Best Customer Experience Books 2023 in Digital Data, Design and Centricity – The famous 3 Ds:
The article was originally posted on Eglobalis by Ricardo Saltz Gulko: https://www.eglobalis.com/__trashed/
During 2022 and December 2023, I read a series of 56 books that I found interesting and valuable for us in CX, Design, and Services. The good news was that many different authors and approaches emerged more practical and different from the typical mindset of thought leaders. Practicality counts and this is an amazing progress comparing with previous years. Also, I was happy to see a lot of new authors coming out of Europe, talking about CX, EX, and Design with very interesting perspectives. This is the list of the best 15 books I read during the last 15 months, and I hope you will enjoy them too. The books are not in order of preference; all are very good.
Using Behavioural Science in Marketing: Drive Customer Action and Loyalty by Prompting Instinctive Responses by Nancy Harhut. Increase engagement, response rates and the ROI of marketing initiatives with this step-by-step guide to harnessing hardwired consumer behaviour and instinctive responses. Using Behavioural Science in Marketing shows how to apply behavioural science principles in key areas of marketing, including marketing communications, email, direct mail and ad campaigns, social media marketing and sales funnel conversion strategies. Highly practical and accessible, it includes case studies and examples from AT&T, Apple, Spotify and The Wall Street Journal showing how these approaches have been used in practice. Using Behavioural Science in Marketing also reveals how to increase consumer involvement and engagement, convey exclusivity and desirability, and prompt customer action and loyalty with scientifically proven principles such as autonomy bias, storytelling, and the Von Restorff effect. Featuring common mistakes to avoid and key takeaways at the end of each chapter, it’s also accompanied by downloadable checklists and an interactive template to use in practice. In a highly competitive space, where even an incremental advantage can result in significant uplifts, this is a crucial resource to create stand out and successful marketing-especially for marketers in highly regulated or highly competitive environments. Here is the link.
The Digital Seeker: A Guide for Digital Teams to Build Winning Experiences by Raj K. De Datta. About the book: The Digital Seeker distils key lessons from the compelling stories of innovative businesses: not just tech companies but
companies spanning a wide range of industries, including amusement parks, fashion, sports, health care, distribution, and the public sector. De Datta defines and explains the power of the seeker-centric philosophy―translating it into a core operational playbook for digital teams to achieve transformative results. Importantly, this book also offers crucial insights into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our digital lives and the long-term effects it will have on digital experiences of the future. Here is the link.
The Digital-First Customer Experience: Seven Design Strategies from the World’s Leading Brands by Joe Wheeler. About the book: In his third book on the topic of customer experience, bestselling author and consultant Joe Wheeler tackles the challenges many organizations are facing as they attempt to design compelling
experiences in a digital-first world. It features case studies of leading brands including Lemonade, Spotify, CEMEX, VMware, Starbucks, NIKE and Amazon. Part One introduces the new “3 Cs”, key trends associated with technology convergence, competition and culture change in a post-pandemic world. Part Two takes a deep dive into seven design strategies, from designing emotional peaks across channels to empowering customers through immersive experiences that merge physical and digital assets. Part Three provides a playbook for how to design digital-first experiences, including how to solve the right problems, develop a measurable business case, design digital-first experiences customers love and execute the new design at scale. Here is the link.
The power of digital conversations by Paolo Fabrizio. About the book: This is a journey into Digital Customer Service and Customer Culture because both are key pillars to deliver great business results. The book is aimed at all smart managers who believe that every single conversation makes the difference to build a fruitful, long lasting business by: – Promoting and leveraging customer culture across all departments of their organization. – Empowering and up-skilling your front-line team when dealing with the end customer over digital channels (i.e. messaging, social media, live chat, video chat, online reviews). I wrote it drawing from my first-hand experience working with companies of various industries, sizes and markets and putting into it all the passion that I have for my work. That’s why you will love ‘the power of digital conversations.
Here are the book links.
Design for How People Learn (Voices That Matter) by Julie Dirksen. About the book: Products, technologies, and workplaces change so quickly today that everyone is continually learning. Many of us are also teaching, even when it’s not in our job descriptions. Whether it’s giving a presentation, writing documentation,
or creating a website or blog, we need and want to share our knowledge with other people. But if you’ve ever fallen asleep over a boring textbook, or fast-forwarded through a tedious e-learning exercise, you know that creating a great learning experience is harder than it seems. In Design For How People Learn, Second Edition, you’ll discover how to use the key principles behind learning, memory, and attention to create materials that enable your audience to both gain and retain the knowledge and skills you’re sharing. Updated to cover new insights and research into how we learn and remember, this new edition includes new techniques for using social media for learning as well as two brand new chapters on designing for habit and best practices for evaluating learning, such as how and when to use tests. Using accessible visual metaphors and concrete methods and examples, Design For How People Learn, Second Edition will teach you how to leverage the fundamental concepts of instructional design both to improve your own learning and to engage your audience. Here is the link.
