Jennifer Chiang is the author of The Startup's Guide to Customer Success and the Head of Customer Success at Seso, where she is the architect of the customer success team.

Do you want to build or expand a customer success team? Customer success is no longer reserved for giant corporations with large teams and resources. It is a company mindset that can unleash the greatest commercial prospects. Customer success may assist to streamline interactions, increase product engagement and loyalty, and, most importantly, keep customers coming back.

Jennifer Chiang gives a guide on how to create, implement, and grow your own customer success team, as well as specific activities you can take to champion the customer at your firm, in The Startup's Guide to Customer Success.

Discover information such as:

• The four qualities that Shreesha Ramdas, CEO and Co-Founder of Strikedeck, believes are essential when hiring your first customer success team
• How Jamey Jeff, Coastal Cloud's Managing Director of Customer Success Solutions, reevaluated QBRs to provide more value to his clients while doing less effort
• Maranda Dziekonski, VP of Customer Success at Pared, explains how she organizes her time properly to not only get things done, but also to battle fires and prepare ahead.
  

This book is for everyone, from new customer success executives, CEOs, and VPs who want to make their organization more customer-centric to start-ups that are establishing their own customer success teams.

Author: Jennifer Chiang

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Startups-Guide-Customer-Success-Champion-ebook/dp/B07NDR49NF

Ratings: 4.5 out of 5 stars (from 41 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #382,748 in Kindle Store

#62 in Service Industry (Kindle Store)

#204 in Service Industry (Books)

#351 in Starting a Business (Kindle Store)

Guy is passionate about people and technology, and has committed his career to transforming the way people do business. Prior to founding Totango, he served as EVP of Engineering at GigaSpaces and Chief Architect at Mercury in the real-time big data field. Guy moonlights as the lead guitarist in a Palo Alto rock band that practices in his garage.

The recurring income business is the new normal across whole industries. Firms that charge clients on a monthly basis must follow an entirely new set of standards, norms that generally benefit the customer over the supplier. However, this new model provides excellent opportunity to deliver and take additional value from the partnership. To generate that value, businesses must shift from a hunting mindset to a farming perspective. That shift is the new Customer Success paradigm.

Many business leaders have heard of Customer Success, but few truly understand what it means to run their company from a Customer Success perspective. Even fewer have the experience to establish and optimize the Customer Success function.

Guy Nirpaz, a pioneer in the field of Customer Success, is regarded as one of the earliest proponents of this company realignment. Guy breaks out the academic underpinnings of Customer Success as a philosophy in "Farm Don't Hunt" and rapidly moves on to providing concrete, actionable suggestions for orienting your business around this new paradigm.

Author: Guy Nirpaz and Fernando Pizarro

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Farm-Dont-Hunt-Definitive-Customer-ebook/dp/B01BIBY8W0

Ratings: 4.4 out of 5 stars (from 121 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #468,404 in Kindle Store

#685 in Sales & Selling (Kindle Store)

#1,599 in Business Management (Kindle Store)

#1,978 in Sales & Selling (Books)

Wayne McCulloch, a Top 100 Customer Success Strategist and one of the world's best customer success specialists, serves as the Customer Success Leader for Google Cloud's complete SaaS portfolio. He is a keynote speaker and multiple industry award winner with over twenty-five years of experience in customer-focused roles.

Whose insight do you rely on for success as a customer success leader? Your field is still emerging, but your occupation is one of the world's fastest growing. There are several books and blogs created by successful people sharing their experiences and strategies, but how do you know what will work for you? Whose professional counsel can you rely on?

Wayne McCulloch has over 25 years of expertise in the software industry, including years spent in training, adoption, and customer experience, which are the foundations of customer success. He's now sharing what he's learned as a chief customer officer in charge of global success activities. Wayne provides a flexible framework for developing an effective customer success organization in The Seven Pillars of Customer Success. From customer journey actions to transformation advisor development, you'll find specific examples of how businesses have put these seven pillars to the test. You need a proven framework and knowledgeable perspective to develop a culture of customer success and stand out in the marketplace—this book gives both, and more.

Author: Wayne McCulloch

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Pillars-Customer-Success-Framework/dp/1544516606

Ratings: 4.8 out of 5 stars (from 136 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #36,874 in Books

#49 in Customer Relations (Books)

#65 in Strategy & Competition

#74 in Marketing & Consumer Behavior

NICK MEHTA is the CEO of Gainsight, where he brings together the appropriate people and positions them to win for customers, partners, employees, and their families. He believes in the Golden Rule and employs it to bring more compassion into his dealings with others.

Gainsight's chief customer officer is DAN STEINMAN. He is the author of dozens of relevant blogs, contributed articles, and Gainsight's Customer Success University, as well as a respected thought leader in the Customer Success space.

