February 4, 2025 • 14 mins
What if your commoditized product could command premium pricing and cultivate a loyal customer community? That's exactly what we explore in this episode, as we unlock the secrets of customer experience (CX) as a transformative strategy, even for products as seemingly interchangeable as sugar and coffee beans. We highlight the pivotal role of CX in brand differentiation and perceived value enhancement. With compelling examples, we demonstrate how companies can leverage CX to stand out and thrive.
Join Jeannie Walters as we unpack real-world success stories and provide actionable insights for turning commoditized products into beloved brands. From the power of word-of-mouth referrals to creating standout experiences, we delve into how strategic CX investments can lead to remarkable growth and customer loyalty. Whether you're selling coffee beans or outdoor gear, this episode offers valuable lessons on how to elevate your brand through the full spectrum of customer experience.
Resources Mentioned:
Take the CXI® Compass assessment -- CXICompass.com
Experience Investigators Website -- experienceinvestigators.com
Want to ask a question? Visit askjeannie.vip to leave Jeannie a voicemail! (And don't forget to follow Jeannie on LinkedIn! www.linkedin.com/in/jeanniewalters/)
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
MC (00:00):
Experience Action.
Let's stop just talking aboutcustomer experience, employee
experience and the experience ofleaders.
Let's turn ideas into action.
Your host, Jeannie Walters, isan award-winning customer
experience expert, internationalkeynote speaker and founder of
Experience Investigators, astrategic consulting firm
(00:20):
helping companies increase salesand customer retention through
elevated customer experiences.
Ready set action.
Jeannie Walters (00:32):
Can customer experience really help if you
are focused on selling a productthat's really a commodity?
That's what we're exploringtoday on the Experience Action
Podcast.
Listener Question (00:48):
Hi, Jeannie, this is Ingrid from Guatemala,
always listening to your podcast.
I have a question.
What if your product is acommodity: sugar, coffee beans?
Would CX be the winningstrategy?
(01:13):
Are there examples of companiesthat have improved their
business and gained growth?
Jeannie Walters (01:15):
The short answer here is yes.
Yes, customer experience canstill be a winning business
strategy for products that arereally commoditized.
This includes making thingsthat are maybe comparable one to
the next.
You know our caller mentionedsugar or coffee.
When you think about productslike that, a lot of the consumer
(01:35):
drive might be centered onprice, on convenience, on you
know what's available when I'mshopping.
But what I want you to thinkabout is there are things that
we earn from customer experiencethat maybe aren't always
translated exactly into thebusiness dollars and cents.
(01:56):
Those are things like branddifferentiation.
People will pay more forproducts that feel different to
them, that speak to their values, that help them feel like they
belong to something bigger thanthemselves.
Now, the other thing aboutcustomer experience with
commodities is that it cancommand premium pricing.
(02:18):
People have shown again andagain that they are more willing
to pay for better packaging,shown again and again that they
are more willing to pay forbetter packaging, better
experiences, better productsthat feel and look a little
different, even if they mightnot be that different when you
get right down to it.
This is about building acompetitive edge with customer
(02:39):
experience.
So if we know that brand andperceived value is important for
consumer decisions, whywouldn't we invest in customer
experience?
If the product itself isinterchangeable, then that means
we have to do something todifferentiate from the
competition.
The way the customersexperience the brand is what
(03:01):
we're going after, and CX canelevate this commodity.
Now the other thing thathappens is people get very
attached to these brands.
Think about something likeStarbucks coffee.
When we first were introducedto Starbucks on a national level
, people weren't reallyconsidering coffee in the way
that they are now.
(03:21):
Starbucks really brought thatidea to us and then they kept
iterating specifically aroundtheir customer experience.
In the beginning, they reallyinvested in this idea of having
a third place not where you workand not where you live, but a
third place to sit down with acup of coffee, get some work
done and enjoy being part ofthat community.
(03:43):
That investment in theexperience really led to the
growth that we all knowStarbucks had.
Now they are continuing toiterate and evolve and they've
had some struggles in the lastfew years, but right now they
are going back to what made themwho they are.
They are investing in thoseself-service bars that customers
(04:05):
said they wanted back.
They're investing in thingslike providing free refills if
you stay in the cafe, and morefeatures that are really
experience-driven and lessproduct-driven.
That's because they know that'swhat works.
The other thing I want you tothink about is how, when you
have experiences that stand out,whether it's a commodity or not
(04:27):
you tell people about it.
We know that traditionaladvertising just doesn't work
the way that it used to.
We know that people havelimited views into media,
meaning that we can't reach allthe people we used to be able to
at once.
