With latte in hand and Spotify cranked, it’s another weekday morning in the office and time to check my inbox. I’m ready to dive head-first into the newsletter subscription emails I get every morning — especially from my favorite customer service blogs.
If you‘re eager to learn more about the customer service space, I’ve compiled a list of outlets you can follow and subscribe to in order to keep your education current, your discussions timely, and your morning routine interesting.
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Best Customer Service Blogs to Start Reading Today
Finding the right industry blog to hold your interest can be a chore. To save you time and spoons, I’ve compiled some of some of my favorites below.
I’ve broken them into six categories I think of as “flavors,” but of course there is cross-value between groups. Adrian Swinscoe is a subject matter expert for sure, but of course you’d learn a lot from his blog about training and education, too. Enjoy!
- All-Inclusive Resources
- Forward Thinkers to Follow
- Subject Matter Experts
- Keeping It Human
- CX Communities
- Education and Training
All-Inclusive Resources
1. CX Today
Previously known as MyCustomer, this all-around excellent resource has been re-branded and repurposed by Rob Scott as CX Today. It has been a leading resource for customer service experience professionals since its inception. It also includes webinars put on by expert contributors, as well as videos and podcasts to help reach more CX professionals.
Top Pick: 6 Unexpected Ways to Enhance CX Through Tech Savviness
Why I Chose It
The mix of media available, content by big names in the industry, and a long tenure on the internet resulting in a large library of information makes it super valuable, in my opinion.
2. Customer Attuned Blog
The Customer Attuned Blog is basically a database of decades of articles about all things customer-related. It is also a bit like an industry news source in that you can find information about new publications, events, and seminars.
Top Pick: The Customer Attuned “Infinity Loop” of Customer Centricity Explained
Why I Chose It
The breadth of information available is like a rabbit hole for people who are not just trying to stay freshly up-to-date but are looking to research the history of customer service as we know it today.
3. Customer Service Life
Stretch your arms wide and get ready to dive deep because this site seems to have it all by the hundreds. Customer Service Life is a large resource founded by two industry thought leaders — Jennifer Dempsey and Jeremy Watkins — where you can find just about anything having to do with customer service.
Top Pick: Features, Bugs, Insights and the Art of Solving Customer Problems
Why I Chose It
I chose it for its extensive information. I clicked a category at the bottom of the page called Customer Experience and got a page with 10 articles. Then, the ability to navigate to 52 other pages on the same topic. That’s over 500 articles about just one category.
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Forward Thinkers to Follow
4. Blake Morgan
Customer experience futurist and keynote speaker Blake Morgan is also a best-selling author and major thought leader in her industry. She works as a customer experience leader at a Fortune 500 company and speaks to the confluence of customer service, technology, and communication.
Top Pick: Cutting Customer Experience Investments Now Is A Mistake - Here’s Why
Why I Chose It
She has major name recognition and speaks beautifully on topics of interest in customer service. You can find her ideas and their application via book, podcast, courses, and speaking engagements — she is also a senior columnist at Forbes, and you can follow her there as well.
5. Rand Fishkin
Creator of industry-changer MOZ, Rand Fishkin is a man held on high by his industry for doing magic — and then keeping the magic of authentic content creation alive for decades. Skipping Fishkin would be like music enthusiasts never hearing from or about the Beatles. He currently writes for SparkToro, a market research tool for gaining important audience insights.
Why I Chose It
HubSpotter Curt del Principe says of Rand Fishkin:
“He’s my first and enduring SEO hero. As the founder of MOZ, he’s one of the original names in SEO — he’s been doing it since dinosaurs walked the Earth. And while he’s no longer in SEO, he’s still at the forefront of content marketing. He’s always been elbow deep in it; partnering to run studies, to do tests, to make sure he has original data so he’s not just talking out his rear.”
6. Steven van Belleghem Blog
The easily alliterated entrepreneur, author, and academic Steven van Belleghem is a thought leader in customer experience. He currently does keynote speaking in addition to being a managing partner at InSights Consulting.
Top Pick: 5 Ways to Create a Strong Customer Centric Culture
Why I Chose It
I couldn’t overlook this blog because Forbes chose his book, A Diamond in the Rough, as their number 1 business book of 2024. This man is on the white-hot cutting edge of customer experience and we need to know what he’s up to to be fully informed on happenings in customer service.
Subject Matter Experts
7. HubSpot
There are actually two resources that HubSpot sends out that might be of particular interest to you — the HubSpot Service Blog and the HubSpot Trends Newsletter.
You’ll find original research, tactical strategy, and thought leadership content about all aspects of customer service, support, experience, and success. We advocate investing in customer happiness and retention as a sustainable way to grow your business, so your happy customers will recommend your brand to their networks.
