[PRACTICE NOTE] A NEW "Why" for CX #1: Making Unique Selling Propositions Truly Unique

A New "Why" for CX #1: Making Unique Selling Propositions Truly Unique

SYNOPSIS. As an equal partner to brand and product, companies must integrate experience into the mix to fundamentally strengthen the relevance differentiation of their core value propositions in today's discerning customers' hearts, minds, and lives. Products can be replicated, and brand messages can be imitated, but a consistently exceptional experience is far more difficult for competitors to match. Together, these three dimensions form a more holistic, durable, and authentic “unique selling proposition” that connects how companies market and sell to how customers are evaluating and purchasing. This is the New “Why” for Customer Experience. To learn more, refer to   "The Customer Excellence Enterprise: A Playbook for Creating Customers for Life", Commercial Bold Move #2: Make the Experience the Proposition.

It’s almost a right of passage, the moment business leaders (presumably on behalf of the CEO and CFO) ask THE Question: “What’s the ROI of CX?” After witnessing this dynamic play out in several industries over several business cycles, I’ve realized that this isn’t always a question of reason or logic, it’s often a philosophical question, a stream of consciousness that I interpret as “Why can’t we be like Amazon or Chewy or USAA or The Ritz-Carlton when it comes to customer experience excellence? After all, C-Suite leaders have surely experienced the difference between great interactions and bad ones in their “other lives” as consumers. They must be able to calculate the financial impact of customer churn and the reputational damage and brand erosion that happen when bad customer service episodes go viral.

So, what gives? 

Mired in their daily grind, when leaders are hit with a cacophony of satisfaction and advocacy metrics that don’t seem to move much, many of them can’t see the light or connect the dots. Therefore, as a major actor in this corporate right of passage, they ask THE Question as the first signal that CX may be on notice, potentially making the corporate restructuring shortlist. 

This should come as no surprise. Far too many companies have come to view CX as a nice-to-have—a somewhat quirky, supplementary functional discipline sitting awkwardly between building surveys in market research, designing journeys and user interfaces, and uncovering pain points in operations. Either way, the discipline is often on the outside, peering in on the “real” revenue and value creation engines dominated by marketing and sales. This perspective has often led to CX initiatives being contemplated in isolation rather than as integral parts of business models, struggling to demonstrate value and trying to elbow in on the revenue performance and value creation results already claimed by the more muscular sales and marketing machines. 

So, how can CX break out of obscurity, get into the direct revenue and value creation game, and finally get a seat at the “adult table”? 

Moving beyond “Mad Men” Marketing

Companies have relied on product and brand factors as their primary mechanisms to differentiate and drive their value propositions. Beginning in the industrial and post-industrial eras, companies focused on creating and offering superior products—leveraging manufacturing acumen, access to raw materials, labor relations, quality systems, and innovative functionality to set themselves apart. This approach worked well in markets where technological advancements were relatively slow, competition was limited, and consumer expectations were largely centered on maximizing the functional utility of product features.

As markets matured and began to become saturated with competing product offerings, the idea of branding emerged as a critical differentiating factor. To that end, companies engaged the infamous “Mad Men”, including originals such as David Ogilvy and Walter Landor. They then invested heavily in brand building using storytelling, advertising, and emotional resonance as the mechanisms to foster preference, generate demand, and create differentiated perceptions of value.

Over time, companies sharpened their approach further by combining product with brand factors to create enduring company narratives built around unique selling propositions (USPs). As the ultimate byproduct of branding, marketing, advertising, and other commercial endeavors, USPs are the essential ingredient in aligning corporate aspirations with customer needs at the critical moment of truth—the point of sale.

A well-crafted USP serves as the bridge between what a brand promises and what the product delivers, making it clear why a customer should choose one offering over another. Iconic brands such as Coca-Cola and Nike became leaders not just because of their products and brands in isolation but because of their ability to artfully blend the two into unique selling propositions — points of perceived or real differentiation— that crystallize their value in a way that evoke strong emotional connections, build cultural relevance, and resonate with customers when they are making their purchasing and loyalty decisions.

However, with the weaponized scale of always-on digital marketing and countless channels to engage customers, the two-dimensional model of product-brand is increasingly facing challenges. Digitization and the democratization of technology enable faster commoditization of products, the focus on competing solely through product and brand factors has become increasingly unsustainable, forcing companies to evolve their mindsets, strategies, and ways of working. Markets have become noisier and more crowded than ever, product lifecycles become shorter, and global competitors have worked their way up the value chain, making it difficult for companies, products, and brands to truly stand out from the crowd.

Key Takeaway: Simply put, with product and brand factors alone, it has become increasingly difficult to create unique selling propositions that are actually unique.