People have their own ways ofconsuming information and
(04:47):
entertainment, so the best thingwe have in our arsenal is
really word of mouth andreferral business.
The more that we can get ourcustomers talking about their
experiences, the more likelywe'll get those referrals that
drive more and new customersinto our brands.
So we talked about Starbucks.
(05:08):
Now I want you to think aboutthings like Patagonia.
Now, Patagonia is a company anda retailer that focuses on
outdoor and adventure wear thattype of thing and what they did
was they really realized thattheir values around
sustainability would attractcustomers who also cared about
(05:29):
sustainability.
So, while things like a cottonflannel shirt, you can find that
in a zillion places, aPatagonia shirt has a different
cachet, and that's because theyhave invested in making sure
that the cotton that they use issustainable that they have
programs that really boost theirloyalty with these
(05:53):
sustainability-focused customers.
Because they are able to, forinstance, shop used products I
believe it's called the WornWear program so they allow
people to sell their usedPatagonia products within their
marketplace.
Revolutionary and innovativeideas like that are really
(06:15):
experience-based and notproduct-based, so I encourage
you to think about what can youdo here.
Another great example is LiquidDeath.
Now, this is a water product.
Really, that's all it is.
They've completely disruptedthe bottled water market by
focusing on mostly packaging.
They stood out by having tallboy cans, aluminum cans and
(06:39):
their graphics were, as they putit, heavy metal inspired.
This has led to amazing growth,especially with environmentally
conscious customers who didn'twant to purchase plastic bottles
.
They liked the idea of the morerecyclable option of aluminum
cans.
They also now provide boxedwaters, which is also another
(07:02):
sustainable choice, but thisapproach that they have had has
led to revenues skyrocketingfrom $2.8 million in 2019 to
$130 million in 2022.
Now, water, when you get rightdown to it, is pretty much water
(07:22):
, but they stood out because ofthe experience they were
providing through theirpackaging, through their unique
lens.
So that's what I want you tothink about.
If you have a commodity and youthink, well, we just keep
focusing on the product, how canwe focus on the experience?
I encourage you to do a fewthings.
One is focus on therelationships, not just
transactions.
(07:43):
What are people doing with yourproduct?
How is it changing their lives?
How is it helping theirbusiness?
If you can tap into that, thenyou can provide even more
experiences to build on that.
Think about what the airlinesdid decades ago now, when they
started loyalty programs.
They started realizing that,yes, people could fly any old
(08:06):
airline.
They could buy one ticket fromUnited Airlines one day and they
could buy one from Delta thenext.
But when they started theseloyalty programs, they realized
if we could keep people in ourecosystem and make them feel
rewarded and recognized, theneverybody wins.
That is an experience-drivenlens.
(08:29):
Now I will say the loyaltyprograms also have their unique
challenges, right, so you dohave to think out about is this
sustainable for our business?
But the more that you can focuson not just what your product
does, but what it does for yourcustomers.
That's really where you canidentify with.
How can we improve theexperience.
(08:51):
A couple of years ago, Spotifystarted creating those year end
videos, those custom things thattold people here's who you
listen to the most in the end ofthe year.
So in 2024 your top artist wasTaylor Swift.
People started sharing thatsaying isn't this cool?
(09:11):
Because the more that we canprovide insights into behaviors,
the more that we can share morepersonalized experiences, the
more people want to share those.
So that's another example wherethey didn't think about just
okay, well, people can listen tomusic through Spotify.
They thought about what are wereally doing?
What can we let them know aboutthemselves?
That's another great way tothink about it.
(09:34):
So focus on relationships, notjust transactions.
You want to make convenienceking.
Convenience is such a driver incustomer experience that the
more that we can provideconvenience in purchasing and
using these commodities, thatthe more that we can provide
convenience in purchasing andusing these commodities, the
more likely people will be torepeat and refer.
If it is more convenient for meto go around the corner and buy
(09:57):
sugar because the store isright down the street versus
maybe having something pop up onmy phone and say, based on your
baking.
We think you might be out ofsugar.
Would you like to order it andhave it delivered to your home?
There are so manyconvenience-driven factors in
how customers are makingdecisions right now that that's
a great thing to look at.
(10:18):
How can we make repeatpurchases and using our product
as convenient as possible?
That is experience-driven.
So that's a great way to do it.
And you want to tell a biggerstory about your brand.
Think about what Liquid Deathdid.
Think about what Starbucks did.
They told a bigger story.
It wasn't just a cup of coffeeanymore.
(10:39):
It was about the experience.
year, if about the craftsmanshipof the coffee.
It was about getting togetherin community.
