10 Best Customer Experience Books

Nowadays, most people search for information online. You read blog posts and research articles if you want to learn more about a specific topic. Although it makes sense to search for information online where you can find up-to-date answers to specific questions, what about getting a more comprehensive understanding by reading a book about the topic.

For example, there are plenty of good customer experience books to read if you want to learn more about customer experience.

To help you out, we have listed our top 10 must-read customer experience books. Whether you’re planning new CX strategies, want to become more customer-centric, or just want to learn more about customer experience, these customer experience books will help you do that. 

Our list includes books written by well-known CX experts and leaders with a long experience working within customer experience in different industries. In addition, we asked the authors to share a quote and explain what made them write the book and why you should read it.

Customer Experience 3

Authors: Naeem Arif & Andrew Priestley | Buy the book here

“The book takes you on a journey through many relevant topics, with the CX leaders sharing their current best thinking on world-class, best practice CX. 

Readers have commented that they love the hands-on tips and advice, as well as each chapter being just long enough to gain insight and inspiration yet short enough to be able to read in a coffee break. 

My chapter is focused on designing for moments worth experiencing from a macro level. I share some experiences from Rituals, a brand that excels in delivering moments worth experiencing and share some practical hands-on advice into how businesses could advantage from creatively designing and implementing working values.“

“It’s not what they say that makes these moments so significant, its more about how they tell it, how they show it, definitely how they live it, and most importantly how people feel it.”

– Joanna Carr one of the contributors of the book

The Cult Of The Customer

Author: Shep Hyken | Buy the book here

”I love to see others succeed. I wanted to share the tactics and tools I teach in my speeches, as well as what my team teaches in our customer service workshops. I hold nothing back. Specifically, included in the tips and strategies in the book are our top culture-changing tools that move an organization to be more customer-focused.”

”This is a book for everyone in any position in any organization. Really! Customer service is not a department. It’s a philosophy to be embraced by everyone, from the leadership to the most recently hired. Everyone – even those who have zero contact with a customer – has a role to play in the customer’s experience.”

– Shep Hyken

Chief Customer Officer 2.0

Authors: Jeane Bliss | Buy the book here

”This is the book I wish I’d had on my desk when I led customer experience for major corporations. It is my gift to our community.”

– Jeanne Bliss 

Transform Customer Experience

Author: Isabella Villani | Buy the book here

”I set out to write a practical guide that provided advice to deliver CX from strategy to execution. I wanted a blend of storytelling, practical advice and theory. All of this is backed by statistics, based both on my own research and on statistics sourced from reputable third parties. 

I wanted my book to have a transformation lenses, providing advice on how to question the status quo in an organisation, as well as offering insights into how organisations can be transformed to deliver sustainable change that has positive outcomes for customer experience, employee experience and financial success. 

Peppered through the book are real-life examples of work I’ve done with clients, masked to conceal their identities, as well as stories from others around the world. We all have stories to tell – the good, the bad and the ugly. I wanted to present information with a focus on what is best for the customer, the organisation and its people.”

-Isabella Villani

The Power of Customer Experience

Author: Martin Newman | Buy the book here

“I’ve been living and breathing customer experience since I started my career on the shop floor of my father’s retail opticians in Glasgow 38 years ago. Despite customers being the lifeblood of every business, here we are in 2021 and way too many businesses still look at customers as a cost centre as opposed to a profit centre. My book, the Power of Customer Experience is intended to prove the value and commercial impact of great customer experience and is packed full of case studies of brands who do this well.“

“Who should read it? Anyone in business and particularly anyone who has any interaction with or impact upon customers either directly or indirectly.“

-Martin Newman

Customer Understanding

Author: Annette Franz | Buy the book here

“I was inspired to write it because it’s critical for CX professionals and others who are charged with designing a great customer experience to know that all their work stems from what customers tell them, i.e., their expectations, their jobs to be done, how well you’re performing against their needs and expectations, and more.

Want to know how to strengthen the customer relationship? Trying to find out what they expect today and in the future? Want to find products and services for your customers, not customers for your products?