From Tangible to Intangible

Underpinning the modern value exchange between companies and customers is an even more significant change — customers today evaluate value not just by tangible attributes like product cost and functionality but also by the quality of the experience they receive before, during, and after a purchase. This shift has only accelerated and deepened with the wide-scale digitization of interactions post-pandemic

The significance of this relatively invisible shift cannot be overstated, having far-reaching implications for how companies create, deliver, and capture value. Specifically, the shift in the value exchange from tangible to intangible is not simply a trend; it is a seismic structural change in consumer behaviors and preferences. According to World Bank data, inherently intangible service industries now make up over 65% of global GDP, reflecting the growing significance of intangible value over tangible goods alone.

Companies like Circuit City failed largely because they focused solely on outdoing competitors through product-led promotional strategies (for example, pitting sales promotions for 50-inch TVs against 55-inch TVs), increasingly commoditizing itself and getting out of sync with consumers. Alternatively, direct competitors like Best Buy and Amazon are executing contemporary success formulas that reflect commitments to the intangible value derived from superior in-store and digital experiences, respectively.

Many Companies are Stuck

Unfortunately, many companies are still wired and focused on delivering tangible value, consumers have moved on as they are now placing equal, if not greater, emphasis on intangible value—such as convenience, personalization, trust, and simplicity. Accordingly, they remain trapped in a cycle of trying to define their unique selling propositions (USPs) through product and brand-based propositions alone. The TV ad campaign and the iconic fedora of the "Mad Men" era have been replaced by the social media influencer campaign and trucker hat of the modern-day ad agency, but the strategies haven’t really changed. These companies continue to rely primarily on creating perceptions of differentiation, without addressing the intangible factors that influence customer behaviors today or align with how they make purchasing and loyalty decisions. This approach often results in short-term gains but often fails to establish a meaningful connection with customers or a sustainable competitive edge. 

While product and brand factors are obviously essential, given the aforementioned changes in the business and customer landscape, they are no longer sufficient. True differentiation in the modern era must be crafted at the intersection of brand, product, and experience—the new lever of the unique selling proposition. While the brand sets the tone and establishes emotional resonance, and the product delivers functionality and innovation, it is the experience that brings these elements to life. Seamless, personalized, and memorable interactions at every touchpoint are what truly set companies apart. Brands that fail to integrate CX into their strategies risk being overshadowed by competitors who understand that experience is no longer an accessory to the unique selling proposition but a pillar in its very core.

Breaking the Tyranny of Uninspiring CX Metrics

The shift in perspective underscores the urgent opportunity for the discipline of customer experience management to reassert itself in the corporate psyche in the form of a New "Why" for CX #1: Making Unique Selling Propositions Truly Unique. The time for this shift is now — the current orthodoxy and predominant rationale of CX being centered on improving customer satisfaction or fostering advocacy have simply not been enough to mobilize many companies around the customer organizations or to make customer-centric cultures commonplace. To be clear, while satisfaction and advocacy goals remain relevant, they alone have proven insufficient to build conviction for customer experience within leadership teams or be considered seriously by boards of directors when contemplating enterprise value and risks.

New "Why" for CX #1: Making Unique Selling Propositions Truly Unique.

No longer can CX simply be defined by surveys, journey mapping, or the tyranny of uninspiring metrics. Crucially, CX must now be reframed to be about strengthening unique selling propositions, realigning how companies are marketing and selling with how customers today are evaluating and making purchase decisions. This means repositioning CX as an equal partner to the brand and product in the core value proposition, reflecting how customers perceive and interact with companies today. The brand creates the emotional resonance and trust that draws customers in, the product delivers on functional needs, and the experience ensures the promises of the brand and product are fulfilled in as seamless, effortless, frictionless, and delightful a way as possible, delivering episodes that customers value deeply and remember vividly.

With its implications for the unique selling proposition, reframing CX in this way demands that it be integrated into a three-dimensional framework, alongside brand and product, reflecting the discipline’s integral role in defining how companies compete, differentiate, and show up to customers. In this context, experience is no longer viewed and treated merely as an enabling function on the fringes of value creation—it becomes an organic element of the company’s reason for being, as critical as the brand’s identity and narrative, and the novelty of the product’s quality, features and functions.

As an added benefit, positive experiences can generate capital-efficient organic growth through word-of-mouth and social sharing, while building goodwill and long-term relationships with customers. In increasingly noisy and crowded markets, companies can reposition CX as more than something to dabble in—it becomes an essential pillar for short-term revenue performance and long-term viability and vitality. 

Questions to consider:

• How clearly is our USP defined, and what percentage of it is centered around customer experience rather than just product features or brand identity?
• How do we measure the impact of customer experience on our overall business performance and market differentiation?
• What role does customer feedback play in shaping our USP, and how often do we adapt based on evolving customer needs?
• To what extent do our frontline employees, systems, and processes consistently deliver on the promises made by our USP?
• How does our USP compare to competitors in leveraging customer experience as a competitive advantage?

To learn more, refer to "The Customer Excellence Enterprise: A Playbook for Creating Customers for Life"