10 exceptional books on customer experience and growing existing clients

The following ten leading titles are essential for your reading list, as they teach you not only how to boost customer satisfaction; but how to win repeat business from all your clients.

1. The Ten Principles Behind Great Customer Experiences – By Matt Watkinson (Financial Times Series)

Customers are powerful. They have a loud voice, a wealth of choice and their expectations are higher than ever. This book covers ten principles you can use to make real-world improvements to your customers’ experiences, whatever your business does and whoever you are. Even for those who are just starting a business, this book shows that making improvements customers will appreciate doesn’t need to be complicated or cost a fortune.

2. Five Star Service: How to Deliver Exceptional Customer Service – Michael Heppell

Create magic moments that get you noticed, remembered and referred – that's the promise from Michael Heppell, the author of Five Star Service. Because providing excellent customer service is the surest way to greater success – and it's not as time-consuming as you might think — an essential guide on keeping clients happy.

3. Managing the Professional Service Firm – David Maister

Drawing on more than ten years of research and consulting to creative companies, David Maister explores issues ranging from marketing and business development to multinational strategies, human resources policies to profit improvement, strategic planning to effective leadership. While these issues can be complicated, Maister simplifies them by recognising that "every professional service firm in the world, regardless of size, specific profession, or country of operation, has the same mission statement: outstanding service to clients, satisfying careers for its people and financial success for its owners".

4. Nonstop Sales Boom: Powerful Strategies to Drive Consistent Growth Year After Year – Colleen Francis

Are you struggling to stay profitable and scrambling to cover costs each quarter? This insightful book by Colleen Francis will help you break the unhealthy cycle of sales highs and lows and instead achieve reliable, steady results. This might be something to suit the more sales-led firm, but there are tips and tricks relevant to any business.

5. Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service – Kenneth Blanchard

A straightforward and snappy guide to successful customer service from the author of the bestselling The One Minute Manager. Raving Fans, in a nutshell, is the advice given to a new Area Manager on his first day – in an extraordinary business book that will help everyone, in every kind of organisation or business, deliver stunning customer service and achieve miraculous bottom-line results.

6. Service Design for Business: A Practical Guide to Optimizing the Customer Experience – Ben Reason

Service Design for Business helps you transform your customer′s experience and keep them engaged through the art of intentional service design. Written by the experts at Livework, this practical guide offers a tangible, effective approach for better responding to customers′ needs and demands. It provides a concrete strategy that can be implemented immediately.

7. Brilliant Customer Service (Brilliant Business) – Debra Stevens

Brilliant Customer Service is your guide to help you deliver exceptional customer service and keep your customers coming back time and time and again. It’s for anyone involved in any organisation – whether you run your own business, manage people, or you're a customer-facing employee. It doesn’t matter what your budget is; you’ll find lots of simple changes you can implement right now to build a highly successful customer service strategy.

8. The Effortless Experience: Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty – Matthew Dixon, Nicholas Toman & Rick DeLisi

Everyone knows that the best way to create customer loyalty is with service so good, so over the top, that it surprises and delights. But what if everyone is wrong? The Effortless Experience lays out the four pillars of low-effort customer experience, with robust data, insights and profiles. Here are tools and templates you can start applying right away to improve service, reduce costs, and ultimately generate the elusive loyalty that the 'dazzle factor' fails to deliver.

9. Measuring Customer Experience: How to Develop and Execute the Most Profitable Customer Experience Strategies – P. Klaus

Now, more than ever, customer experience plays a pivotal role in the success and longevity of a company. Based on rigorous scientific tools and global data, this book offers a simple but thorough guide on how to master the challenges of the market and how to deliver superior performance through effective customer experience management.

10. Relationology: 101 Secrets to Grow Your Business Through the Power of Relationships – Matt Bird

The number one dictator of your success in life and business is the quality of your relationships. Building a network of contacts is not just for extroverts, salespeople and networkers. While everyone knows they should be doing it, not everyone knows how they can build stronger business relationships to achieve greater business success.

In Relationology, Matt Bird provides 101 inspirational and practical secrets to help you grow your business through the power of relationships. A must-read!