The best Customer Relations books: Reddit reviews

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Start by learning a bit about Customer Success, a good place to start would be by reading this book

Next you would want to look for companies hiring in your region, look for specific skills that they are looking for eg: tech, data analysis, sales etc. I would highly recommend brushing up your Excel skills.

Reach out to the CSM's already working in those companies via LinkedIn to know more about their day to day work, this should give you a lot of insights. Here you can also learn about the tools that they use and how they use it eg: Asana for Project Management, HubSpot or Pipedrive for CRM.

Get familiar with how CRM's work, analytics tools like Google Analytics, Google Data Studio, Tableau, etc. (you can do this by watching videos on YouTube) as CSM roles are highly data driven.

There are tons of free content online on CS, checkout gainsight.com they have high quality content.

Next, you'd want to create your resume tailored for CSM roles and start applying to those companies.

The initial transition might be a bit difficult but keep working on upgrading your skills and you'll get through eventually.

If you need any help feel free to DM, I'd be happy to help.

Yes, the shortsighted quest to maximize short term profits now threatens the long term viability of the company.

See also: The Innovator's delimma.

Start by learning a bit about Customer Success, a good place to start would be by reading this book

Next, you would want to look for companies hiring in your region, look for specific skills that they are looking for eg: tech, data analysis, sales, etc. I would highly recommend brushing up your Excel skills.

Reach out to the CSM's already working in those companies via LinkedIn to know more about their day to day work, this should give you a lot of insights. Here you can also learn about the tools that they use and how they use it eg: Asana for Project Management, HubSpot, or Pipedrive for CRM.

Get familiar with how CRM's work, analytics tools like Google Analytics, Google Data Studio, Tableau, etc. (you can do this by watching videos on YouTube) as CSM roles are highly data-driven.

There are tons of free content online on CS, check out gainsight.com they have high-quality content, follow blog posts by Lincoln Murphy.

Next, you'd want to create your resume tailored for CSM roles and start applying to those companies.

The initial transition might be a bit difficult but keep working on upgrading your skills and you'll get through eventually.

If you need any help feel free to DM, I'd be happy to help.

Love to see more Wix stores out there! How do you like Modalyst? I'm on Spocket, but not sure if it's any good or not.

If I had to give my top 3 pieces of advice, it would be this:

1. Hammer down exactly what the store helps people do (i.e. We help people treat their pets) and make it immediately clear on the first page you see on the website

2. Build a proper landing page for your home page

3. Clean up the design and try to mimic other, well-established stores

Those 3 things will help you clarify your message and connect with customers. I highly recommend reading this book, it helped me a lot: Building a StoryBrand

I second this advice.

Try to find a similar store to yours and copy it (obviously put your own twist on there).

Also, reading this book could help you. This book single handedly had the biggest impact on my freelance web design business.

I highly recommend reading "Continuous Discovery" - the business and product value should be the no 1 priority and should deeply influence design - to do that effectively we need constant communication with customers, asking more useful questions, and have Product managers, tech leads and team leads on those calls to directly understand pain/use cases, etc that drive value, and then they can translate that into testable hypotheses that you can methodologically work through before your write any code

By the time you're writing the code, you should have a decent understanding of the forest and the trees and you can work quickly and confidently

Ugh. It’s hard to break past people pleasing habits so good on you on focusing on yourself. Have you read The Disease To Please: Curing the People-Pleasing Syndrome or When Pleasing You Is Killing Me? They are both helpful, but if you only want to try one I’d suggest the second. Stay strong and good luck!

Absolutely it's possible, especially if you are skilled at interpersonal connections. CS is about building relationships so if you can sell yourself and talk a little shop you'll get your foot in the door. Do research, lean about SaaS, read this book and create a LinkedIn profile of you don't already have one. I feel pretty confident that if you have charisma, your lack of experience in paper is irrelevant. I was asked to do CS, never heard of it before being offered an internal gig. I did CS for 1.5 years and now I'm a Product Manager. You can do this.

