What are Experience Level Agreements (XLAs)?
Experience Level Agreements (XLAs) go a step further by focusing on the end-user experience. XLAs measure how users feel about the service, which can include factors like satisfaction, ease of use, and overall happiness.
Example: An XLA for an IT helpdesk might track how easy it is for users to get support. For example, it could measure whether employees can resolve their issues on the first attempt without needing to reopen a ticket.
What are Service Level Agreements (SLAs)?
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are agreements with your customers that define service expectations, including key performance metrics and what happens if those targets aren’t met. They set clear rules and keep everyone accountable.
Example: Your SLA might guarantee 99.9% uptime. If you drop below that, you might have to compensate customers like offering service credits or refunds.
Learn more about SLAs and why they matter
What is the Watermelon Effect in IT with SLA and XLA Metrics?
In IT service management (ITSM), the “watermelon effect” is a common phenomenon where SLAs appear green on the outside but are red on the inside.
As an example, you can imagine that your IT services are like a watermelon. It looks perfect on the outside with nice and green color, because all your services meet SLA metrics and show good numbers. But when you cut it open, it’s red inside.
Why? It occurs when SLAs are met, but users are still unhappy.
How can we measure user happiness? How can we overcome this phenomenon? The answer is? We need to look beyond traditional SLAs and focus on XLAs as well.
Example of the Watermelon Effect
For instance, an XLA might measure user satisfaction through customer surveys and feedbacks.
- SLA Metric – Your IT support team resolves 95% of tickets within 24 hours.
- XLA Metric – Despite the quick resolution, user satisfaction surveys show a score of 5 out of 10 because users feel the solutions provided are not effective.
How to resolve the Watermelon Effect
- Combine SLAs with XLAs. Don’t rely just on SLAs. Incorporate XLAs to get a holistic picture of service performance.
- Collect feedback on a regular basis to understand user pain points and improve services accordingly. For instance, send out once in a few months surveys asking users to rate their experience and provide suggestions for improvement.
- Look at the entire user journey, not just individual metrics. Understand how different aspects of the service impact user experience. For instance, if users aren’t satisfied with the support process, go through the entire journey from ticket submission to resolution.
- Use the data from XLAs to make better decisions and improve services. If users are consistently unhappy with the provided resolution, consider additional training for support staff or improving the knowledge base.
By focusing on both SLAs and XLAs, you can ensure that your services not only meet contractual obligations but also deliver a positive user experience. This holistic approach helps identify and address the watermelon effect, leading to happier users and better service outcomes.
However, while this all sounds great on paper, the reality is always challenging when implementing a new approach or metric within your IT team.
Common mistakes and challenges when measuring XLAs
Let’s explore common challenges and mistakes in implementing XLA metrics, along with practical examples.
1. Separate focus on SLAs and XLAs as 2 isolated metrics
Example
An IT leader implements an XLa metrics but still prioritizes traditional SLAs like response time and ticket resolution time as these are important metrics to prove top management that IT services are running according to agreements. Even though the data from Service Desk meets its SLA targets, employees continue to report frustration with slow self-service options and difficulty getting human support when needed.
How to solve it: Align XLa with SLAs by tracking "effort score" (how easy it is for users to resolve their issue) alongside resolution speed.
Learn more about SLAs, SLOs, and SLIs metrics
2. Using too generic or irrelevant experience metrics
Example
An IT team decides to measure employee satisfaction using Net Promoter Score (NPS) but finds that NPS scores fluctuate without clear reasons. A deeper investigation discovers that employees don’t think about IT in terms of "recommendation" (which is what NPS measures). Instead, their main frustrations come from slow laptop performance and frequent VPN disconnects. These issues are not captured in NPS surveys.
How to solve it: Instead of NPS alone, use Employee Satisfaction Scores (ESAT) and measure frustration levels related to IT services.
3. A need for real-time monitoring
Example
An IT team reviews XLa results quarterly but employees face daily disruptions from system slowness and software crashes. By the time IT notices a drop in satisfaction scores, it's too late.
How to solve it: Implement real-time experience dashboards that track live data from monitoring tools. Provide alerts when the data is worsening.
4. Accountability and responsibility issues
Example
A software company implements XLAs but no single team takes responsibility for the experience improvement. IT blames HR for onboarding problems, HR blames IT for slow laptop setups and by the end of the day employees are still frustrated.
How to solve it: Assign experience person within IT, HR, and operations who regularly review and act on XLa data.
5. Integrating XLa into business decisions
Example
An IT director collects employee experience data but never shares it with leadership. As a result, the business makes decisions based on cost savings rather than employee experience impact.
How to solve it: Include XLa reports in executive meetings and show the correlation between experience improvements and productivity, retention, and business performance.
Guide to implement XLAs
1. Definition of what user experience with IT means for the business
It’s crucial to define questions such as:
- What IT challenges frustrate employees the most?
- What does great IT experience look like from their point of view?
- What IT issues slow down your work the most?
- How easy is to get IT help when needed?
- How happy are you with IT support?
What to do: Make a short employee survey or interviews to analyze major pain points.
2. Choose a relevant XLA metrics
Pick simple 3-5 important metrics without overthinking and complexity.
Example:
What to measure: How happy employees are with IT support
- How to track: Simply survey after support interactions.
What to measure: How easy it is to get IT issues fixed
- How to track: 1-5 stars how easy was it to get help?
3. Use simple tracking methods
You don’t need complex tools to measure user satisfaction. Gather feedback effortlessly using:
- ALVAO Satisfaction Survey: Automate feedback collection and track trends over time in Service Desk. ALVAO automatically sends a survey right after a ticket is closed, capturing real-time user experience insights to help improve IT support.
- Microsoft Forms: A quick way to gather basic user feedback.
4. Set up a simple dashboard to monitor trends and data in real time
IT teams should not overcomplicate data tracking. Use Power BI reports to monitor XLA trends.
5. Take actions and implement improvements based on XLA insights
If there are no evaluations of data, it is useless process.
- Actively fix recurring IT frustrations such as slow VPN or poor Wif-Fi
- Invest in automation such as self-service knowledge base
- Improve IT support response time and focus only longer response time but with high quality outcome
Example
Employees rate IT support 3/5 stars for easy of resolution.
- How to solve it: Add self-service knowledge base guides for common issues
6. Improve XLAs continuously
It may sound too tiring but to review XLAs regularly per month makes a huge difference in how users are happy with your IT.
Questions to ask:
- Are employees experiencing fewer IT issues?
- Is IT team becoming easier to reach?
- Are employees spending less time dealing with IT issues?
- How to implement the XLA metric into your IT without resistance?
Hopefully, you find this article helpful in understanding why measuring XLAs is crucial. If you want to make it easier, we can offer you a free demo to show how ALVAO Service Desk for Microsoft 365 can seamlessly handle it for small and mid-sized businesses. No shared mailbox, no overly complex or expensive ticketing tools.
Simple, straightforward, and Microsoft-centric, this is what ALVAO is all about.