Staying on top of new customer service trends can be exhausting. Plus, if you’re only getting news from your vendors, you might not be getting the full picture.
Having a well-rounded collection of sources can help your team identify new opportunities for improvement and up your customer service game. Plus, it’s really nice to be inspired every now and then!
We’ve got quite a few friends in the customer service world who inspire us. The list below is a sample of some of our favorite smart people who keep us on top of our game. We’ve linked each person to their Twitter feed so you can follow them. For those of you not on Twitter, we’ve also included links to the best customer service podcasts, books, email newsletters, and blogs, so you can follow your favorites without logging on!
Manage the contact with the customer ever step of the way. What we are doing today should always be something that would make the customer want to come back the next time – every time!
— Shep Hyken (@Hyken) February 1, 2018
Customer Service Experts, Writers, Consultants, and Influencers
- Mathew Patterson – Customer Service Evangelist at HelpScout. You can follow his writing on the HelpScout Blog.
- Blake Morgan – Influencer, Customer Experience Consultant and all around smart lady, Blake’s been sharing her knowledge as a Forbes contributor for years, host of The Modern Customer Podcast
- Heidi Craun – Founder of Insightful Delight, a boutique customer support consultancy, as well as Intermitten, a unique tech conference centered around creativity, community and diversity.
- Shep Hyken – Could any list be complete without him? Shep’s an author, speaker and thought leader on all things customer service. Subscribe to his blog for great knowledge about elevating your customer service strategy.
- John R Patterson – Speaker, Author, Customer Service and Leadership Consultant, John is generous with sharing great articles from a wide variety of writers on his Twitter feed.
- Sarah Betts – All around wonderful person and support human at Olark, Sarah writes about her considerable experience helping customers on the Olark Blog.
- Jeanne Bliss – Jeanne’s a strong advocate of the Chief Customer Officer (and author of the book with the same title). If you’re looking to move into the C-Suite, her content is a must read.
In creating a customer-centric business, journey mapping can be a great tool, but even the language we use to name the stages of the #CX journey should reflect the customer's point of view! Here, I explain how to approach it. #CustExp https://t.co/6nPW6QfnfL pic.twitter.com/ngcOCRjRN0
— Jeanne Bliss (@JeanneBliss) January 28, 2018
- Sarah Hatter – Founder of the Elevate conferences (Support, Women and Leadership themed conferences each year. Founder of CoSupport. Author of the Customer Support Handbook, which is an absolute MUST READ.
- Jeff Gardner – Customers & Product at Graphy, former Director of Customer Support at Intercom. You can often catch him on the road speaking at conferences, meetups, and events. (Ask him about his Lives of Adventure podcast!)
- Andrew Spittle – His Twitter bio says Happiness Engineer at Automattic, but that’s being humble. He’s helped build one of the best support teams in the world at the company responsible for WordPress from the ground up. Read his eloquent thoughts on customer service on his blog.
- Jeff Toister – Author of The Service Culture Handbook. You can sign up for his super helpful weekly customer service tips on his website.
Making commitments to customers is easy. Keeping them is hard.#CustServ
— Jeff Toister (@toister) January 29, 2018
- Kate Leggett – Kate is a longtime Forrester Analyst that focuses on new technology and trends in customer service.
- Bill Quiseng – Bill shares a ton of great customer service resources on his Twitter feed from a variety of sources and industries. If you don’t want to miss the top articles, make sure to give him a follow.
- Roy Atkinson – a prolific writer, speaker, webinar presenter, and podcaster, and industry analyst. Currently, he serves as CEO at Clifton Butterfield, LLC – a business advisory practice.
- Bill Bounds – Customer Support and Leadership Consultant. I’m really not sure how you can follow him, as he doesn’t seem to have Twitter or a blog. (Help us learn from you Bill!)
- Simon Ouderkirk – Another Automattician, Simon writes on his own site about the idea of hospitality in customer service, working remotely, data and all sorts of other interesting things.
- Mercer Looper-Smith – VP of Customer Success at Venafi, former Head of Support at Trello by Atlassian and editor in chief of the Support Driven blog.
- Ben McCormack – Hugger at FullStory and writer of things. You can find his past work on his personal website.
- Michael Redbord – former VP of Support at Hubspot for many years. He frequently writes on his personal blog about SaaS customer success.
- Erica Marois – Community at ICMI, and host of the weekly #icmichat Twitter chat on call centers.
- Micah Solomon – Author of many great books (you can find free chapters here), regular Forbes contributor and customer service consultant.
- Marsha Collier – Customer Service author and co-host of the #custserv Twitter chat.
- Greg Ortbach – CX Evangelist and co-host of the #custserv Twitter chat.
- Frank Eliason – Author of At Your Service and customer service consultant.
- Jeremy Watkin – Director of Customer Experience at First Call Resolution, and founder of the Customer Service Life blog.
- Annette Franz – CEO of CXJourney, consultant and writer.
- Lincoln Murphy – Founder of Sixteen Ventures, author of the Customer Success book, and one of the foremost thought leaders on customer success
Customer Success is NOT Customer Happiness
I finally understand why there's so much confusion… and it's not good.https://t.co/LPb4jIXEc3#CustomerSuccess
— Lincoln Murphy (@lincolnmurphy) January 8, 2018
- Morten Lundsby – in charge of product strategy and operations at Zendesk.
- Scott Tran – Founder of Support Driven, which hosts the annual SDX and SupConf conferences.
Customer Service Podcast Hosts
- Dan Gingiss – Author of Winning at Social Customer Care and co-host of the Experience This!” podcast (formerly the Focus on Customer Service podcast)
- Dave Chapman – Customer Champion at Buffer, a contributor to Buffer’s Customer Happiness blog and podcast host.
- Allison Pickens – Founder & GP at The New Normal Fund, former Chief Customer Officer at Gainsight
- Chase Clemons – Basecamps support team lead and host of Support Ops podcast.
- Carolyn Kopprasch – Chief of Special Projects at Buffer. Follow for start-up tips, customer service inspiration, and a smile.
- Conor Pendergrast – Customer Success Coach at Expensify, co-host of Support Breakfast podcast and author of the Start Managing Customers email series.
- Lisa Hunt – Support Engineer at Klausapp, former Customer Champion at Geckoboard, founder of London Support Lab
Founders of Help Desks and other Software
- Mathilde Collin – CEO and Co-Founder of Front, help desk software
- Nick Francis – Founder of HelpScout, help desk software
- Viktor Magic – Our very own Founder of Nicereply, survey software
- Mikkel Svane – Founder of Zendesk, help desk softw are
- Jamie Edwards – Co-Founder of Kayako, help desk software
- Des Traynor – Co-Founder of Intercom, customer conversations and insight software
- Aaron Fulkerson – Founder of MindTouch, self service support software
- Chris Martinez – Co-Founder of Idiomatic, AI driven insights tool for support conversations
- Nick Mehta – Founder of Gainsight, a customer success platform
- Derek Homann – Co-Founder of Median, screenshare software for chat
Become a Customer Service Expert
To have a successful career in support, there is value in learning from those who have studied it longer and developed a true understanding of the absolute best customer service practices. And who can teach you better than long-time customer service experts who have encountered many situations in their careers?
So if you are the Twitter type, we’ve put together a handy list of customer service experts for you to subscribe to. You can find our Twitter list of top customer service experts HERE.
Have we missed someone? (we’re sorry!) Need to request a correction? (again, we’re sorry!) Email us at michaela@nicereply.com to get in touch.