Because contrary to popular belief, it's not politicians who create jobs, but entrepreneurs. A business is an evolutionary ecosystem, old companies die, and new companies replace them.

You might consider a quick read-through of Inspired or Swipe To Unlock over a weekend. They may help demystify the process of launching a product and empower you to evaluate this opportunity yourself more effectively.

I'm glad people have found this comment fruitful. These resources have been advocated before on this sub before, but I highly recommend reading the following books:

https://www.amazon.com/Customer-Success-Innovative-Companies-Recurring/dp/1119167965/ref=sr_1_5?crid=BFFR1S4XDIFD&keywords=Customer+success&qid=1664000626&sprefix=customer+success%2Caps%2C84&sr=8-5 Is great to get a base understanding of Customer Success in today's market

https://www.amazon.com/Customer-Success-Professionals-Handbook-Careers_While/dp/1119624614/ref=sr_1_7?crid=GNQLPWDLEJ3F&keywords=Customer+success&qid=1664000658&sprefix=customer+success%2Caps%2C79&sr=8-7 Is the next in their series that goes into more detail on expected day-to-day activities of a CSM

If you or anyone else is interested in reading about how to pivot during a disruption, or how not to do it, then I really recommend the book The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Technologies-Management-Innovation-dp-1633691780/dp/1633691780/

What indeed 😄😄😄

I’ll go further … even if the innovation was INVENTED by a monopolist mega company, they still will not be properly organized to take advantage of the innovation in the market and it will instead be a new entrant that will use that innovation to crush them.

https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Change-Business/dp/0062060244

Since you mentioned SVPG, you can look into their risk framework since you are pretty early on with your product. Combine that with Teresa Torres’s continuous discovery framework and you should have the framework to quickly focus on a prioritized list of what to build with first after you’ve derisked all your ideas and hypotheses on what to build.

Competitive landscaping and user research/concept testing will probably be your best bet here early on. Map our your customer journey, identify painpoints, and then identify opportunities. Use the assumption mapping framework from Teresa and use that to drive what you define as your MVP to build with a prototype and get that in front of your potential users as soon as you can.

Just started my first PO role really recommend this book. I already had a scrum background but this fills in some of the gaps for me

https://www.amazon.com/INSPIRED-Create-Tech-Products-Customers/dp/1119387507

You may like this book:

The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1633691780/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_CXSDZYX1HHSFSFGC2WHW

Surprised no one has taken the opportunity to link to Teresa’s book. If you are able to join one of her live classes it was worth every cent and I was able to implement learnings in my work even after the first class.

My rating: -10 (that's minus 10)

Reasoning: you're not outreaching you're spamming.

Now, before you get mad and start arguing with me (you know what they say about arguing overt the internet, right), if this is working for you, by all means, do not stop, and do more of the same. There's no arguing with results.

If this should not be working, you might want to:

1. take a look at this book: https://www.amazon.com/Permission-Marketing-Turning-Strangers-Customers/dp/0684856360
2. Google "inbound marketing" and read what comes up.

Good luck.

I'd go one step furhter: spamming in any way, email, phone, SMS, reddit messages, LinkedIn, cold approach etc....

Moreover, it will get people banned from all sort of places.

This is a good book on how to do it right: https://www.amazon.com/Permission-Marketing-Turning-Strangers-Customers/dp/0684856360

You should read the Bible of Innovation: https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Change-Business/dp/0062060244

Narrow-minded people, either expert or otherwise; won't be able to innovate even if their life depended on it.

Wide-minded people are able to step away here and there, think outside the box, and unpack what's going on so that they can see what's obvious but unseen.

Two recent favorites:

https://www.amazon.com/INSPIRED-Create-Tech-Products-Customers/dp/1119387507

https://www.amazon.com/Good-Strategy-Bad-Difference-Matters/dp/0307886239

Anything from SVPG or Marty Cagan sparked great discussion.

Continuous Discovery Habits for sure.

Teresa Torres is like a spiritual successor to Marty Cagan except she actually tells you how to do things.

> The technology is changing rapidly these days and I wonder what is the right subreddit to learn more on internet business?