LINCOLN MURPHY is the founder of Sixteen Ventures, a consulting firm that helps businesses accelerate growth through Customer Success. He is a prolific author and international speaker on the topics of Growth and Customer Success.

Your company's success is now inextricably related to the success of your customers. Customer Success is a game-changing primer on the exciting new approach of customer management. Business interactions are shifting fundamentally. Companies could focus entirely on sales and marketing in the world B.C. (Before Cloud) because customers were frequently'stuck' after purchasing. As a result, most organizations considered the 'post-sale' experience to be a cost center. Customers now have the power in the A.B. (After Benioff) world, with granular per-year, per-month, or per-use pricing models, cloud deployments, and numerous competitive options. As a result, B2B suppliers must give success to their clients in order to succeed in their own enterprises.

Companies are forming customer success teams to manage the customer lifetime and increase adoption, renewals, upsell, and advocacy. The Customer Success mindset is infiltrating the boardroom and influencing CEOs' business thinking. Customer Success is the trendiest B2B movement since the introduction of the subscription business model, and this book is the one-of-a-kind handbook that tells you how to make it work in your organization. It is one of the best books on customer success.

From the beginning phases of planning to implementation, you'll receive skilled assistance:

• Recognize the circumstances that led to the creation of the Customer Success movement.
• Create a Customer Success strategy that has been proved by the world's most competitive organizations.
• Implement a strategy for organizing the Customer Success organization, tiering your customers, and creating the necessary cross-functional playbooks.

Customers desire products that will assist them in achieving their own business objectives. Allowing your customers to see the value in your products protects recurrent revenue and creates a customer for life. Customer Success teaches you how to kickstart your customer-centric revolution and make it last.

Author: Nick Mehta, Dan Steinman and Lincoln Murphy

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Customer-Success-Innovative-Companies-Recurring/dp/1119167965/

Ratings: 4.6 out of 5 stars (from 536 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #13,306 in Books

#15 in Customer Relations (Books)

#33 in E-commerce Professional (Books)

Aaron Ross launched PredictableRevenue.com, a consultancy firm that assists B2B enterprises in tripling revenue growth and developing self-managing sales teams. Aaron is also the founder of PebbleStorm, a company that helps 100 million individuals "earn money through fun" by fusing happiness and money.

Storm Ventures' Managing Director is Jason Lemkin. Jason works exclusively with early-stage SaaS/enterprise start-ups and helps them scale at Storm Ventures.

Why are you struggling to expand your business while everyone else appears to be achieving their objectives? Would you know exactly how to treble your sales in the following three years if you needed to? Doubling, tripling, or even tenfolding the growth of your company isn't a matter of magic. It's not about advantages, good fortune, or working harder. The world's fastest growing firms follow a formula to achieve and sustain much, much quicker growth.

From Impossible to Inevitable delves at the hypergrowth strategies of firms such as Hubspot, Salesforce.com (the fastest growing multibillion-dollar software company), and EchoSign—formerly Adobe Document Services (which grew from $0 to $144 million in seven years). Whether your company is worth $1 billion or $100,000, you can apply the same insights as these well-known organizations to learn what it takes to shatter your own revenue records.

• Determine why you are not growing faster.
• Learn what it takes to achieve hypergrowth.
• Nailing a niche (the most important missing growth element)
• What every revenue leader should know about assembling a scalable sales force

There's no better moment than now to break through plateaus and get off the revenue rollercoaster. Find out how right now!

Author: Jason Lemkin and Aaron Ross

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Impossible-Inevitable-Hyper-Growth-Companies-Predictable/dp/1119531691/

Ratings: 4.4 out of 5 stars (from 183 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #134,027 in Books

#548 in Sales & Selling (Books)

#867 in Marketing (Books)

#1,761 in Business Management (Books)

David H. Maister, one of the world's foremost authorities on professional service business management, is the author of numerous best-selling books, including Managing the Professional Service Firm, True Professionalism, and Practice What You Preach, as well as the coauthor of The Trusted Advisor.

Charles H. Green is a professional services sector executive instructor and business strategy consultant. Robert M. Galford is a Managing Partner at the Center for Executive Development in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was previously the executive vice president and chief people officer at Digitas, Inc., a leading Internet professional services firm with over 1,400 employees.

David Maister, best-selling author, collaborates with Charles H. Green and Robert M. Galford to create the vital tool for all consultants, negotiators, and advisors- The Trusted Advisor. The book is regarded as one of the best books on customer success.

