A CX Research Reading List
7 February 2022
A research reading list
We're often asked for recommendations on books about research and insight. Here are 12 that we think are great (and yes, we wrote 2 of them!).
Introduction/Overview
Yvonne McGivern, The Practice of Market Research: An Introduction
A good introduction to the entire field of Market Research.
Paul Hague, Market Research in Practice
A pragmatic explanation of how to use research.
Stephen Hampshire, Your Customer Survey
This short book is designed to help you make or review the key decisions to make sure you've getting the most out of your customer research. Apologies for the self-promotion!
Nigel Hill, Greg Roche, & Rachel Allen, Customer Satisfaction
If you want a step by step, thoroughly referenced, guide to how we approach customer satisfaction research, this is it. A little long in the tooth now (we’re planning a new edition). The fundamentals haven’t changed, but take what it says about web surveys with a pinch of salt.
Design research
Jon Kolko, Well Designed
A useful explanation of what designers actually do, and how research informs that process.
Karen Holtzblatt & Hugh Beyer, Contextual Design
This book, and the approach it details, is meaty and not for the faint hearted. The foundation of a lot of user research practice.
Qualitative Research
Wendy Gordon, Mindframes
Kindle only, sadly, but a great book from a legendary qualitative researcher explaining how she thinks.
Erika Hall, Just Enough Research
A thorough, opinionated, explanation of how qualitative user research works.
Sean Hall, This Means This, This Means That
My favourite book on semiotics, cutting through the really arcane stuff.
Ideo, Method Cards
A useful resource in terms of inspiring new ideas for learning about customers. You can find a PDF version with a bit of creative Googling (not that I’m endorsing that, you understand).
Gerald Zaltman, How Customers Think
Interesting book looking at the psychology of qualitative research, although I wouldn’t follow Zaltman’s approach to the letter.
Quantitative research
Roger Tourangeau, Lance J. Rips, & Kenneth Rasinski, The Psychology of Survey Response
The only book I know of that examines in detail what cognitive science has to tell us about the way people understand questions, remember experiences, and choose how to respond to surveys. Technical, but might change how you think about surveys for good.
Stephen Hampshire
You may also be interested in
Explore & Understand
Good customer research means looking at the experience the way the customers see it. Understanding their thoughts and feelings will help you make improvements.
Measure & Track
Strategic surveys will offer you a consistent set of results to track and monitor the health of your relationship with all your customers. We will help you understand how customer satisfaction and attitudes lead to loyalty behaviors such as retention, related sales and referrals.
Webinar
NPS Best Practice
If you’re using Net Promoter Score (NPS) as your headline measure, this webinar is a must. NPS should be the starting point for customer insight, not the ultimate goal.
Webinar
Hybrid Methodology: Getting the Best of Quant and Qual
Often B2B has a much smaller number of key accounts to focus on. An opportunity to capture feedback needs to maximise the richness from comments with the score to track. A hybrid methodology ensures you don't loose the best of both. This webinar looks at how to use a mix of metho...