This notion occurred to me as a consequence of a couple bits of conversation: the first was a conversation about a fairly upscale in which the bathrooms were disgusting and the second about the filthy conditions of an employee break room in a restaurant. As I considered what I had heard, it occurred to me that there are a staggering number of instances in which the back-of-house experience is sorely neglected, and likely done as a conscious choice to neglect rather than a mere oversight. And while the venue was brick-and-mortar retail, my sense is that some of this can be translated to the online user experience as well.
That said, here's the ramble ... I'm going to stick to the example of a restaurant, and consider components of experience that are typically neglected.
Core Product or Service
I'd completely skipped over this component, likely taking it for granted that firms that deliver a product or service make the quality of their core product or service a top priority, and had to come back to it later because I realized this assumption cannot be taken for granted.
Using the example of a restaurant, there are many places that serve food where the food itself is given very little attention. Some excellent examples of less-than-excellent product quality are in airport restaurants, or institutional food service (companies that provide meals in prisons, schools, and office complexes), or in most QSRs (fast food joints) where fast, cheap, or convenient is given precedence over quality and the customer is expected to settle for a poor product because they are just grabbing a quick bite.
Even in those instances, there is some modicum of quality, though sorely and purposefully neglected, or customers would not patronize them at all, or leave without eating the slop that is on offer.
I won't dwell on this component overmuch: there's much to be said on the matter but my present focus is on items other than the core product or service.
Primary components of the experience
This category of neglect includes elements or components that the customer can be fully expected to encounter during the course of their interaction with the firm in the course of the service experience.
Using the example of the restaurant, the food is likely given great attention - but the customer will also notice the plate on which it is served and the flatware they handle while eating it, the other elements placed on the table, the decor of the dining room, the attire and attitude of the server, and other elements while they are "enjoying" the main attraction of the cuisine.
Perhaps the management of such a restaurant considers these elements to be of little importance and a waste of budget to do anything to improve them: but the customer who is served food on a chipped plate, must eat it with a bent fork, season it with a clogged salt shaker, their eyes constantly drawn to the stain on a paper-tent tabletop promotion, served by a surly waiter in a threadbare uniform, on a rickety chair at a wobbly table, in a dining room with grungy cinderblock walls, etc. will likely be so distracted by the "unimportant" components of the experience that the quality of the cuisine will not matter.
From personal experience, I've had some very satisfactory meals in very shabby places. In some instances, the quality was such that I went back, sometimes repeatedly, to these shabby little places. Perhaps that disproves my hypothesis, but it's also worth mentioning that I never brought my wife to these places, never suggested to friends or acquaintances, and if I ever happened to mention them or had them mentioned to me, it was never without a disclaimer about the poor quality of everything but the food.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that the neglect of the primary components of experience is a frequent occurrence, or that most restaurants completely neglect such things, but it is at least widespread and is a strong differentiator between a good restaurant and a bad one.
Secondary components of the experience
This category of neglect relates to components that a customer does not "have to" experience in the delivery and consumption of the core product, but which they might encounter.
Using the example of the restaurant, there are parts of the facility the customer might encounter that they don't necessarily "need" to encounter while taking a meal: the waiting area, the lavatory, areas they might pass through on their way to and from the table, etc.
My sense is that the importance of a clean and well-appointed bathroom in a restaurant operation is so widely recognized that it doesn't require much elaboration - though admittedly I've been in a few where the message had not been heard or had been entirely ignored - and it would suffice to say that the same importance should be attached to every area the diner might venture and every staff member the diner might encounter during the course of their visit.
And granted, this being even further removed from the act of consuming the product, there is even greater tendency of a manager to take a so-what attitude toward it - but just as with the plates and flatware, they are parts of the overall customer experience that can detract from, and even undermine, the experience a business intends to deliver by its attention to elements that it considers to be more important.
Tertiary components (outside of experience)
This category applies to the brand exposure that occurs outside of the experience, either by happenstance or intention.
One component of this, related to the brick-and-mortar establishment, is literally the back of the house - that is, the back of the building, visible from outside.
This is fairly easily dismissed by the notion that people don't see the back of the building - which is really more along the lines of struggling to maintain the ridiculous opinion that it is utterly invisible. There are roads behind and beside restaurants where people will see the back of the building. If there is a high-rise apartment or office building behind the place, everyone who lives and works there will see it at some point, recognize it is the back of the restaurant, and the brand association is made to the appearance and condition of the loading dock, dumpster, and other things that the firm wishes to keep discreetly out of view.
I recall one instance where someone mentioned to me that they wouldn't eat at a place because they could see the back of it from their office window, and had a vivid collection of one summer day when they left a few cases of product - mayonnaise, eggs, and the like - setting out on the dock for several hours. Hearing that, I was a bit aghast: I had eaten at this place before, but never again after hearing that account.
The notion that "nobody ever sees it" is even less tenable when you consider the number of restaurants who offer overflow parking in the back. The (smaller number of) customers who can get a space in front may never see the back of the place, but the (larger number of) customers who have to park in the back will notice it, and walk right past it. Or consider a QSR with a drive-through window, where anyone who uses that service will see the back of the place, while sitting in their car and waiting in line, and who likely have the time to pay close attention to it.
The literal back of the house is an area that is likely to be sorely and intentionally neglected - hosing off the filth and putting a fresh coat of paint of things that were dismissed as invisible to the customer is likely regarded as a complete waste of budget - but it will matter, and it will become part of the perception of the brand.
Components of the non-customer experience
The "non-customer experience" pertains to people who are generally dismissed as unimportant by the business because they are not considered to be customers, and it's therefore reckoned that the experience they have interacting with a firm does not matter.
The most obvious subset of the "non-customer" group are the employees of a firm. Aside of the firm's treatment of its own people (a topic which can fill volumes), the impression employees have of a firm leaks out, and they have a great deal of influence with others who regard them as having the inside scoop on a business.
To go to the example of restaurants, it's not unusual to hear from an employee, or a "friend of a friend" of one, about the unsavory conditions in the areas of a restaurant that are off-limits to customers. And when word gets around that the people that work at a restaurant refuse to eat there, it's thoroughly damning to the impression others take.
Granted, food is a very sensitive topic, and people are particularly squeamish about it - so perhaps the example of a restaurant seems skewed. But the same applies to any retail operation: a clerk at a department store refuses to shop there, a salesman at an auto dealership chooses another brand of vehicle, etc. This is a clear vote of "no confidence" by the people who are most familiar with the brand, and whose job it is to deliver the customer experience, and a clear warning to anyone else.
To a lesser degree, the same can be said of other non-customers who are brought into the back of the house to do business with the firm: vendors who work on equipment, salesmen, job applicants, delivery persons, and anyone who passes through a door to a location customers are not permitted often see a very different image of the business than the carefully manicured front-of-house that customers see.
It's also worth noting that a person is not always a non-customer. They may be interacting with the firm in the role of an employee, partner, or vendor at the moment, but they might, and should, visit the establishment as a customer at a different time, unless something about their experience as a non-customer soured them on the brand.
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This has gone on for longer than I intended, but I have the sense that it's barely scratched the surface of the components of a business that are very often ignored, to the detriment of customer experience and the perception of the brand.
And at the risk of making an overlong ramble even longer and more rambling, it stands to reason that the ideas that have been discussed in terms of a brick-and-mortar retail experience also apply to other kinds of customer experience of virtually any firm, and in virtually any channel.
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