It was about hanging out in acool cafe with great music.
So think about what is thebigger story that you can tell.
Is it about sustainability andenvironmentalism?
Is it about the workers.
?
Is it about your founders?
(11:01):
Is it just about how people useyour products?
All of that can really parlayinto brand loyalty and
relationship building.
And, of course, you want toleverage technology.
You want to lean in tounderstand the behavior of your
customers, not just thetransactions.
So if customers are alwaysbuying your product a certain
(11:24):
way at a certain time of year.
If you don't understand why,that's a great thing to dig into
.
Ask AI to show you thosepatterns of purchases.
Ask AI to show you, you knowwhat, what if we were able to
provide more supply at certaintimes of the year, would that
actually help people.
Really understand how and whyyour customers are making those
(11:46):
purchases in order to improvetheir experiences.
And then the last thing I wantto leave you with you know, when
we talk about our CXI NavigatorFramework, we talk about an
area called experientialinnovation.
If we are not constantlythinking about how to disrupt
our market, somebody else is.
(12:06):
They are about to disrupt.
Because.
So we actually do somethingthat we call a disruptor day,
and this is where we gettogether with our clients and we
talk about okay, if we weredisrupting this market, what
would we do?
Because, even if it's big,magical thinking, in that moment
you will find ideas that cangrow.
(12:28):
You will find ways , connectwith your customer values,
understand what the product isdoing for them, and once you
have those insights and thoseinnovations, then you can really
start staying ahead of thosedisruptors who are probably
(12:48):
chasing you right now and youmight not.
even know it.
So never be afraid ofexperiential innovation.
So, speaking of that, our CXINavigator Framework if you are
curious about how you're doingon your customer experience
journey, check out cxicompasscom.
It's a free assessment.
(13:08):
We give you some tools at theend to really move forward and
understand where to prioritizeyour customer experience efforts
.
So I hope you'll check that out.
Thank you so much for thisquestion.
I know that sometimes it canfeel like if you're in a
commoditized market or if you'redoing the same thing again and
again, you might think well,it's working, it's not broken.
(13:31):
So why innovate?
Well, I'll tell you why.
Because your customers want youto.
They are waiting for innovation, they are waiting for
disruption.
So why not?
Why not be the leader and goahead and disrupt?
Why not be experience driven?
Because we know that will buildbrand loyalty, build customer
lifetime value, give more repeatpurchases and referred
(13:53):
customers to your organization.
It is literally a win-win-win.
So, yes, the answer to thequestion is customer experience
is a winning business strategy,even in commoditized markets.
Thank you so much for thisquestion.
I can't wait to hear your nextone.
Thanks for joining me everybodyTo learn more about our
(14:16):
strategic approach to experience.
Check out free resources atexperienceinvestigatorscom,
where you can sign up for ournewsletter, our Year of CX
program and more, and pleasefollow me, Jeannie Walters, on
LinkedIn.
Experience Action.
Let's stop just talking aboutcustomer experience, employee
experience and the experience ofleaders.
Let's turn ideas into action.
Your host, Jeannie Walters, isan award-winning customer
experience expert, internationalkeynote speaker and founder of
Experience Investigators, astrategic consulting firm
(00:20):
helping companies increase salesand customer retention through
elevated customer experiences.
Ready set action.
Jeannie Walters (00:32):
Can customer experience really help if you
are focused on selling a productthat's really a commodity?
That's what we're exploringtoday on the Experience Action
Podcast.
Listener Question (00:48):
Hi, Jeannie, this is Ingrid from Guatemala,
always listening to your podcast.
I have a question.
What if your product is acommodity: sugar, coffee beans?
Would CX be the winningstrategy?
(01:13):
Are there examples of companiesthat have improved their
business and gained growth?
Jeannie Walters (01:15):
The short answer here is yes.
Yes, customer experience canstill be a winning business
strategy for products that arereally commoditized.
This includes making thingsthat are maybe comparable one to
the next.
You know our caller mentionedsugar or coffee.
When you think about productslike that, a lot of the consumer
(01:35):
drive might be centered onprice, on convenience, on you
know what's available when I'mshopping.
But what I want you to thinkabout is there are things that
we earn from customer experiencethat maybe aren't always
translated exactly into thebusiness dollars and cents.
(01:56):
Those are things like branddifferentiation.
People will pay more forproducts that feel different to
them, that speak to their values, that help them feel like they
belong to something bigger thanthemselves.
Now, the other thing aboutcustomer experience with
commodities is that it cancommand premium pricing.
