Customer Service Books: 36 Picks for Support Pros
Reading: it’s not just an annoying job you outsource to an AI agent (or a town in England). Reading is a way to challenge and change your thinking, to learn from others without having to experience everything yourself. It helps you decide, for example, where to roll out AI in your support org or how to structure your team.
“You are the same today as you’ll be in five years except for two things: the books you read and the people you meet,” wrote author Charlie “Tremendous” Jones. Well, it’s been more than five years since I (Mathew “Pretty Decent” Patterson) wrote my first list of recommendations, and I’ve read a lot of books since then. I’ve changed, but so has the support world. The people you meet in the support queue now might not all be actual people, for one thing.
Fortunately, there are plenty of smart authors and excellent customer service books that can help us all figure out what great support looks like when people and AI are both in the mix.
Books to help you think about AI and service
1. Co-Existence, Ethan Mollick
Wharton professor Mollick on why he believes the future is working alongside AI, and how to best collaborate with AI tools as their capabilities continue to change.
2. Co-Intelligence, Ethan Mollick
Mollick’s older guide to living and working with AI, examining how generative AI changes work and education, and offering useful rules for engaging with AI tools effectively.
3. The AI Revolution in Customer Service and Support, Ross Smith, Mayte Cubino, and Emily McKeon
A little more corporate than the typical Help Scout blog fare, but worth a read for the ideas around AI, company culture, and responsibility.
Books on hospitality and the craft of service
4. Unreasonable Hospitality, Will Guidara
Guidara shares the lessons he learned, mistakes he’s made, and the principles he takes into building customer-centric food businesses. Watch the Eleven Madison Park episode of 7 Days Out for some more insights.
Recommended Reading
5. Setting the Table, Danny Meyer
Danny Meyer is the restaurateur who inspired Will Guidara, and this book is his argument that how you make customers feel is what drives a successful business. Meyer also has a new book out, What Could Possibly Go Right, about scaling a culture. I’m still reading it, but it’s great so far.
6. The Service Culture Handbook, Jeff Toister
A highly actionable book that wastes no time getting to the useful insights to help you create a culture of service in your team or your whole business.
Recommended Reading
7. The New Gold Standard, Joseph Michelli
A hotel is in some ways very far from the work of an online tech support team, but the attitudes, the approaches, and even some of the specific actions are surprisingly transferable. A great choice for team leaders and managers.
8. Be Our Guest, Disney Institute
This book by the Disney Institute starts out with a promise to “take you behind the scenes to discover Disney best practices and philosophies in action,” and it delivers.
9. Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit, Leonardo Inghilleri and Micah Solomon
This is the first book that really shaped my thinking on support, back when I was building the Campaign Monitor support team. For years, I gave every new team member a copy when they started. It’s short and readable, with detailed analysis on crafting carefully planned customer experiences. Their example of Ritz-Carlton’s “use” and “do not use” word list for team members is something many customer service teams could adapt to their own tone and approach.
10. Anything You Want, Derek Sivers
Derek Sivers, founder of CD Baby, tells his personal story of his business growth and ties it to his persistent focus on his customers. He is honest about his mistakes and clear about his successes, making this a fascinating read.
Books for handling difficult customers and managing burnout
11. Hug Your Haters, Jay Baer
Baer splits critical feedback about service into two groups: onstage for those using public channels to get attention on their issues, and offstage, for people using one-to-one private channels. He shares useful, specific advice for dealing with each kind of “hater.”
12. Crucial Conversations, Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler
A very practical book that will help you think through why people might be acting as they are, and plan your own response. Highly useful for customer service folks on the front line!
13. Against Empathy, Paul Bloom
Bloom makes an argument that empathy — as opposed to “rational compassion” — can lead to worse outcomes and poor decision-making. I’m not sure I agree, but it was a fascinating read in the context of customer service.
Books to help you communicate clearly
14. Writing for Busy Readers, Todd Rogers and Jessica Lasky-Fink
Your queue is full of busy customers with work to get done. This practical guide to help you write more clearly, concisely, and effectively is worth your time.
15. Supercommunicators, Charles Duhigg
Duhigg explores the science behind why some conversations connect effortlessly while others fail, and he shares methods any support team could use to navigate the different types of communication.
16. Everybody Writes, Ann Handley
Handley’s fun, actionable guide to writing better online content explores how clear and engaging copy is a powerful tool for anyone communicating with customers.
17. On Writing Well, William Zinsser
William Zinsser’s classic book is a wonderful collection of essays covering principles of writing, methods of improvement, and advice on varied writing types. Whether you’re writing to your customer, team, or management, this book will help you write with more clarity and impact.
18. How to Write Short, Roy Peter Clark
In the age of social media and “shareable insights,” the ability to write clearly and concisely is even more important. In this book, Roy Peter Clark teaches you how to say more with fewer words than you thought possible. Of course, “short” is not the target in itself. The author asks, “Dare I suggest that when it comes to writing, it’s not the length of the text that matters, but the power of the text for the length?”
19. Revising Prose, Richard Lanham
In a short, accessible book, Professor Richard Lanham outlines his multi-step Paramedic Method for finding and killing the “lard” in your prose. He then demonstrates it by revising examples from newspapers, press releases, and nonfiction essays.