I think that is the wrong question: the next Amazon, Uber, Netflix won't be started by someone who found the "right" Reddit sub.

I suggest you do this: https://www.startupschool.org/

And also read this: https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Change-Business/dp/0062060244

Good luck.

> As fas as I have investigated only 5% of the emails are converted into donations.

5%? I have never heard of a response ratio so high.

> What do you suggest me for building an email list for a crowdfunding campaign?

Same way you build ANY email list.

This is the best guide that I know on the matter: https://www.amazon.com/Permission-Marketing-Turning-Strangers-Customers/dp/0684856360

> Do clothing start-ups get funding?

Yes.

> How would one differentiate themselves enough to get funding?

The usual way, money (funding) is like manure (natural fertilizer). So plant a seed, get an audience, develop a brand; once you have "some" traction you'll get the $$ to fuel growth.

This is a good read: https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Change-Business/dp/0062060244

Ans so is this: https://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steve-Blank/dp/0989200507

> I understand unique designs but there's a relative limit to uniqueness in this sphere today isn't there?

Google this quote "Everything that can be invented has been invented." but before you do that, try to guess when it was said, and by who.

> what funding for clothing start-ups would look like!

Same as any other non-tech/non-LifeScience startup, anywhere from your own credit card to some VCs (not many).

The knowledge is a great starting point and broad to cover customer success from a wide variety of industries. I would recommend their material but also recommend the book their CEO, Nick Mehta, wrote Customer Success: How Innovative Companies Are Reducing Churn and Growing Recurring Revenue. It definitely opened my eyes and shaped and solidified my view on the field even further as someone relatively new to the workforce and CS itself. It can definitely get repetitive, but at the same time, the points Mehta repeats are salient enough to be repeated.

In terms of the service itself, it's definitely helpful in my day to day and the only gripe I have with it is that I wish it integrated even better with SF and some things were less manual to input.

Read this book https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Change-Business/dp/0062060244 or -better - take an online course on "Innovation" at one of the online universities that teach the class based on the book.

Beware: it's not an easy book to understand.

> From a business perspective, how is that not an existential risk for those fintech entrepreneurs?

A couple of comments:

1. Personally I cringe when people tell me that their "customer service" is their competitive advantage.
2. Having said #1 above, the real advantage comes from being dominating a new category, so not so much fintech, but a niche within fintec. Look at Robinhood, they didn't become huge thanks to their customer's service, did they?

> I'm sure big banks have enough money and resources to create killer apps and destroy the competition coming from fintech startups.

Unfortunately that never happens. Netflix ate BlockBuster's lunch, same for Amazon/B&N, Google/Yahoo, etc....

> I would not feel comfortable entering a market if I did not have an edge that is hard for the incumbents to replicate.

You need to understand capital markets, especially private equity markets. It's a long story.

If you want to understand why startups kill large incumbents, read this: https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Change-Business/dp/0062060244 or - better - take an online class based on this book.

> Spam might be annoying, but it's not illegal.

Correct, that was never an issue. Still the ISP will/might ban you Constant Contact and similar will surely ban you.

But that is not really the issue, the real issue is:

Is it working?

And by "working" I mean bring in long-term relationship-based business? I'd say at best the answer is "not that well".

This is a good book for any business person https://www.amazon.com/Permission-Marketing-Turning-Strangers-Customers/dp/0684856360

So you know the space and have domain expertise.

If this company is big, it means:

1. they have had their product out there for quite a while, and it was conceived long ago. Times have changed, but they need to maintain their legacy systems and business processes: what does the best of breed product/service looks like 6 months out? Build it.
2. They are big and you're nimble: use it to your advantage by moving faster/
3. They are big so chances are they are targeting large(r) customers: can you serve the smaller customers better?
4. Maybe you can make a lateral move, and pivot to a different/better product/service in the same space that is the next logical step
5. Is this company the first in the space? If so statistically speaking they are doomed, the first movers advantage is actually false, second movers are the ones who kick ass

Great read for you: https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Change-Business/dp/0062060244