(02:18):
People have shown again andagain that they are more willing
to pay for better packaging,shown again and again that they
are more willing to pay forbetter packaging, better
experiences, better productsthat feel and look a little
different, even if they mightnot be that different when you
get right down to it.
This is about building acompetitive edge with customer
(02:39):
experience.
So if we know that brand andperceived value is important for
consumer decisions, whywouldn't we invest in customer
experience?
If the product itself isinterchangeable, then that means
we have to do something todifferentiate from the
competition.
The way the customersexperience the brand is what
(03:01):
we're going after, and CX canelevate this commodity.
Now the other thing thathappens is people get very
attached to these brands.
Think about something likeStarbucks coffee.
When we first were introducedto Starbucks on a national level
, people weren't reallyconsidering coffee in the way
that they are now.
(03:21):
Starbucks really brought thatidea to us and then they kept
iterating specifically aroundtheir customer experience.
In the beginning, they reallyinvested in this idea of having
a third place not where you workand not where you live, but a
third place to sit down with acup of coffee, get some work
done and enjoy being part ofthat community.
(03:43):
That investment in theexperience really led to the
growth that we all knowStarbucks had.
Now they are continuing toiterate and evolve and they've
had some struggles in the lastfew years, but right now they
are going back to what made themwho they are.
They are investing in thoseself-service bars that customers
(04:05):
said they wanted back.
They're investing in thingslike providing free refills if
you stay in the cafe, and morefeatures that are really
experience-driven and lessproduct-driven.
That's because they know that'swhat works.
The other thing I want you tothink about is how, when you
have experiences that stand out,whether it's a commodity or not
(04:27):
you tell people about it.
We know that traditionaladvertising just doesn't work
the way that it used to.
We know that people havelimited views into media,
meaning that we can't reach allthe people we used to be able to
at once.
People have their own ways ofconsuming information and
(04:47):
entertainment, so the best thingwe have in our arsenal is
really word of mouth andreferral business.
The more that we can get ourcustomers talking about their
experiences, the more likelywe'll get those referrals that
drive more and new customersinto our brands.
So we talked about Starbucks.
(05:08):
Now I want you to think aboutthings like Patagonia.
Now, Patagonia is a company anda retailer that focuses on
outdoor and adventure wear thattype of thing and what they did
was they really realized thattheir values around
sustainability would attractcustomers who also cared about
(05:29):
sustainability.
So, while things like a cottonflannel shirt, you can find that
in a zillion places, aPatagonia shirt has a different
cachet, and that's because theyhave invested in making sure
that the cotton that they use issustainable that they have
programs that really boost theirloyalty with these
(05:53):
sustainability-focused customers.
Because they are able to, forinstance, shop used products I
believe it's called the WornWear program so they allow
people to sell their usedPatagonia products within their
marketplace.
Revolutionary and innovativeideas like that are really
(06:15):
experience-based and notproduct-based, so I encourage
you to think about what can youdo here.
Another great example is LiquidDeath.
Now, this is a water product.
Really, that's all it is.
They've completely disruptedthe bottled water market by
focusing on mostly packaging.
They stood out by having tallboy cans, aluminum cans and
(06:39):
their graphics were, as they putit, heavy metal inspired.
This has led to amazing growth,especially with environmentally
conscious customers who didn'twant to purchase plastic bottles
.
They liked the idea of the morerecyclable option of aluminum
cans.
They also now provide boxedwaters, which is also another
(07:02):
sustainable choice, but thisapproach that they have had has
led to revenues skyrocketingfrom $2.8 million in 2019 to
$130 million in 2022.
Now, water, when you get rightdown to it, is pretty much water
(07:22):
, but they stood out because ofthe experience they were
providing through theirpackaging, through their unique
lens.
So that's what I want you tothink about.
If you have a commodity and youthink, well, we just keep
focusing on the product, how canwe focus on the experience?
I encourage you to do a fewthings.
One is focus on therelationships, not just
transactions.
(07:43):
What are people doing with yourproduct?
How is it changing their lives?
How is it helping theirbusiness?
If you can tap into that, thenyou can provide even more
experiences to build on that.
Think about what the airlinesdid decades ago now, when they
started loyalty programs.
They started realizing that,yes, people could fly any old
(08:06):
airline.
They could buy one ticket fromUnited Airlines one day and they
could buy one from Delta thenext.
But when they started theseloyalty programs, they realized
if we could keep people in ourecosystem and make them feel
rewarded and recognized, theneverybody wins.
That is an experience-drivenlens.
(08:29):
Now I will say the loyaltyprograms also have their unique
challenges, right, so you dohave to think out about is this
sustainable for our business?
But the more that you can focuson not just what your product
does, but what it does for yourcustomers.