20. Illuminate, Nancy Duarte and Patti Sanchez
Nancy Duarte and Patti Sanchez highlight that communication is all about change — changing someone’s understanding of a situation or changing their feelings about a decision. Extremely relevant to this period of drastic technological change.
Books to help you build and lead a team
21. CXOXO: Building a Support Team Your Customers Will Love, Mercer Smith
Mercer draws on many years of support experience, including some in my own team, to deliver this heartfelt and highly practical guide. Flip through and you’ll find answers to your questions.
Recommended Reading
22. Radical Candor, Kim Scott
Kim Scott writes a guide for building trust and keeping your team aligned, and provides tools for challenging people while caring, without falling into passive aggressiveness. Your manager might have read it too!
23. The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle
Daniel Coyle examines highly successful groups and explains how safety, vulnerability, and shared purpose shape team dynamics. You’ll learn some good tips on building trust and strengthening your team.
24. Turn the Ship Around, L. David Marquet
“I’m sorry, I can’t help you with that” is the refrain of the disempowered customer service agent, who knows what needs to be done but doesn’t have the authority or the tools to do it. Marquet explains leadership that pushes authority and control right down to the front lines with great effect.
25. Switch, Chip and Dan Heath
Scaling support often means changing your processes and behaviors over and over again. Chip and Dan Heath provide a framework to identify why those changes are so hard and how to make them more likely to happen effectively. Their imagining of your brain as an elephant and rider trying to work together is one that will certainly hit home during a period of uncomfortable change.
26. Start With Why, Simon Sinek
Simon Sinek’s book and his 2009 TED talk explain why some companies and leaders are able to have a much bigger impact by focusing on their underlying purpose. Understanding Sinek’s “Why/How/What” model will help you build a team that follows you by choice, not because of your position.
Books to help you run a support operation
27. The Good Jobs Strategy, Zeynep Ton
MIT Sloan School of Management professor Zeynep Ton presents a heavily researched case that paying well and improving conditions can result in more success than cutting costs and treating people like replaceable parts.
If a big, low-margin retailer like QuikTrip can treat their frontline team well, there are few excuses for the rest of us.
28. The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande
Gawande demonstrates how simple checklists can dramatically improve performance and prevent errors. Highly recommended for any leader with a growing team.
29. The Tyranny of Metrics, Jerry Z. Muller
Before you design the metrics by which you’ll measure your support team, read this book. It will scare you, then inform you, about the dangers of using the wrong measures.
30. The Effortless Experience, Matthew Dixon, Nick Toman, and Rick DeLisi
Author Matthew Dixon and his colleagues at the CEB use data collected from hundreds of companies and over 100,000 customers to bust a few common customer service myths, namely that “delight” is vastly overrated. They claim reduced customer effort is the one true driver of loyalty. The second half of the book outlines ways to reduce effort across the customer experience.
Recommended Reading
Books for CX leaders
31. Customer Understanding, Annette Franz
Anything by Annette Franz is worth your time, and this book is no exception. If you want to know how to move your customers closer to the center of your business, and why that matters, start here.
32. The Human Experience, John Sills
Full of case studies and examples, this book reinforces the value of focusing on human feelings in growing a successful business. It’s easy to read and highly encouraging.
33. Chief Customer Officer 2.0, Jeanne Bliss
The role of “Chief Customer Officer” is relatively new but rapidly growing, and this book contains a framework for building a more customer-focused company. Jeanne Bliss’ work is especially useful for executives and leaders in larger groups who are looking to shift their businesses onto a customer-focused path.
34. Uncommon Service, Frances Frei and Anne Morriss
Frei and Morriss start out their book with a blunt challenge: A business cannot be good at everything, and when you choose to excel in one area, you must underperform in another.
If you truly understand your customers, you can make the best decisions on where to focus and where to dare to be “bad.” This is a book that won’t let you take the easy, ineffectual path of being “pro-service” without backing it up with action.
35. Strategic Customer Service, John A. Goodman
Much of Goodman’s book is spent breaking down his practical approach to creating a customer experience strategy that does the job right the first time, using feedback and complaints from customers to identify opportunities for proactive service.
Recommended Reading
36. The Loyalty Effect, Frederick F. Reichheld and Thomas Teal
Frederick Reichheld’s Harvard Business Review article “The One Number You Need to Grow” introduced us to the now omnipresent NPS survey as a way to measure customer loyalty. In this book, he and his co-author make the case for customer loyalty as the most important factor in profitability.
Recommended Reading
There’s no right way to read
When you’re reading to learn, you don’t have to sit down and read from page one to the final words. Browse the index and look for chapters or sections that feel relevant to your current situation. Skim the headings, grasp the key points, and dip in deeper wherever it makes sense.
Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren's How to Read a Book is a useful tool for this kind of reading. You don’t even have to read books with your eyes. Maybe an audiobook will fit your life better; get your ears on the job. Do whatever works for you! The point is to make time to invite new information in, consider it, and act on it.
To read is to change.
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Mathew Patterson
A veteran support leader, Mat spent years teaching online support at Help Scout before founding More Human Content. He also runs People-First Jobs. Subscribe to The Supportive or find Mat on LinkedIn.
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