxquels je me référais toujours, ainsi que The Lean Startup d'Eric Ries, plus tard quand je cherchais comment devenir un meilleur entrepreneur technologique.

Dragos Novac

PDG/Nordique 9

Relever la barre : une méthode basée sur l'action pour un maximum de réactions des clients

This is by John Taffer of Bar Rescue. I don't agree with everything he says in this book, but I have a tremendous amount of respect for Taffer's accomplishments and experience. He has a lot of good ideas in this book, many of which we have implemented in our business. This is a much smaller book than #1 and #2, and in no way a substitute for either.

Chuck Rogers

Owner/Chuck Rogers Consulting

Invisible Selling Machine

John thinks that Digital Marketer founding CEO Ryan Deiss' 2015 book is a great introduction to sales tactics for the new entrepreneur.

Jean Daymond

Fondateur/FUBU

If You’re Not First, You’re Last: Sales Strategies to Dominate Your Market and Beat Your Competition

Grant Cardone: The 10X Rule, Sell or Be Sold, If You're Not First You're Last and Be Obsessed or Be Average. Grant is the real deal. He helped me realize that I've been dreaming far too low!

Mark Struczewski

Animateur / Podcast Mark Struczewski

Commencez par pourquoi : comment les grands leaders incitent tout le monde à passer à l'action

Au fil des ans, il a [Tony Hsieh] recommandé plus de 20 livres sur les affaires, y compris le sien, le best-seller Delivering Happiness de 2010 et vous pouvez toujours trouver ce qu'il lit actuellement sur son bureau encombré. Commencez par Pourquoi est parmi ces titres.

Tony Hsieh

CEO/Zappos

Lancement : la formule secrète d'un millionnaire sur Internet pour vendre presque n'importe quoi en ligne, créer une entreprise que vous aimez et vivre la vie de vos rêves

This book is a must read for everyone trying to influence and change people’s lives in a positive way. It’s a GREAT business book, but it’s also much more than a business book. I plan to get a copy for every Hay House author.

Reid Tracy

CEO/Hay House, Inc.

Les restes du jour

Si vous lisez The Remains of the Day, qui est l'un de mes livres préférés, vous ne pouvez pas vous empêcher de penser que je viens de passer 10 heures à vivre une vie alternative et que j'ai appris quelque chose sur la vie et sur le regret. Vous ne pouvez pas faire cela dans un article de blog.

Jeff Bezos

PDG/Amazon

La startup Lean

Il existe pas mal de bons livres commerciaux sur la technologie, et j'en énumérerai ci-dessous quelques-uns que je trouve être un bon point de départ. Personnellement, j'aime beaucoup les biographies et je lis surtout des biographies de morts, car ce sont les plus honnêtes. Donc, parce que l'ère informatique est encore très jeune, il n'y aura pas beaucoup de biographies dans ma liste.

Bogdan Iordache

Co-fondateur/Comment faire du Web