I keep hearing comments that suggest that many people believe that only products can be commodities, and that services and experiences are somehow automatically differentiators. That’s just patently untrue.
If companies are providing services similar enough that customers see no difference, the services are also commodities. And if companies aim at the same “good experience” based on talking to customers and arriving at the same understanding customers needs and expectations, then conforming their offerings around that understanding — or worse, imitating one another’s best practices — that experience will also become a commodity.
The only way to avoid becoming a commodity is to do something the other guys can’t do — and hopefully won’t even try to do after you’ve laid claim to it. That something might take the form of making a product nobody else can make like you make, serving customers in some way nobody else can serve them, or providing a unique experience nobody else can deliver.
It’s got to come out of the unique capabilities of the organization, or it the difference will be swallowed up immediately by competitors and made into commodity table-stakes.
Any organization on earth can do UX, and/or hire a flash animator, or invent a brand definition. Developing the separate pieces of a brand experience in isolation is pretty trivial, which is why it’s usually done that way. The whole “experience” is processed assembly-line style, bolted together step-by-step. But getting it all to line up around the uniqueness of the organization and the known and latent needs and wants of customers is much, much harder.
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