A Winning Customer Experience Strategy: How Who Gives A Crap Built Growth Into the Customer Journey
A great product can win a customer once, but a great experience gives them a reason to come back.
That’s an important distinction in categories where products are difficult to differentiate. When customers see little difference between competing options, growth often comes from improving everything around the product rather than the product itself.
Who Gives A Crap understood this early. Entering a category where toilet paper had become a commodity, the company didn’t try to reinvent what it sold. Instead, it built a customer experience strategy that made buying easier, receiving the product more enjoyable, and every interaction more memorable.
Removing Friction Before It Becomes a Problem
Toilet paper isn’t something people look forward to buying. It’s bulky, inconvenient to carry, and usually only purchased when someone suddenly realises they’re running out.
Rather than competing for attention every time customers visited the supermarket, Who Gives A Crap redesigned the buying experience. They introduced a subscription model so customers no longer had to remember to buy toilet paper. It simply arrived when they needed it.
This wasn’t simply a subscription service. It was a smarter customer retention strategy. By removing friction from a routine purchase, the business reduced the need to constantly win repeat sales through promotions or reminders.
Giving Customers More Than a Product
Making the purchase effortless was only half the strategy. They also wanted every order to mean something beyond the product itself.
Who Gives A Crap commits 50% of its profits to improving access to clean water and sanitation, contributing more than $20 million to date. That mission isn’t treated as a separate corporate initiative—it becomes part of the customer experience.
Every purchase helps fund projects that improve sanitation, reduce preventable disease, and provide safer access to toilets and clean water for communities around the world.
For customers, buying toilet paper becomes more than a household transaction. It becomes an opportunity to contribute to a cause they understand and can easily explain to others.
When purpose is integrated into the experience rather than added as a marketing message, it creates a stronger reason for customers to return.
Making Packaging Part of the Experience
Who Gives A Crap didn’t treat packaging as something to throw away. It became part of the product itself.
Each roll is wrapped in bold colours and playful designs, while shipping boxes feature humour, artist collaborations, reusable wrapping paper, and limited-edition releases. As a result, toilet paper became an experience rather than a routine delivery.
This approach turned branded packaging into a marketing asset. Instead of disappearing into a cupboard, customers photographed it, shared it online, and talked about it with others.
Long after the toilet paper was unpacked, the packaging was still building awareness, reinforcing the brand, and creating reasons for people to remember it.
Growth Comes From Connected Customer Experiences
On their own, subscriptions, packaging, and purpose are valuable initiatives. Together, they become much harder to replicate.
- The subscription made buying effortless.
- The mission gave customers a reason to feel connected to the brand.
- The packaging created moments people wanted to share.
Each part of the experience supported the next. Customers stayed because it was convenient, remembered the brand because it stood out, and recommended it because it reflected something they believed in.
That’s what created meaningful brand differentiation. Marketing became more efficient because it wasn’t trying to persuade customers from scratch. It introduced people to a brand whose customer experience was already generating repeat purchases, referrals, and long-term loyalty.
Key Takeaways
- A strong customer experience strategy improves every stage of the customer journey, not just the product.
- An effective customer retention strategy removes friction and gives customers compelling reasons to return.
- Purpose creates greater impact when it becomes part of the customer experience rather than a separate marketing initiative.
- Well-designed branded packaging can continue building awareness long after a product has been delivered.
- A scalable brand growth strategy connects operations, marketing, and customer experience into one system.
The Customer Journey Is a Growth Strategy
When every interaction has a purpose, marketing becomes more effective, retention becomes easier, and customers become your strongest advocates.
That’s the type of customer experience strategy we build at Ooze Studios, one designed to support sustainable growth, not just short-term acquisition.
If you’d like to uncover where your customer journey can work harder, we’d love to help.
