For decades, service quality was judged by service level agreements (SLAs). These are contracts packed with metrics like uptime, response times, and ticket closures, telling us if the lights were on and the wheels were turning. But too often, SLAs produced the watermelon effect: green on the outside (all the targets met) but red at the core (users still dissatisfied).
Enter experience level agreements (XLAs). Where SLAs measure outputs, XLAs measure outcomes. They move the focus from what was delivered to how it was experienced. And in a world where customer trust, employee productivity, and patient safety hinge on experience, that shift is not cosmetic. It’s existential.
What exactly is an XLA?
An XLA is a structured commitment to deliver value as perceived by the end-user – whether that’s an employee using IT systems, a customer phoning a support desk, or a patient navigating healthcare.
Instead of reporting that 95% of tickets were closed within four hours, an XLA asks: Did the employee feel supported? Did their productivity improve? Did the experience align with the promise of the service?
Think of it as moving from technical performance to human performance. XLAs measure the real impact of services on people’s satisfaction, trust, and ability to get things done.
XLAs vs SLAs: Not a replacement, but a recalibration
SLAs and XLAs are not enemies. They are complementary lenses:
- SLAs guarantee reliability.
- XLAs guarantee relevance.
The SLA might promise “99.9% uptime”. The XLA asks: Was that uptime meaningful? Did it enable your team to work seamlessly, or did small moments of friction still grind down productivity?
The smartest organisations use both—a dual scorecard that ensures services are technically sound and experientially valuable.
Why they matter now
Experience is no longer a “soft” concept. It is measurable, contractual, and directly tied to business outcomes:
- Employee engagement: Engaged employees are more productive and less likely to leave.
- Customer loyalty: A single bad service experience can erase years of brand-building.
- Healthcare outcomes: Patient satisfaction correlates with treatment adherence and better health.
In each case, XLAs bridge the gap between operational performance and strategic value.
Lessons from the frontlines
- Ahlstrom-Munksjö (manufacturing): By implementing XLAs in IT support, they boosted user happiness by 150% and cut lost productive time by 57%.
- Reckitt (consumer goods): Embedding XLAs into IT contracts lifted employee satisfaction scores by 52% and reclaimed over 250,000 hours of productivity in a single year.
But failures exist too. Organisations that treated XLAs as box-ticking add-ons – collecting surveys but never acting on them – saw the initiative collapse.
The difference? Commitment. Transparency. Follow-through.
Best practices for implementing XLAs
- Anchor them in business goals: XLAs must connect directly to retention, revenue, or resilience.
- Tailor, don’t template: Different teams value different experiences; metrics must reflect that.
- Start small: Pilot with one or two XLA metrics alongside existing SLAs.
- Close the loop: Collecting data is not enough – act on it, and communicate what changed.
- Build culture, not just contracts: XLAs succeed when empathy, trust, and collaboration become part of service DNA.
The future: Predictive experience
The next frontier of XLAs is predictive. With AI and analytics, organisations will anticipate user needs before dissatisfaction even arises: self-healing systems, proactive outreach, personalised experiences at scale.
This is more than service management. It’s experience management. And it’s fast becoming a strategic differentiator across industries.
The ITLawCo lens
At ITLawCo, we see XLAs as the natural evolution of service governance. They don’t just protect contracts; they elevate trust. They are the legal-tech architecture for an economy where experience is currency.
In practice, that means helping clients:
- Translate human expectations into contractual language.
- Design hybrid SLA–XLA scorecards that balance reliability with relevance.
- Anticipate legal and regulatory intersections where “experience” becomes a compliance requirement (think POPIA data access journeys, AI governance, or digital healthcare rights).
Because ultimately, legal frameworks should move with your customer. XLAs are a powerful way to ensure they do.
How we help
You don’t need another dashboard. You need legal architecture that makes experience enforceable and keeps providers honest—without losing the operational guardrails you already rely on.
| Service | What you get | The outcome |
|---|---|---|
| XLA jumpstart (4 weeks) | Experience audit; “moments-that-matter” map; dual SLA–XLA scorecard; baseline survey & telemetry plan; executive narrative | Contract-ready XLA targets aligned to your business goals—without ripping out your SLAs |
| XLA legal architecture & contract pack | XLA clauses, schedules, and remediation mechanics; incentive models; dispute-safe definitions; change-control pathways | Contracts that measure what matters and drive the right behaviour—no gaming, no ambiguity |
| XMO-in-a-Box (Experience Management Office) | Governance charter, RACI, cadence, reporting structures; “you-said, we-did” feedback loop | A living framework that turns signals into funded improvements and prevents XLAs becoming shelfware |
| Data, privacy & AI governance for XLAs | POPIA/GDPR-aligned feedback collection; lawful basis & minimality patterns; DPIAs for telemetry; AI safeguards | Experience data you can actually use—lawfully, ethically, and defensibly |
| Vendor remediation & renegotiation | Gap analysis against XLA targets; cure plans and backlogs; renegotiated incentives; structured exit plans | Faster improvement, fewer disputes, better leverage with incumbents |
| Capability uplift & training | Playbooks for IT, HR, CX, and product teams; survey & sentiment design; templates; leadership workshops | Teams that design for experience upfront—and know how to prove it |