Professionals in today's fast-paced networked economy must work harder than ever to preserve and grow their business skills and expertise. However, world-renowned professional advisors David H. Maister, Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford argue that technical mastery of one's specialty is insufficient. They say that the capacity to acquire the trust and confidence of clients is the key to professional success. To emphasize the critical importance of trust, the writers employ tales, experiences, and instances of their own and others' achievements and mistakes. The result is an extremely readable work that will appeal to both rookie advisors and seasoned experts.

Author: David H. Maister, Charles H. Green and Robert M. Galford

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Trusted-Advisor-David-H-Maister/dp/0743212347/

Ratings: 4.5 out of 5 stars (from 678 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #87,986 in Books

#68 in Consulting

#111 in Customer Relations (Books)

#873 in Entrepreneurship (Books)

MATTHEW DIXON is the executive director of CEB's Sales & Service Practice. He is a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review, and his previous book, The Challenger Sale, was a Wall Street Journal bestseller that was hailed as "the most important advance in selling in many years" (Neil Rackham) and "the beginning of a wave that will take over many selling organizations in the next decade" (Business Insider).

NICK TOMAN is a frequent writer to Harvard Business Review and the senior director of research for CEB's Sales & Service Practice.

RICK DELISI is a well-known public speaker and facilitator, as well as the senior director of consulting services for CEB's Sales & Service Practice.

CEB is the most prominent member-based advisory firm. CEB provides senior leaders and their teams with insight and actionable solutions to transform operations by combining the best practices of thousands of member organizations with its advanced research methodology and human capital analytics.

Everyone knows that the ideal approach to build client loyalty is to provide service that is so good, so out of the ordinary, that it surprises and delights. But what if everyone is mistaken?

Matthew Dixon and his colleagues at CEB debunked numerous long-held sales fallacies in their famous bestseller The Challenger Sale. With a new book that throws conventional thinking on its head, they've turned their research and analysis to a new crucial business subject: customer loyalty.

The notion that businesses must delight customers by exceeding service standards is so entrenched that few managers even question it. They commit incalculable time, energy, and resources to dazzling others and inspiring unwavering allegiance. Despite this, CEB's thorough study over five years and tens of thousands of responses demonstrates that the "dazzle factor" is vastly overrated—it simply does not predict repeat sales, share of wallet, or favorable word of mouth. The truth:

"Loyalty is driven by how well a company delivers on its basic promises and solves day-to-day problems, not on how spectacular its service experience might be. Most customers don’t want to be “wowed”; they want an effortless experience. And they are far more likely to punish you for bad service than to reward you for good service."

This makes a lot of sense if you put on your customer hat instead of your manager or marketer hat. What do you truly want from your cable company: a free month of HBO when it goes down or a quick, easy connection restoration? Do you desire free cookies and a friendly grin from your bank, or maybe a personal relationship with your teller? Or is it just a simple in-and-out transaction with an easy option to seek a refund if it overcharges on fees?

The Effortless Experience takes readers on an enthralling trip deep within the consumer experience, revealing what truly makes customers loyal—and disloyal. The authors outline the four main pillars of a low-effort customer experience, including strong statistics, stunning insights, and profiles of firms who are already using the concepts uncovered by CEB's study with remarkable success. They also contain a plethora of tools and templates that you can use right now to enhance service, cut expenses, minimize customer attrition, and eventually produce the illusive loyalty that the "dazzle factor" fails to achieve.

The prizes are there for the taking, and the path to obtaining them is now well-defined.

Author: Matthew Dixon, Nick Toman and Rick DeLisi

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Effortless-Experience-Conquering-Battleground-Customer/dp/1591845815/

Ratings: 4.6 out of 5 stars (from 498 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #43,805 in Books

#53 in Direct Marketing (Books)

#54 in Customer Relations (Books)

#85 in Marketing & Consumer Behavior

Gainsight's principal strategist is Ruben Rabago. He established Pulse+, a revamped continuation of the world's largest education program for customer success experts, and he consults with colleges on curriculum development. Ruben also oversees Gainsight's community outreach, which aims to increase diversity in the profession.

Gainsight-the Customer Success Company's chief customer officer is Ashvin Vaidyanathan. Ashvin began his career with Gainsight as a customer success manager, and he spent much of his time there developing new and innovative methods.

The Customer Success Manager has evolved into a valuable asset to businesses of all sizes. That critical role will only grow in prominence as the subscription model spreads from the cloud and SaaS to new sectors of the economy. This is because, in order to compete and survive in this new climate, you must center your approach on the consumer. You must acknowledge that you are no longer selling a product. You're selling a result. CSMs are dedicated to capturing and achieving those results by listening to their customers, understanding their needs, and modifying goods and services to drive success. Although some current publications address the customer success imperative, until today there has been no authoritative instruction manual for the CSM profession.

