customer success books

Top 10 books for Customer Success Managers in 2022

Perspectives towards things bloom when we experience or read. No matter at what stage we are in our career, learning is a never-ending thing. When for the firms, Customer Success came into sight helping out customers before a situation knocked up mattered a lot. Although this is the purpose of it, there is much to it, and only a few get it right. Read on to know about the Customer Success books for Customer Success Managers (CSMs) to read in 2022.

Did you know, “Happy customers are repeat customers”? The philosophy of customer success has changed how CEOs think of their customers and business. Let’s unleash our minds to keep leveling up our expertise by deepening our knowledge. 

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Top Customer Success Books for Customer Success Managers to read in 2022.

Customer Success Books provide insights about what customer success can achieve for your business, as well as best practices for determining what your customers need (versus what they typically “want”) and managing your customer interactions at every stage.

Customer Success: How Innovative Companies Are Reducing Churn and Growing Recurring Revenue. 

Customer Success Book image

There are three sections in the book. The first comprises: why is it necessary for the SaaS firms to reduce or eliminate churn? The second: 10 laws of “Customer Success”. The third deals with CCO – Chief customer officer, Technology and The Future. 

With the hot subscription-based model from music to movies, like a recurring payment. When sales cared more about attracting new customers, only in the recent five years, we realized the game changer is retention. Learn from A-Z inside the book that takes you from the start of the customer success to the success stories. 

Customer rating: 4.6 out of 5 

From Impossible to Inevitable: How SaaS and Other Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue

Impossible book image

Book by the founder of predictable revenue – Aron Ross and managing director – Jason Lemkin. 

As the name suggests, this is about converting impossible goals into inevitable success. 

This book answers the three questions; 

  1. Why aren’t you growing faster? 
  2. What do you need to know about scaling a sales team? 
  3. So, what does it take to achieve hyper-growth? 

With the 7 ingredients of the hyper-growth template given in the book, the author breaks even to the specifics of it to guide you through. 

From the 1st ingredient of nailing the niche to the 7th ingredient of defining destiny, it is a list that the customer success teams don’t want to miss upon to comprehend their role in the business. 

Customer rating: 4.7 out of 5 

Hypergrowth: How the customer-driven model is revolutionizing the way businesses build products, teams, and brands. 

The book is authored by David Cancel who is an Entrepreneur, CEO, and Founder of Drift. 

Hyper growth book image

The theme in the book is to give attention to the current customers to drive success for the business. Learn the modern approach of structuring teams and building products. The book offers room to learn about the author’s experience in transforming firms such as Performable and Hubspot;

  1. How did he create a customer-driven mode?
  2. Has it helped him structure the work ever since?
  3. How to bring this sort of thinking into the organization?

This book is filled with the strategies and frameworks from responsive development to the spotlight framework. You don’t want to miss upon it as this is about hyper-growing your business. 

Customer rating: 4.3 out of 5  

The Customer Success Pioneer: the first 12 months of your journey into growth.

Pioneer Book image

The book is authored by Kellie Lucas, the founder of ForseLucas. 

A book for professionals who are engineering the growth of revenue.  A handbook that gives best in practice knowledge of customer success to make up to the ladder from way down. Most essential for customer success managers to develop their careers and give out the best outcomes for the organizations. 

  1. Are you climbing up the ladder of customer success?
  2. Want to turn around churn into growing recurring revenue?
  3. Do you want a clear path for the developed framework?
  4. Wondering to be proactive?
  5. Does your company have a customer success philosophy or yet to build one?

Well, then this book is for all those customer success professionals who want to start building their careers in customer success.

Customer rating: 4.6 out of 5 

Suggested Read: Top 50 resources for Customer Success

The trusted advisor: An invaluable roadmap to all those who seek to develop truly special relationships with their clients.

Tusted Advisor book image

One of the best customer success books! The author David H Maister is a leading authority of professional service firms, Charles H Green – founder of trusted advisor associates, Robert M Galford the coauthor who wrote this book. 

This book is about managing customer relationships that rely on trust and has five steps to build which are so useful for CSMs.