Top Pick: The Annual State of Customer Service Report
Why I Chose Them
HubSpot’s Service Hub is one of the top service software platforms on the market, so it’s fitting their content delivers top-tier guides and insights to match. Get real-world strategies you can implement to accomplish your brand’s customer success goals and stay on top of trends in business and tech.
8. Zendesk Blog
Zendesk's content community is chock-full of blog posts, podcasts, and professionals to connect with about how to make customer service about relationships — not transactions.
Top Pick: Improving the customer experience: Why UX writers and customer service should team up
Why I Chose It
As one of the largest customer service platforms on the market, Zendesk delivers content on everything from how-to guides to the latest app integrations and trends. I think both newbies and seasoned service professionals will find this blog useful.
9. Adrian Swinscoe
Adrien Swinscoe has been seeing and doing it all in customer service for over 25 years. He facilitates workshops and acts as a customer experience advisor who wants businesses to do great things for customers and build great teams to do them.
Top Pick: The Limiting Factor to Achieving Personalized Experiences as Scale
Why I Chose It
I like that Adrian Swinscoe seems to settle in at the intersection of building businesses that both the customers and the employees like. You’re not going to be able to create or keep loyal customers if your employees are unsupported and think the outfit is crap as well.
I appreciate that he’s put in the work with over 500 episodes of his Punk CX podcast where he interviews industry experts to deliver valuable insight, and has recently put out a book titled Punk XL that highlights some of the best of those insights.
10. Customer Bliss
Jeanne Bliss pioneered the role of Chief Customer Officer and held it for over 35 years at five different highly successful companies, including Microsoft, Land’s End, and Mazda. She is now a leadership and customer experience advisor as well as a keynote speaker advocating for customer centricity.
Dawn Aly, Senior Manager at Red Hat, says, “Jeanne Bliss’s message is incredibly vital. She champions the idea that companies should build deeper, more meaningful connections with their customers by treating them as individuals, not just transactions. By prioritizing people as human first, businesses have the opportunity to make a real impact during pivotal moments in their customers’ lives and nurture lasting, authentic relationships.”
Why I Chose It
I like that her perspective on leadership is grounded in having humanity, and she knows that focusing on your customers and how your teams serve them is the only way forward.
11. Gary Vaynerchuck
Gary Vaynerchuck is everywhere and talking about everything! He’s the CEO of full-service ad agency VaynerMedia and the chairman of VaynerX, a media and communications holding company.
Top Pick: 6 Pieces of Advice From VeeCon 2023
Why I Chose It
He’s best known for his podcasts and vlogs, but his blog still has tons of information and insight on all things directly about and adjacent to customers, content, tech, and leadership. If you like to read about various topics from someone with their hand in, like, all of the industry cookie jars, this is your blog.
Plus, he cusses a lot, so it’s fun to listen to. He reminds me of a buddy I had in college — you were never quite sure if he was a visionary or a nutcase, but boy, was he living.
50 Free Customer Service Email Templates
Templates to communicate price increases, apologies, thanks, and notifications to your customers with sincere, on-brand messaging.
- Price Increase Letter Templates
- Customer Apology Email Templates
- Referral Email Templates
- And More!
Download Free
All fields are required.
Keeping It Human
12. Doing CX Right
Stacy Sherman created what she calls her Heart & Science framework that aims to affect customer loyalty by empowering the workforce that interacts with those customers. She advocates for diversity, inclusion, and the robust strengths and perspectives gained by pulling from underserved populations. She believes that humanity is critical to any business’s success.
Top Pick: Customer Service: An Investment in Loyalty — Insights from Stacy Sherman and Seth Godin
Why I Chose It
I’ve always felt as though there seems to be an absurd wall of professionalism that separates workers from their humanity the moment we step into the office, and I think Stacy Sherman is combating that. With her knowledge and experience from 24 years in customer service, I’m intrigued by how she’s trying to make the world a more decent place via CX.
13. The Michelli Experience
Joseph Michelli is, at heart, a psychologist who uses his knowledge as an organizational consultant. He wants every person at every level of the org chart to grow in all aspects of their lives, bringing that insight and energy to work, too. He believes that you can improve customer experience by adding more trust — and maybe even joy — to the equations.
Top Pick: Autonomy and Guidelines – The Art of Front-Line Empowerment
Why I Chose It
Honestly, I chose to put him on this list because of the vocabulary surrounding his intentions. He wants people to feel and be better, to take the entire arena of business and make it better for everyone, and in some way make the world better as a result.
