IT Support SLAs vs XLAs (Experience Level Agreements)
Moving beyond traditional SLAs
While SLAs are crucial, they often fall short in measuring overall success in today’s dynamic IT environment. The traditional SLA approach may not fully capture the complexities of modern IT support, where multiple stakeholders and diverse locations impact service delivery.
Global 4 believes in evolving beyond standard SLAs by placing a strong emphasis on the customer experience. We recognise that service success isn’t just about meeting technical targets but about how these services impact the end-user.
What is an XLA?
XLA stands for experience level agreement. It’s an agreement between an IT provider and its customer that measures the quality of the user experience, not just technical targets. Where an SLA tracks things like response times and uptime, an XLA tracks how satisfied, productive and supported your users feel. In IT service management, XLAs help providers spot problems that technical metrics miss, such as a fix that met the SLA but left the user frustrated.
What is an SLA?
An SLA (service level agreement) is a formal contract that sets the level of service a provider must deliver. A typical IT support SLA includes:
- A description of the services covered
- Metrics such as response time, resolution time and uptime
- Performance targets for each metric
- Responsibilities on both sides
- How performance is monitored and reported
- Escalation procedures when targets are missed.
SLAs are essential, and every Global 4 plan has them. But on their own, they only show part of the picture.
How Global 4 measures experience with XLAs
An Experience Level Agreement (XLA) extends beyond traditional SLAs by incorporating the end-user experience into performance measurements. Unlike SLAs, which focus on technical metrics such as response times and uptime, XLAs assess how these metrics affect user satisfaction, usability, and overall experience.
By focusing on XLAs, we build a comprehensive picture of our relationship and engagement with your organisation. This approach allows us to adapt and refine our service continuously, ensuring we meet your evolving needs. Our CXMs are integral to this process, working directly with your team to identify opportunities for improvement, manage changes, and ensure a seamless experience.
Global 4 is committed to being proactive and present, whether by working on-site to understand your challenges or through regular virtual meetings to keep our services aligned with your expectations.
Feedback on every ticket
When a ticket is closed, your user can rate their experience with a single click in the case email. It takes seconds, adds no extra work, and shows us both individual concerns and overall satisfaction with IT as a service.
A dedicated Customer Experience Manager
Every client has a named Customer Experience Manager (CXM) who gathers feedback at every level of your business, spots where the experience can improve and manages changes, before and after your service starts.
Regular service reviews and reporting
We review performance with you regularly, combining SLA data with experience feedback, and share it through service reports, service dashboards and our client portal. You see exactly how the service is performing and what we’re improving next.
Time with your team
Floor walks and introductions help our engineers and your users get to know each other, on site or through regular virtual meetings. It encourages people to raise small issues early instead of putting up with them.
Moving from SLAs to XLAs
If your current IT contract only reports on SLAs, switching to a provider that uses XLAs doesn’t mean losing those guarantees. When you move to Global 4, we keep clear SLAs in place and add experience measures on top, starting with a baseline of how your team feels about IT today. Your CXM then tracks how that changes over time.
The result is IT support you can judge on two measures: response times on paper, and how the service feels to your users. Our service desk already responds in nine minutes on average and fixes 85% of cases on first contact. With XLAs, we keep improving the parts of the experience your users care about most.
Whether you’re unhappy with your current provider or simply want more than a monthly SLA report, we’ll show you how it would work for your business.
Find out how XLAs could improve your IT support
Talk to our team about how we measure IT support by your people’s experience, not just the clock.