That's really where you canidentify with.
How can we improve theexperience.
(08:51):
A couple of years ago, Spotifystarted creating those year end
videos, those custom things thattold people here's who you
listen to the most in the end ofthe year.
So in 2024 your top artist wasTaylor Swift.
People started sharing thatsaying isn't this cool?
(09:11):
Because the more that we canprovide insights into behaviors,
the more that we can share morepersonalized experiences, the
more people want to share those.
So that's another example wherethey didn't think about just
okay, well, people can listen tomusic through Spotify.
They thought about what are wereally doing?
What can we let them know aboutthemselves?
That's another great way tothink about it.
(09:34):
So focus on relationships, notjust transactions.
You want to make convenienceking.
Convenience is such a driver incustomer experience that the
more that we can provideconvenience in purchasing and
using these commodities, thatthe more that we can provide
convenience in purchasing andusing these commodities, the
more likely people will be torepeat and refer.
If it is more convenient for meto go around the corner and buy
(09:57):
sugar because the store isright down the street versus
maybe having something pop up onmy phone and say, based on your
baking.
We think you might be out ofsugar.
Would you like to order it andhave it delivered to your home?
There are so manyconvenience-driven factors in
how customers are makingdecisions right now that that's
a great thing to look at.
(10:18):
How can we make repeatpurchases and using our product
as convenient as possible?
That is experience-driven.
So that's a great way to do it.
And you want to tell a biggerstory about your brand.
Think about what Liquid Deathdid.
Think about what Starbucks did.
They told a bigger story.
It wasn't just a cup of coffeeanymore.
(10:39):
It was about the experience.
year, if about the craftsmanshipof the coffee.
It was about getting togetherin community.
It was about hanging out in acool cafe with great music.
So think about what is thebigger story that you can tell.
Is it about sustainability andenvironmentalism?
Is it about the workers.
?
Is it about your founders?
(11:01):
Is it just about how people useyour products?
All of that can really parlayinto brand loyalty and
relationship building.
And, of course, you want toleverage technology.
You want to lean in tounderstand the behavior of your
customers, not just thetransactions.
So if customers are alwaysbuying your product a certain
(11:24):
way at a certain time of year.
If you don't understand why,that's a great thing to dig into
.
Ask AI to show you thosepatterns of purchases.
Ask AI to show you, you knowwhat, what if we were able to
provide more supply at certaintimes of the year, would that
actually help people.
Really understand how and whyyour customers are making those
(11:46):
purchases in order to improvetheir experiences.
And then the last thing I wantto leave you with you know, when
we talk about our CXI NavigatorFramework, we talk about an
area called experientialinnovation.
If we are not constantlythinking about how to disrupt
our market, somebody else is.
(12:06):
They are about to disrupt.
Because.
So we actually do somethingthat we call a disruptor day,
and this is where we gettogether with our clients and we
talk about okay, if we weredisrupting this market, what
would we do?
Because, even if it's big,magical thinking, in that moment
you will find ideas that cangrow.
(12:28):
You will find ways , connectwith your customer values,
understand what the product isdoing for them, and once you
have those insights and thoseinnovations, then you can really
start staying ahead of thosedisruptors who are probably
(12:48):
chasing you right now and youmight not.
even know it.
So never be afraid ofexperiential innovation.
So, speaking of that, our CXINavigator Framework if you are
curious about how you're doingon your customer experience
journey, check out cxicompasscom.
It's a free assessment.
(13:08):
We give you some tools at theend to really move forward and
understand where to prioritizeyour customer experience efforts
.
So I hope you'll check that out.
Thank you so much for thisquestion.
I know that sometimes it canfeel like if you're in a
commoditized market or if you'redoing the same thing again and
again, you might think well,it's working, it's not broken.
(13:31):
So why innovate?
Well, I'll tell you why.
Because your customers want youto.
They are waiting for innovation, they are waiting for
disruption.
So why not?
Why not be the leader and goahead and disrupt?
Why not be experience driven?
Because we know that will buildbrand loyalty, build customer
lifetime value, give more repeatpurchases and referred
(13:53):
customers to your organization.
It is literally a win-win-win.
So, yes, the answer to thequestion is customer experience
is a winning business strategy,even in commoditized markets.
Thank you so much for thisquestion.
I can't wait to hear your nextone.
Thanks for joining me everybodyTo learn more about our
(14:16):
strategic approach to experience.
Check out free resources atexperienceinvestigatorscom,
where you can sign up for ournewsletter, our Year of CX
program and more, and pleasefollow me, Jeannie Walters, on
LinkedIn.
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