If you’re looking to level-up or just get started in customer success, then good news: we’ve done our best to compile a collection of resources to help point you in the right direction.
There are so many great books, blogs, thought leaders, and even several good online communities that are worth checking out. Below, we’ve outlined some of our personal favorites, as well as some of the best resources from around the web.
P.S. If you’re looking to connect directly with others in the customer success world, here’s a short list of online customer success communities you might enjoy:
•
OUTCOMES by Success Hacker•
r/Customer Success on Reddit•
Quora: Customer Success•
Saastr Community
P.P.S. Here’s another great resource from MockQuestions, where they’ve highlighted a collection of, well, mock questions, for customer service-related job interviews.
P.P.P.S. This is a great article on how to succeed in customer success from Brandy Dryzmkowski—it's got some great tips on mapping skills or traits you have to real-world customer success work.
Okay, okay, so not
all of the podcasts we listed below are directly customer-success focused. We also included several podcasts we think are really useful for learning more about the startup and technology landscape at large—understanding the market can be helpful if you land a job in customer success in tech. Also, some of these offer really good insights about how to build a better business, and delighting customers is a huge part of that.
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The Customer Success Podcast, Gainsight
•
Churn It Up, Aly Mahan
•
The Official Saastr Podcast, Harry Stebbings
•
The CX Leader Podcast, Steve Walker
•
Human Duct Tape Show, Jeanne Bliss
•
This Week in Startups, Jason Calacanis
•
How I Built This, Guy Raz
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Masters of Scale, Reid Hoffman
•
a16z Podcast, Andreessen Horowitz
Maybe better than any other career category, customer success is a fantastic genre for reading—and don’t worry, they’re not all stuffy business books, either. In fact, some of our team’s favorite customer success books don’t really feel like customer success books on the surface. The best ones demonstrate this through stories.
So a lot of our list of some of the best reads in the customer success category are made up of awesome biographies and memoirs from people who’ve built organizations with legendary customer satisfaction. (Ahem, of course, we did throw in a few business-y type books, too, because some of these share pretty good insights on how to build awesome companies and teams.)
So without further ado, check out our
Essential Reading List for Every Customer Success Professional in 2020. Here it is.
• Delivering Happiness, Tony Hsiegh
•
Made in America, Sam Walton
•
The E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber
•
Start With Why, Simon Sinek
•
Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek
•
Contagious, Jonah Berger
•
Setting the Table, Danny Meyer
•
The Everything Store, Brad Stone
•
The Virgin Way, Richard Branson
•
Pour Your Heart Into It, Howard Schultz
•
Without Reservations, J.W. “Bill” Marriott, Jr.
•
The Spirit to Serve, J.W. “Bill” Marriott, Jr.
•
Chocolates on the Pillow Aren’t Enough, Jonathan M. Tish
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Grinding It Out, Ray Kroc
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How To Win Friends & Influence People, Dale Carnegie
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Good to Great, Jim Collins
•
Built to Last, Jim Collins
•
Principles, Ray Dalio
•
Made to Stick, Chip Heath and Dan Heath
•
Getting Naked: A Business Fable About Shedding The Three Fears That Sabotage Client Loyalty, Patrick M. Lencioni
•
The Southwest Airlines Way, Jody Hoffer Gittell
Not everyone that’s a phenomenal voice on how to do customer service well necessarily has “customer success” in their title—which is a great reminder that customer success is a job shared by everybody in every part of an organization.
To highlight some people we think do it best, we’ve put together this short list of thought leaders, ranging from companies and investors to customer success leaders, CEOs, and more. Each bring unique points of view to the table—often with great insights that apply to doing customer service better.
• Jason Lemkin (
Twitter and
Quora)
• Dushka Zapata (
Quora and
LinkedIn)
• David Skok (
blog)
• Todd Eby (
Twitter and
Medium)
• Tomasz Tunguz (
blog)
• Gainsight (
Twitter and
blog)
• Mark Kilens (
Twitter)
• Mike Volpe (
Twitter)
• Nick Mehta (
Twitter and
LinkedIn)
• Julie Devaney Hogan (
Twitter)
• Sahil Lavingia (
Twitter)
• Jason Fried (
blog and
Twitter)
• Justin Jackson (
blog and
Twitter)
• Stewart Butterfield (
Twitter)
• Patrick Campbell (
LinkedIn)
• Wade Foster (
LinkedIn)
• Seth Godin (
blog and
Twitter)
In today’s world, you don’t have to look very far to notice the popular trend of companies loudly posting on social media and all over their websites about how they’re “customer first” organizations. But if everybody is saying it, what does it actually mean? Well, instead of telling, we thought it might be helpful to show—by highlighting a few companies we think do customer success well.
Apple – Someone will always make you feel seen and heard within about a minute of walking into a store. You get to play with their products and someone’s always nearby to answer a question, talk about why something is great, or get you what you need as fast as they can—while still making you feel welcome and like you can stick around for as long as you want.
Chick-fil-A – Though Chick-fil-A isn't a startup (or even a tech company), we can't help but add them to this list of companies whose customer service we really admire. If an order is ever messed up or if you have to wait for a few extra minutes, they'll probably give you a coupon and a genuine apology. They also adequately mix their cookies and cream milkshakes because they care about their jobs. Not to mention the consistency from associates—like how everyone responds with, “My pleasure,” anytime you say thank you.
Notion – Notion is a profitable tech startup in SF. They’re building a unique sort of product, and their no-shoe-wearing office culture is reminiscent of the founders’ days rebuilding the entire product from scratch in Japan. Working on their
Community & Support team could be a remarkable experience.
ProfitWell – They’re tackling a tough problem. Not only have they created a product that works, but they’ve made it beautiful and easy to use. Plus, through their product, content, and support, they’re great at educating their customers on how to do business better.
Robinhood – Their app and product experience is quietly better all the time.
Slack – Anytime Slack’s app goes down, they consistently respond proactively—their “downtime” refund emails are a great way of enforcing and proving they value the customer experience.
Typeform – We’re big fans of Typeform here at Crash—we use them for our very own
Discover quiz, as well as the contact form when hiring managers want to reach out to Crashers. Help them “make things a little more human” by sending a tailored Crash pitch to their
Customer Support Advocate role—remote, or in San Francisco or Barcelona!
Zapier – Zapier’s brand and offering is all about making it easier for people to work better—one of the small but awesome ways they’ve built customer service into their offering is using automatic notifications to alert you any time there’s a real (or suspected) issue with a Zap. Their fully remote team is incredibly diverse and committed to the company.
Zappos – The founder of Zappos once described it as a “customer service company that happens to sell shoes.” They prove their focus on customers in so many ways—one small example is their 365-day and free-return-shipping refund policy. On the wilder end, they even once ordered a pizza for a customer who called their support line. You can’t escape their customer service.