What do Customer Success professionals think of my book: 'Practical Customer Success'?

This is my first book, and once I'd written it I had literally no idea what people in the Customer Success profession would make of it... Would they like it? Would they hate it? Would they find it useful and informative? Would they even read it? I simply didn't know!

With this in mind, I asked a few friendly contacts here on LinkedIn if they'd be kind enough to read my early, unedited manuscript and get back to me with their thoughts. I am delighted with what they have told me, and their responses are shared below.

I'm still waiting for one or two more late responses to come in before I send them off to my publisher for them to use on the back cover or in other marketing, but meantime I wanted to share these comments and my excitement about the upcoming book launch with everyone and I wanted to thank everyone for being kind enough to take the time to read the manuscript and get back to me with their thoughts.

If you're interested, you'll find more information on the book here and of course I will be providing more information about it in due course as we draw closer to the publication date.

Practical Customer Success Management is a must read playbook for all business leaders and customer success-focused professionals. It imparts a solid grounding in what customer success is and why it is so important, whilst highlighting key challenges and how to respond to them. In addition it provides a detailed practical framework that explains both what to do and how to do it at every stage of the customer success engagement.         

Jason Noble,  Global Customer Success and SaaS Leader             

Practical Customer Success Management’ is unique from any other customer success management book I’ve read in that it bridges the gap between the theory of customer success and the reality of actually implementing a customer success program. The templates provide the jumpstart needed to either stand up a new framework or to bridge gaps in an existing framework. This is a welcome addition to my customer success library!              

Theresa Campbell,  Customer Experience Executive,  Presidio

This book contains so much common sense that my neck was getting tired from nodding my head in agreement so often. As you read the material, and especially if you’re a seasoned customer success professional, you immediately recognize that it was written by someone with many years of deep experience working with clients. And I think that’s where Rick Adams’ book is differentiated from most of the other customer success content that has been published. He’s clearly coming at this from years of customer leadership in real life scenarios, from the trenches in which it seems he was able to work with customers week by week to help them methodically advance in their ability to adopt more of a product or service in order to achieve their goals. And that’s what customer success is all about.              

Peter Armaly,  Senior Director Customer Success,  Oracle

As a relative newcomer to Customer Success, I have found this book to be an invaluable resource. Customer Success as a function within my organization is still in its infancy, and for that reason, there is much that remains to be built out and standardized. I feel as though we've done a good job of making the best with what we have, but I am someone that thrives when there is a structured roadmap to follow. That is precisely what this book offers, and does so with great detail. I found so many of the scenarios and examples to be extremely relatable, and the recommended processes highly applicable. I plan to implement Rick's framework not only to my day-to-day activities, but also to serve as our Customer Success team's playbook and guide 

Dan Louks,  Customer Success Manager,  Hiring Solved

I wish a book like this existed when I started in Customer Success! I’ve been in the role for more than half of my career and I was impressed with the book’s vast coverage of the multiple facets and nuances of the Customer Success position. ‘Practical Customer Success Management’ is a great foundational book for learning the principles and applications of Customer Success and a good practical guide, well laid out enough to be easily referenceable and easily digested.    

Cyn Taylor,  Enterprise Customer Success Manager,  LogicMonitor

This book provides a comprehensive review of the Customer Success role and responsibilities as distinctly different from overall customer experience and applicable to any business, not just SaaS. Onboarding, adoption planning, and adoption implementation are described in depth and there are immediately usable recommendations to execute each phase effectively.              

Anne Marie Ponder,  Manager, Customer Success,  Cisco

In his book, Adams not only clarifies what customer success management is, but he also provides all the ingredients to create the right customer success strategy. If you need to implement customer success within your own company, or if you are a CSM who simply wants an authoritative guide to customer success management best practices then dive in!  

Baptiste Debever,  Head of Growth & Co Founder,  Alkalab

It is refreshing to see a book that articulates easy-to-follow concepts of customer success management using real-life examples on how to perform the role more effectively and efficiently. Adams’ style of writing is entertaining and very simple to digest, and what I particularly appreciated is the way in which he has broken down complex challenges and made them easy to understand for customer success managers to apply in everyday situations when serving their customers.

Samuel Parri,  Global Success Manager and Senior Program Leader        

The growth of Customer Success as a corporate discipline has been remarkable and continues unabated. Rick’s excellent book is an invaluable resource for anyone with an interest in Customer Success. Whether you are contemplating your first foray into Customer Success or are a seasoned executive, this book provides both the framework and practical guides to help ensure that you have the best-practice structures and processes in place for both today and the future         

Adam Joseph,  CEO,  CSM Insight