The Customer Success Professional's Handbook is the go-to resource for CSMs and other related professions in the field. This practical, first-of-its-kind textbook fills a large gap in professional customer success literature by delivering the knowledge that every CSM requires to succeed—from practitioner to senior leadership. The authors, who are recognized specialists in creating, training, and managing Customer Success teams, provide real-world guidance and practical recommendations for both aspiring and seasoned CSMs. The manual was written by practitioners for practitioners. This much-needed book is an invaluable resource for front-line Customer Success Managers.

• Shows how to create, implement, and manage a Customer Success team.
• Assists new CSMs in developing their skills and proficiency in order to be more employable and advance in their careers.
• Managers are given explicit instructions on how to hire a fantastic CSM.
• Presents real strategies for increasing revenue during renewal, expansion, and customer advocacy opportunities.
• Describes tried-and-true approaches and strategies for coaching CSMs throughout their careers.
• With more than a dozen of the industry's most regarded professionals providing their thoughts, this book provides essential insights from Gainsight, the Customer Success Company, and the larger customer success community.

Customer Success Manager is currently one of the world's fastest-growing careers, with over 70,000 available positions. The Customer Success Professional's Handbook: How to Thrive in One of the World's Fastest Growing Careers will be your go-to guide at every point of your CSM career. It is among the best books on customer success.

Author: Ashvin Vaidyanathan and Ruben Rabago

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Customer-Success-Professionals-Handbook-Careers-While-ebook/dp/B083XKZN8C

Ratings: 4.7 out of 5 stars (from 334 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #327,182 in Kindle Store

#106 in Customer Relations (Kindle Store)

#197 in Management Skills

#318 in Career Guides

Paul Henderson is an author, lecturer, and income-from-outcomes consultant. Through a customer outcome program, he assists B2B organizations in unlocking unrealized revenue.

"Set aside, we're on our way!" This is the cry of a new breed of technology vendors. They've taken a fresh approach to ensuring their consumers' success. As a result, they're thriving.

Subscription pricing is at the heart of each of these suppliers' businesses. Each has learned that recurring revenue does not grow and may even drop if customers do not believe they have had success.

What distinguishes them? They are completely clear on what the consumer believes to be success. And they've developed their company to facilitate that achievement. They understand that the outcomes for the customer are what matter. They are all from the Outcome Generation.

The Outcome Generation explains how to become a member of the Outcome Generation. You'll discover how to achieve actual customer success at each stage of the customer lifecycle. For existing customers, you'll discover how to engage customer executives at the beginning of the buying cycle—and, in many cases, how to initiate a buying cycle.

You'll discover how to use the third generation of technology sales—selling outcomes—to increase new business (new logo) sales. And what kind of outcome to sell. You'll make more emotional connections, stand out from the competition, and gain more business if you use the third-generation strategy. You'll also discover how to evolve Services and Support to focus on actual customer success, and how this results in fantastic references. And marketing will have a whole new means of gaining attention, piqueing prospects' interest, and engaging them.

Most vendors have moved on from solution-selling and its associated marketing, sales, services, and support techniques. The Outcome Generation demonstrates how to connect the entire organization around a similar theme—enabling results that customers consider as successful. And how this enables vendors to prosper!

Author: Paul J Henderson

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Outcome-Generation-Technology-Vendors-Customer-ebook/dp/B07HHDDLXW

Ratings: 4.3 out of 5 stars (from 50 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #305,817 in Kindle Store

#85 in Information Technology

#95 in Customer Relations (Kindle Store)

#96 in Business Consulting (Kindle Store)

Matt Watkinson is a designer and consultant that works with businesses to improve their customer experience. He has worked with renowned names, design firms, and management consultancies in the United Kingdom, Europe, and America.

Learn how to give your company a competitive advantage by providing an unparalleled client experience!

Ten Principles Behind Great Customer Experiences will show you how to consistently improve and build your business by following a simple "10 principles" format. The combination of psychological theory, real-world case studies, worked examples, and template papers provides the 'what, why, and how' needed to make good ideas stick and put them into practice, allowing you to improve your customers' experiences and keep them coming back for more.

Among the best books on customer success, Ten Principles Behind Great Customer Experiences is packed with easy concepts that are simple to adopt and accessible to everybody, with lessons from a slew of winning companies including Facebook, Lush Cosmetics, Gü puddings, and John Lewis.

Author: Matt Watkinson

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Behind-Customer-Experiences-Financial-ebook/dp/B00BFSMXGU/

Ratings: 4.6 out of 5 stars (from 190 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #111,426 in Kindle Store

#20 in Customer Relations (Kindle Store)

#23 in Small Business Sales & Selling

#33 in Marketing for Small Businesses