  1. There are three sections, where the first part unleashes stories, anecdotes, and suggestions that stimulate the thinking which an advisor must acknowledge. 
  2. The second part deals with formally addressing the subject. 
  3. And in the last section, the concepts discussed in the previous parts are developed and applied.

The most intriguing thing is the “Trust Equation” that is of value to build trust in a compelling way which implies for every relationship even though it is written for business consulting. 

Customer rating: 4.5 out of 5

Drive Customer Success throughout the Customer Journey!

The effortless experience: Conquering the new battleground for customer loyalty.

Experience book image

The best-selling author of The Challenge Sale, Matthew Dixon comes with a breakthrough idea in the book along with Nick Toman – senior director of research at CEBs, and Rick DeLisi – senior director of advisory services at CEBs. 

The Customer Success book gives out conventional wisdom on customer loyalty. Also, it changes the perspective of how the traditional way of customer loyalty won by top-notch customer service is misleading. Rather it has to do with delivering the promises. 

This book put forth 4 pillars of customer experience that are of low effort, profiles, with robust data and insights. Get the templates and tools to start applying for enhancing the service, generate loyalty and reduce costs. 

Customer rating: 4.5 out of 5

The startup’s guide to customer success: How to champion the customer at your company.

Guide to Customer Success Book Image

The author Jennifer Chiang has released a guide describing how to grow, execute and plan teams of customer success and the steps that can be taken to outshine the customer at the company. 

Get insights on; 

  1. The must-have things while hiring the teams of customer success. 
  2. How to derive value with less work for customers? 
  3. How to get things done timely and as well plan ahead of time while fighting the fires? 

From startups to companies who want to incorporate a customer-centric approach and are building customer success teams to those who are VPs or CEOs can read this book. 

Customer rating: 4.6 out of 5

Farm don’t hunt: The definitive guide to customer success.

Farm don't hunt book image

The author Guy Nirpaz the CEO of To tango, Fernando Pizarro – the VP at Spoon wrote how businesses have to shift from the mindset of hunting to farming which is a customer success paradigm.

The point is that hardly do business leaders understand customer success and its function. This book reveals customer success underpinnings as theory and gives insights on how to orient business around the new model. 

Customer rating: 4.4 out of 5

The seven pillars of customer success: A power framework to drive impactful client outcomes for your company.

Pillars Book image

The author Wayne McCulloch is a customer success leader at Google cloud wrote about whose thoughts to trust in regards to success?

There are a lot of resources out there but whom to rely on to see if it works for you or not?  

With 25 years of author’s experience in customer success, he provides a strong framework for building customer success organizations. Read the detailed specifics of how an organization uses seven pillars to test it out. Gives out perspectives to grow knowledge and has a driven framework and much more explained in the book. 

Customer rating: 4.7 out of 5

The outcome generation: How a new generation of technology vendors thrives through true customer success. 

Outcome Book Image

The author Paul Henderson is a developer of the generation of 3 customer success programs. 

In this customer success book, learn how to leverage customer success at all stages of the journey of the customer. And for the current customers, know how to engage at the beginning of the buying cycle and to create one. 

Get more knowledge on increasing sales and learn what outcome to exactly sell. Understand how to grow support and services to enable customer success. Get on board to know how to generate outcomes around one theme. 

Customer rating: 4.3 out of 5

Winding up! 

It’s undeniable how a subscription-based model outshines single purchases. The profitability is more in retaining the current customers to like you more than making new ones try you.  Check out the above-mentioned best books for Customer Success Managers to deepen your knowledge and provide the best customer experience.

To avoid the existing customers from deviating, it is essential to be there in their shoes and visualize the problem to resolve it. The reads suggested are the customer success books for customer success managers to thrive and explore in the field of customer success. Hoping it would give perspectives to gain insights. Happy learning!

Amitha is a content writer at CustomerSuccesBox. She is a structural engineer by qualification but has a passion for writing..An avid learner in the morning and an explorer in the night. At present, she is exploring the Customer Success domain. Loves baking, dancing and drawing when she is not writing!