Delivering Delight through Experience-Led Service ModelsBy Kranthi Kumar, Experience Transformation Leader, AscentHR Technologies
- October 30, 2025
- Posted by: AscentHR
- Categories: Authored Article, In the Press
Published in
For decades, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) have been the backbone of IT and service delivery contracts. They brought predictability and accountability, defining uptime, restoration timelines, and incident handling. SLAs enabled scale and operational discipline.
But today, SLAs alone no longer suffice. Users expect more than speed and availability; they expect experiences that are seamless, empathetic, and friction-free. This shift has revealed a gap—services may meet contractual targets but still leave users dissatisfied.
As Everest Group noted, “while most enterprises consistently meet SLA performance objectives, their employees still report frustration with IT services, highlighting a clear disconnect between SLA compliance and user experience.” This is the “watermelon effect” – dashboards look green, but user sentiment is red.
Why SLAs Fall Short
SLAs measure activities, not impact. A 99.9% uptime SLA may look impressive, but downtime during a critical meeting can cause disproportionate damage. More importantly, SLAs rarely capture the human side: Was the process simple? Did the employee feel supported? Did the outcome inspire trust?
As John DuBois of NTT Data remarked, “SLAs may appear green—but user frustration often lurks underneath.”
The Rise of XLAs
To bridge this gap, organizations are adopting Experience Level Agreements (XLAs). Unlike SLAs, which track operational outputs, XLAs measure perceptions and outcomes—whether services delivered real value to users.
Forrester Research defines XLAs as agreements that “quantify employee technology experience, monitor it, and link it to business outcomes.” This ties service delivery directly to productivity, engagement, and satisfaction—the outcomes business leaders value most.
Key aspects include:
• User-centric metrics like NPS, CES, and ESAT.
• Real-time feedback loops capturing sentiment.
• Integration with SLAs, ensuring balance between reliability and experience.
Why XLAs Matter Now
Adopting XLAs isn’t about “soft” measures – it’s about business impact. Bain & Company research shows that even a 5% improvement in retention can raise profits by 25–100%. Internally, better employee experiences drive engagement, productivity, and loyalty.
In service delivery, XLAs create three advantages:
1. Closer alignment with business goals – tying service quality to outcomes like productivity and retention.
2. Cultural shift in service delivery – moving from ticket resolution to empathy-driven support.
3. Innovation and shared accountability – encouraging providers to take responsibility for outcomes, not just processes.
Making XLAs Work in Practice
Transitioning from SLAs to XLAs requires more than new metrics—it demands a redesign of service delivery. A hybrid model is emerging as the practical way forward.
Hybrid SLA–XLA Model: 5 Key Steps
1. Adopt a Hybrid Model – Use SLAs for reliability and XLAs for relevance, supported by dashboards that display both operational and experiential metrics.
2. Invest in Feedback Mechanisms – Deploy real-time sentiment tools and encourage feedback beyond closure surveys.
3. Train Teams for Empathy – Shift from ticket-based thinking to user-centric problem solving; reward behaviours that build trust and satisfaction.
4. Align XLAs with Business KPIs – Connect experience metrics to outcomes such as productivity, digital adoption, and retention.
5. Pilot and Iterate – Start small in one service area, refine based on insights, and scale gradually across functions.
From Efficiency to Delight
SLAs will always matter for operational consistency. But in a digital-first world, consistency without empathy falls short. XLAs extend the service model by ensuring interactions are judged not just by speed of resolution but by how they make users feel.
This evolution – from SLA to XLA – is more than a shift in measurement. It signals a transition to people-centric services where success is measured in trust built and value delivered. Organizations that master this hybrid approach – balancing SLAs for reliability with XLAs for relevance – will move beyond efficiency to deliver true customer delight.
That is the future of business services.
About the Author
Kranthi Kumar is a delivery leader at AscentHR Technologies with over 25 years of experience in IT, service delivery, and project management. He has led large-scale transformation programs and brings a practitioner’s perspective on building service models that balance operational efficiency with user experience.