“Sorry, my computer is slow today.”
Whether you’re waiting in line at the grocery store or trying to check in for a flight, it’s beyond annoying when you’re delayed due to technology failures. Point-of-sale devices, self-serve kiosks, gate computers. Whatever the tech, poor-performing tech makes for a bad experience.
A poor digital experience is often even worse, however, for anyone who has to deal with it over and over again. In fact, one survey found that nearly half of employees would leave their jobs because of technology issues.
The digital employee experience (DEX) matters today more than ever. So, how do you improve it and keep your employees productive, engaged, and satisfied at work – all of which could have a direct or trickle-down impact on the customer experience?
XLAs focus on outcomes
Do your employees feel like they have all of the applications they need? Are they stressed about deadlines because they’re constantly rebooting their laptops and tablets? Do their client relationships suffer because of unreliable video conferencing?
Your employees expect their technology to function and blend seamlessly into their workflow. They want to do a good job. But when they don’t have the right tools, their productivity and morale suffer.
An experience-level agreement (XLA) helps you address these issues by measuring employee sentiment, including the quality of their experience based on performance, usability, satisfaction, and other factors. For forward-thinking IT teams, an XLA has replaced the traditional service level agreement (SLA), which typically doesn’t take into consideration invaluable qualitative data.
An XLA score can give you a comprehensive assessment of your employees’ experiences within your digital workplace, so you can proactively track, measure, and ultimately improve the user’s digital experience. A high XLA score typically indicates that end users are satisfied with their technology and efficient in their jobs. A low XLA score is cause for concern, as it may reflect slow networks, complex user interfaces, and other technology-related pain points that make it harder for employees to do their jobs – productively or otherwise. Low XLA scores also can help you identify and understand “silent sufferers,” who often don’t report tech-related issues.
Predict the employee experience with an XLA
Ultimately, your XLA becomes predictive of the employee experience, including employees’ satisfaction and intent to stay. As a leading experience management company noted, “It’s essential to enable your employees, especially high-performing talent, to be as productive and autonomous as possible; otherwise, they’ll simply leave.”
XLA scores give your IT teams actionable data insights that they can use to prioritize improvements, address specific IT systems, drive their persona planning, and ensure that their efforts have the greatest ROI for employee well-being and productivity. These efforts are crucial, especially at a time when employees may face added stress from managing AI and other challenges.
Standardizing your XLA scores
Unlike other areas in which there may be clear, quantifiable metrics (e.g., device uptime), a good XLA measures not only these quantifiable points, but also measures user experiences, which are inherently subjective. That said, it’s still possible—and advisable—to develop standards for your XLA scores.
As with any metrics and scoring system, consistency is key when it comes to standards and baselines. Start by choosing half a dozen key topics, such as the speed of devices and reliability of networks. (Look at common service desk tickets to see issues that are likely frustrating your employees). If key groups of employees rely on specific technologies and portfolios, consider adding those as well. I typically recommend tracking scores for no more than 10-15 items, at least until you’ve started to get some initial “wins” by addressing your core issues.
The enterprise shift from SLA to XLA
Traditional service level agreements (SLAs) still have value, largely because they can help organizations improve technical metrics such as uptime and response times. You should still keep finding ways to optimize your SLAs. But more enterprises are supplementing technology-centric SLAs with user-centric XLAs, given that they can capture the employee’s perspective, show the impact of IT on your overall business, and help you align your IT initiatives with your business objectives.
In many cases, an XLA score can even serve as a proxy for the technical metrics in an SLA. Think of it this way: if your employees’ devices are unreliable, you’ll probably see that reflected in low XLA scores. But while an SLA score focuses only on tangible outputs, an XLA score gives you a big-picture view, and lets you see the experience from the employee’s perspective.
Combining quantitative and qualitative data to improve outcomes
There is still tremendous value in having trustworthy, reliable, timely data about your devices and other technology. However, no amount of quantitative data will give you a full view of the employee experience. One new solution is to combine quantitative and qualitative data analysis in a unified dashboard that brings together telemetry and sentiment data. This type of platform lets you track what your devices are doing—and how your employees feel about it—in one integrated view.
The digital employee experience matters more than ever. An XLA won’t magically solve your technology and HR challenges—but it will give you new insights and data as you keep working on improving retention, productivity, and employee satisfaction.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Matthew McGuire
Senior director of product management at Lakeside Software
Matthew is the senior director of product management at Lakeside Software. His career has included work in marketing and product management for EdTech, HRTech, and startups. At Lakeside, Matthew leads the product operations and product management functions.
