SLA Plus XLA = Happy Users
Our traditional advice to IT clients has been to negotiate an SLA with their internal users as part of IT Service Management. It makes for happier end-users but it’s no longer enough without adding an XLA. End users understand an XLA and appreciate you for including it. They think that they understand SLAs, but they really don’t as they can be counterintuitive.
SLA vs. XLA

A service-level agreement (SLA) is an agreement that identifies what services the service provider (ISP, IT Department…) will furnish and defines the objective service standards the provider has agreed to meet. It focuses on what can be measured. Examples include:
- Available bandwidth
- Percentage up-time
- Mean time to repair
- Average clearance time for trouble tickets
- Did the work complete within budget
These service level metrics are measured and tracked and if a standard is not met, reports are issued and a plan for improvement is generally developed.
An experience level agreement (XLA) identifies the subjective service standards for user satisfaction. Examples include star reviews (1 – 5) for such things as:
- Did you get the outcome you were trying to achieve?
- Did you achieve the benefits that you were expecting?
- Were you satisfied with the experience?
- Was the process easy to use?
Each Can Disappoint
Perceived IT quality is not the same as actual IT quality. For example, a reliable network uptime may be 99.9% and IT staff are happy when they’re meeting their SLA. However, this metric actually translates to 43 minutes of outage per month. If the outage happens after hours, it may go unnoticed by users. If it occurs during peak deadline time, it can be devastating.
Prior to XLAs, complaining users could be brushed off with the comment that the network performance is good: the SLA thresholds are being achieved. SLA results do not often impress end users.
XLA ratings can be hard to mitigate. One poor rating can go viral and influence subsequent ratings. XLA results often do not impress IT staff. They can seem like a personal judgement.
Further, valid user feedback can be difficult to collect. Many people don’t take the time to respond when the outcome was fine but are motivated to give a negative response when they had a disappointing experience. We now need to discuss design options that will increase the level of user feedback. We also need to decide what level of XLA feedback scores can be considered to represent successful service levels.
Taking Action
Some organizations combine SLA and XLA requirements into one document. This allows all of the basic SLA information to be used: what service, where, to whom, exceptions, who will sign, expiry/renewal date, etc.
Development of XLA metrics need to be developed through discussions with stakeholders. For example, help desk ticket resolution time may have a higher standard for tax department staff during the property tax payment season.
If you’d like to comment on this article or explore these ideas further, contact me at ellen.
This article was published in the
October 2022
edition of The TMC Advisor
- ISSN 2369-663X Volume:9 Issue:5
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