The Experience Mindset: Changing the Way You Think About Growth by Tiffani Bova. About the book: In the war for customer acquisition, businesses invest millions of dollars to improve customer experience. They deliver packages faster, churn out new products, and endlessly revamp their UI, often putting greater strain on employees for diminishing returns. According to Tiffani Bova, this siloed focus on customer experience – without considering the impact on your staff – actually hinders growth in the long run. The most successful companies adopt an Experience Mindset that strengthens both employee experience (EX) and customer experience (CX) at the same time. Based on exclusive research from two Salesforce-sponsored studies of thousands of employees and c-suite executives, The Experience Mindset details exactly how your company can adopt an Experience Mindset, at scale. It’s not enough to know that happy employees equals happy customers. You must have an intentional, balanced approach to company strategy that involves all stakeholders – IT, Marketing, Sales, Operations, and HR – with KPIs and ownership over outcomes. Here is the link.
Journey To Centricity: A customer-centric framework for the era of stakeholder capitalism by Ilenia Vidili. About the book: Managers and leaders know that customer centricity means
providing positive customer experiences. But what if that’s not enough in the 21st century? In the current age, where Millennials and Generation Z are shaping the very fabric of society and business, to remain relevant, organisations must provide more than occasional good experiences. A narrow focus on short-termism, excessive tech automatization and outdated product mentalities are a liability to customer centricity. We need businesses that are willing to radically change, embrace a long-term, customer-focussed perspective, and can create value for all stakeholders. Here is the book link.
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE UNEARTHED: A Deep Dive into Real-Life Stories from the CX Therapy by Julien Rio. About the book: Have you ever paused to consider the Customer Experience from the consumer’s viewpoint? It’s easy to forget, while ensconced in professional roles, that we are
also everyday customers navigating an array of experiences—both delightful and disheartening. This book invites you on a revelatory journey, seeing the world through the eyes of genuine customers. Eschewing complex journey mapping, we zero in on the authentic human experience. Featuring 40 powerful stories from the CX Therapy series, this guide uncovers frequent hiccups in customer journeys and arms you with practical solutions. An essential read for anyone committed to elevating simple transactions into memorable experiences. At the heart of every successful business lies a deep understanding of its customers. Yet, in the fast-paced modern business world, professionals often become insulated from the genuine, ground-level experiences of their consumers. Here’s why “Customer Experience Unearthed” is an indispensable read for anyone seeking to bridge this gap and truly comprehend the consumer journey. Here is the book link.
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Converted: The Data-Driven Way to Win Customers’ Hearts by Neil Hoyne. About the book: When the world’s biggest brands want to sharpen their digital marketing strategy, they call Neil Hoyne – Google’s Chief Measurement Strategist and Senior Fellow at the Wharton School. In his first book, he offers a simple, research-backed playbook that anyone can use to find their best customers and develop relationships that last. Under pressure for quick results and facing fierce marketplace competition, too many marketers are boxed into spaghetti-to-the-wall forms of digital marketing that limit the potential of their long hours, countless experiments, and warehouses of data. And in the end, they watch their competition sprint ahead. But what if you built a business around long-term relationships with customers, using data to understand who they are, what they need, and where to find more customers just like them? You can. And you’ll leave your competitors, with all of their data and their short-term thinking, to poke around in the scraps. Here is the book link.
The Human Experience: How to make life better for your customers and create a more successful organization by John Sills. About the book: Across all sectors, organizations’ fixation with functionality has meant that the ‘human’ elements of the customer’s experience have become neglected. Strict processes and automated procedures have created organizations full of people who aren’t allowed to act in a ‘human’ way. As a result, and despite these new technologies, customers are no more satisfied than they were a decade ago (according to the Institute of Customer Service) and, according to Edelman, they now trust big organizations even less than they did in the past.In The Human Experience, John Sills draws upon extensive research and illustrative case studies to explain that the emotional experience is just as important as the functional one, and, if done right, will create a more efficient business. He also demonstrates that the customer experience is not just the responsibility of front-line employees, but shared across the company, from the CEO operating as the spokesperson of the business to the programmers developing a seamless and welcoming user interface. Here is the book.
Why Your Customer Experience Program Will Fail: … and 7 ways to avoid it: … and 7 proven ways to avoid it by Friederike Niehoff and Aleksandra Pilniak. About the book: Whether you are just getting started with CX or have already implemented a strategy but are struggling to achieve results, this book will give you a proven recipe to avoid the biggest mistakes. The authors have already made them for you. They describe 7 proven ways to make sure that your CX program will have a measurable impact: Not underestimating that culture eats strategy for breakfast, Using the competitive advantage of authenticity, Working on CX while also improving employee experience, Making clear choices in your CX strategy. Here is the book link.
Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analysing, and Presenting UX Metrics by Bill Albert and Tom Tullis. About the book: This book presents an update on the first resource that focused on how to quantify user experience. Now in its third edition, the authors have expanded on the area of behavioural and physiological metrics, splitting that chapter into sections that cover eye-tracking and measuring emotion. The book also contains new research and updated examples, several new case studies, and new examples using the most recent version of Excel. Helps readers learn which metrics to select for every case, including behavioural, physiological, emotional, aesthetic, gestural, verbal and physical, as well as more specialized metrics such as eye-tracking and clickstream data. Provides a vendor-neutral examination on how to measure the user experience with websites, digital products, and virtually any other type of product or system. Contains new and in-depth global case studies that show how organizations have successfully used metrics, along with the information they revealed Includes a companion site, www.measuringux.com, that has articles, tools, spreadsheets, presentations and other resources that help readers effectively measure user experience. Here is the book link.
The Chief Customer Officer Playbook: 8 Strategies that Will Accelerate Your Career and Win You a Seat at the Executive Table by Rod Cherkas. About the book: Develop and master the skills you need to be a successful CCO. You will be able to accelerate your career growth, build your confidence, and deliver stronger, repeatable results by reading this playbook.This book will enable you to: Understand the scope and expectations of a CCO, Identify the skills you need to acquire along your career path, Deliver repeatable, predictable results with confidence. Also gain advocates within your company and across your network, Improve alignment between you and your executive leaders. Here is the book link.
Belonging to the Brand: Why Community is the Last Great Marketing Strategy by Mark W. Schaefer. About the book: While “community” isn’t new, he explains how three major trends are colliding in a way to make brand communities the future of marketing strategy. Highlights include:
Connecting the dots between social media, content marketing, and community. Practical steps to create your own brand community A solution to the problem of measuring ROI of community
How a community strategy upends traditional marketing management
The unexpected psychological connection between communities and brands
How GenZ views community in a different way — a wake-up call for brands!
Through extensive research, diverse case studies, and expert interviews, Schaefer provides a compelling and actionable blueprint for the modern brand community. This is an unmissable work from one of marketing’s leading thought leaders. Here is the book link.
Can Your Customer Service Do This? Create an Anticipatory Customer Experience that Builds Loyalty Forever by Micah Solomon. About the book: Customer service done right is one of today’s most powerful competitive advantages. In Can Your Customer Service Do This, customer service turnaround wizard and renowned customer service training expert Micah Solomon―who has worked transforming the customer experience for brands from Auberge Resorts to Audi of America, from Cleveland Clinic to the NFL Players Association―shares everything he knows, and everything you need to know, about how to create a truly Five-Star customer service experience and use it to build sustainable bottom-line success. This is the first book to move the reader step-by-step toward customer service perfection and true customer-centricity by creating, refining, and synchronizing employee behaviours, systems, and standards to together create the perfect customer service environment and customer experience for your customers. Here is the link.
Extra book advice:
THE REAL(istic) CUSTOMER CENTRICITY METHOD: Creating game changing customer
experiences, building loyalty, and organizational resilience for the future for real by Nicolette Wuring
About the book: The fastest path to transforming your company into a truly and genuinely customer centric organisation. This book is blatantly and unashamedly about transforming your company into a truly and genuinely customer centric organisation and reaping the rewards of that kind of success. If you’re good at the technical thing of what you do but don’t know exactly how to move from talking about “putting the customer at the heart of everything you do” to actually and genuinely being and doing it, then don’t worry, the whole point of this book is to take you from confusion to clarity
—so you know exactly what to do make the transformation a success. The goal is for you to begin developing your roadmap by the time you finish reading this book. The method you’re about to discover has radically transformed the life of employees, customers, and yes, shareholders too, for the better, with benefits far beyond the financial. Above all, it is my sincere hope that you learn more than just how to deploy the Real(istic) Customer Centricity Method. I’ve interspersed little bits of advice and lessons I’ve learned from twenty-plus years on the front lines, having made all the mistakes and living to tell the tale. Yes, you could call this a marketing book, but it’s really a book about designing a better company. A company that brings people (you, employees, customers) joy, financial rewards, and even peace. I sincerely believe that the world can, should, and will be changed for the better within my lifetime and the lifetimes of our children. I believe it will be the bold ones, change agents, dreamers, and innovators like you who will make that happen. So, it’s a great privilege to share what I know with you. I hope it inspires, informs and helps you to improve your company, so you can improve the lives of yourself and of others. Here is the link.
I hope you enjoyed my 2023 list in partnership with the European Customer Experience Organization ECXO.org. Become a member of the open-access Customer Experience Professional Business Network now: ECXO Membership or follow us on LinkedIn here: European Customer Experience Organization LinkedIn.
Stay connected; in May 2024, we will have another list of books and many more posts and events.
Happy Holidays! Wishing you a joyful season, a Merry Christmas, and a Happy, Peaceful, and Prosperous New Year!
For the past seven years, I have consistently maintained a list of the best readings.
– 2017
– 2018
–2019
–2020
–2021
–2022
–2023