14. Brian Solis
Futurist Brian Solis is an anthropologist and digital analyst with big ideas about making change, creating disruption, and the importance of ever more innovative technologies. He draws connections such as how social engineering can change our biology and asks how we can use AI to make customer experiences more human, not less.
Top Pick: Bringing Humanity Back to Marketing
Why I Chose It
Sometimes I think people in big-money business and tech lose sight of the human tradition they’re a part of. Brian Solas is thinking big, but always bringing it back to people.
CX Communities
15. CustomerThink
CustomerThink is a community of writers and customer-facing professionals who contribute blog posts about a variety of topics — including leadership, technology, sales, analytics, and tactical content for anything and everything customer-related.
Why I Chose It
HubSpotter Pam Bump, Manager of the Content Innovation & Research Team, says of CustomerThink:
“While many growing publishers, blogs, and influencers are leaning on more basic, less-original, or AI-generated content, one thing I like about CustomerThink is that they scalably dig into customer service topics with credible sources and external data about a huge number of service industries.
“While CustomerThink might not have a big-co budget, they still use data, studies, and interviews from credible external sources. Citing authoritative quotes and data (even if it’s external) can help to boost their credibility and authority to audiences and even potential Google crawlers.”
16. Support Driven
Support Driven is a community of customer support professionals that connect via a Slack group, a podcast, conferences, and a blog. It offers a ton of resources for new and experienced professionals in the industry, and its blog offers in-depth articles, event and podcast recaps, and thought leadership.
Top Pick: How did you know or discover that you wanted to build a career in Support?
Why I Chose It
Tristen Taylor, Editor of the HubSpot Service Blog, says of Support Driven:
“Support Driven is a standout community/blog that consistently delivers exceptional insights from customer experience (CX) leaders. What sets it apart for me is its commitment to featuring human-centric, practical advice from prominent leaders across various industries. Whether you prefer in-depth reads or listening to their content on YouTube, you're always in for a real treat."
Education and Training
17. The Success League
A customer consulting firm, The Success League’s blog is all about leveling up your customer success efforts. From events, courses, guides, and interviews with industry professionals, The Success League has you covered.
Top Pick: From Individual Contributor to Strategic Leader with Julie Fox
Why I Chose It
I think this blog is a great resource for professionals looking for actionable steps they can take to grow within their roles or teams. All content is geared toward creating top performers.
18. CX Journey Blog
CX Journey is written by the organization’s CEO — which stands for “Chief Experience Officer.” This blog is dedicated to helping companies and leaders build an exceptional customer experience by capturing the voice of the customer (VoC), and it includes both tactical strategies for growth and big-picture ideas about where the customer success industry is headed.
Top Pick: Leaders: Are You In Love With Your Own Ideas?
Why I Chose It
I like how CX Journey allows readers to get industry insights on a macro level or drill down into more tactical success strategies for those further along in their careers.
19. Nicereply
If you are looking for a place where you can find useful templates, step-by-step guides, interviews with support leaders, and “how to” tricks & tips blog posts, the Nicereply blog is a great source for all of your customer service needs. It's written by experienced support managers who share their customer service advice on how to build strong and meaningful relationships with your customers.
Top Pick: The Art of Saying Sorry – How to Apologize in Customer Service
Why I Chose It
Nicereply provides tons of tips with real-life experiences and shows you how to apply them to your practices.
20. Shep Hyken
Shep Hyken is one of the customer service industry’s most well-known speakers. His blog shares not only his own excellent content but also the content he’s reading to keep informed about the customer success world. (Read about our interview with Shep in this post.)
Top Pick: Three C's of Customer Service Success
Why I Chose It
Hyken’s blog delivers a double dose of expertise by including not only his insights but also tips and materials from his favorite industry professionals.
Keeping Up With Customer Service Trends
It's important to stay current on trends and new data in your industry. It can be tricky, though, to actually dedicate enough time for reading new content.
Try subscribing to blog newsletters sent out from your favorite sources. Make it as pleasant as possible with your favorite AM drink or snacks, aiming to cultivate a morning routine of reading at least one.
I’ve learned that some content creators have realized that, hey, people differ. They actually ask how much content you want to see so they’re not overstepping their bounds and losing the subscription. I think that’s incredibly smart.
Most of the time, you’ll be able to start your day by learning about interesting new research or thought leadership covered by other outlets that can inform your work. It might even change your perspective — or inspire new writing prompts, like the 20 best customer service blogs you should be reading in 2024!
Editor's note: This article was originally published in August 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
50 Free Customer Service Email Templates
Templates to communicate price increases, apologies, thanks, and notifications to your customers with sincere, on-brand messaging.
- Price Increase Letter Templates
- Customer Apology Email Templates
- Referral Email Templates
- And More!
Download Free
All fields are required.
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