Start with the classics
- The Customer Success Economy — Nick Mehta & Allison Pickens. The canonical text. If you've read one CS book, make it this. Defines the function as it exists today.
- Customer Success — Dan Steinman, Lincoln Murphy, Nick Mehta. The older classic; useful for vocabulary and the "10 laws of CS" framework you'll hear referenced in interviews.
- The Seven Pillars of Customer Success — Wayne McCulloch. Operator-forward, lighter read.
Newsletters worth a weekly slot
- Gain Grow Retain — Jeff Breunsbach + Jay Nathan. Podcast plus Slack community. The most reliable operator-voice in CS.
- CS Insider — weekly newsletter with hiring trends and tooling.
- ChurnZero blog — the most practical posts on playbook design.
- Gainsight's Pulse+ library — free with registration; every public talk from Pulse, the annual conference.
Communities
- Customer Success Collective on Slack — thousands of CS operators who actively answer questions about specific companies.
- Pavilion — paid community; the CS track is strong but requires the investment. Worth it after you land the role.
- Gainsight Pulse conference — every May. Free virtual pass most years. The single biggest CS gathering.
Podcasts
- Gain Grow Retain — weekly, short, operator-forward
- The CustomerSuccess Co. Podcast — deeper company profiles
- Unchurned — renewals-focused, good for interview prep
Before your first CS interview
Listen to two episodes of Gain Grow Retain, skim The Customer Success Economy for the NRR and segmentation chapters, and find the target company's last investor day or S-1 for their retention numbers. That's a 4-hour prep session that will put you in the top 10% of MBA applicants to the role.