CX Strategic Knowledge · CX Philosophy
Challenging Current Ways & Core Terms: TERMS & MODELS (Chapter 2 Foundations)
Most companies are customer-peripheric: the customer exists, but internal convenience makes the decisions.
A working vocabulary for diagnosing fake CX. Customer-peripheric names organizations where the customer exists but isn't the center. PSE — products, services, experiences — is everything a company offers, and the goal is PSE-market fit. CX itself is the complete end-to-end journey, not marketing or support.
Customer-peripheric is the diagnostic term. The customer exists in these organizations — in decks, in values statements — but is not the center. Decisions prioritize internal convenience. Naming this pattern is the first step to seeing how common it is.
PSE stands for products, services, and experiences: everything a company designs, builds, sells, or offers, across digital, physical, live, and asynchronous channels. The upgrade is from product-market fit to PSE-market fit. When the overlap between PSE and customer needs is small, you get waste, unused features, missed needs, and risk — money left on the table. The ideal overlap serves known needs fully and treats unknown needs as discovery.
- CX is not marketing, not support, not helping people buy
- CX is the complete end-to-end journey across all tasks and interactions
- Design, QA, and accessibility are CX — they cannot be added later
- Neglecting them creates complaints, attrition, legal risk, and brand damage
Done well, the labels converge: CX, UX, and brand experience become the same discipline. UX originally meant what we now call CX. Titles matter less than outcomes — it is all about the X, the experience.
Apply this
Reading about challenging current ways & core terms: terms & models (chapter 2 foundations) is one thing. Seeing where it applies in your journey is the useful part.