Taking the time to listen to – and to co-create with – customers will put you leaps and bounds ahead of your competition! Be sure to share the book with your executives; the book starts off with reasons for putting the customer at the heart of the business – and closes with a hard punch letter to CEOs to drive home reality!”

– Annette Franz

Delivering Fantastic Customer Experience

Author: Daniel Lafrenière | Buy the book here

“Well, all the good, and mostly bad customer experiences I’ve had in stores, on the web and over the phone inspired me to write this book. It seemed at the time — and it’s still the case — that people forgot the art of doing business, meaning treating your customers with respect, taking the time to understand their needs and provide them with the proper goods or services. It really looks like business owners are not aware of the consequences of offering bad customer experiences, meaning losing clients and employees, then their business.“

”Who should read the book? Everybody! If you are a human and interact with other humans, for business reasons, physically or digitally, this book is for you. Sales people, advisors, marketing, website or accounting managers, delivery people, installers and executives should read this book. You want customers to fall in love with your brand. It’s a matter of life or death for most businesses, if not all businesses.”

-Daniel Lafrenière

Customer Empathy

Author: Alex Allowed | Buy the book here

“Customer Empathy has been written with the aim of humanising current approaches to customer experience management and design. The ability to empathize enables us to see the customer’s world differently. Through feeling their emotions and understanding their perspective we create more meaningful connections, align and unite teams and enrich our decision-making to make a difference in customers’ lives—and in doing so, deliver customer experiences that enhance value and drive growth.”

“Ideal for VP’s and executive leaders, customer experience professionals, CMO, CCO, CXO, senior leaders in customer roles, sales and marketing and customer service. Written with the purpose of inspiring and empowering leaders with new possibilities and to provide teams with customer-centric frameworks, methods and tools. Learn how to leverage the most under-utilised and powerful human resource in business today – Customer Empathy.”

-Alex Allwood

The Guaranteed Customer Experience

Author: Jeff Toister | Buy the book here

“There’s one problem that universally frustrates customers: failing to do what you say you’re doing to do. Whether it’s false advertising, a defective product, or an unresolved complaint, customers lose trust when companies fail to keep their promises. I wrote the book to provide a practical guide to winning and retaining more customers by providing a consistently and predictably good experience.”

“The Guaranteed Customer Experience is intended for anyone who wants to win and retain customers by offering a consistently superior customer experience. Company executives, whether you’re a small business owner or a Fortune 500 CEO, can use this model to build a customer-focused organization. Functional leaders—such as marketing managers, product managers, and customer service managers—will discover how to build more unity and cooperation with other departments. Even individual employees will benefit by learning how to manage customer expectations and recover from service failures.”

– Jeff Toister

The Four CX Pillars To Grow Your Business Now

Author: Adrian L. Brady-Cesana | Buy the book here

“I wanted to get all of the things written down that I learned during my journey building a variety of CX teams at a number of VC backed startup companies in New York City” 

“This book is for customer-focused business leaders looking to learn more about CX and how they can leverage their teams, tools, process and feedback to grow their business”.

– Adrian Brady

Customer Experience Management Field Manual

Author: Jeff Sheehan | Buy the book here

This field manual is a CX leader’s practical guide for starting a new or improving an existing customer experience management program. Whether you are brand new to a customer experience management role, or a veteran, this book offers valuable frameworks, ideas, and examples for building your CX program that improves operational efficiency and customer intimacy.

“My mission for writing this book is to offer CX professionals a practical guide on how to create and refine a CX program that treated customer experience management as a holistic set of integrated business functions with a clear commercial purpose. I wrote this book to be a dog-eared desktop reference resource.” 

– Jeff Sheehan

The Customer of the Future

Author: Blake Morgan | Buy the book here

“I’ve been writing about CX for nearly two decades—long before it became the mainstream practice it is today. In that time, customers have changed dramatically, and those changes will only grow in the future. I wrote The Customer Of The Future to show companies that they can’t rely on how they’ve done business in the past to connect with customers in the future. The book is written with change agents and CX professionals at all levels in mind. “

– Blake Morgan