An investment bank has outsourced its customer care helpline. It is keen to introduce experience metrics into its Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with the service provider for the helpline. It has asked for a re-negotiation of the existing SLA. Which is BEST example of an experience metric that can be included in the SLA?Which approach is being demonstrated by these examples?

An experience metric is designed to measure a user's subjective perception and feelings about a service interaction, rather than purely objective operational outputs. Customer satisfaction is a direct measure of the customer's experience and sentiment regarding the helpline service. This aligns with the ITIL DSV focus on understanding and improving the service journey from the stakeholder's perspective. The shift from traditional Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to Experience Level Agreements (XLAs) emphasizes capturing such sentiment-based metrics to ensure value is co-created and perceived by the customer.

A. Availability of the helpline during agreed hours: This is a classic operational metric measuring service uptime, not the quality or feeling of the customer's interaction.
B. Number of customer queries processed correctly: This is a quality or output metric that measures the provider's accuracy, not the customer's subjective experience.
C. Number of calls processed concurrently: This is a capacity or performance metric measuring the system's load-handling capability, not the individual customer's experience.

1. AXELOS. (2020). ITIL® 4: Drive Stakeholder Value. TSO (The Stationery Office).

Section 4.3.3.3

"From service level agreements (SLAs) to experience level agreements (XLAs)": This section explicitly states

"XLAs are focused on the user experience of a service... They capture the user’s true experience and their level of satisfaction with the entire service." This directly supports that customer satisfaction (D) is an experience metric. The text contrasts this with traditional SLAs that focus on operational metrics like availability (A).

2. AXELOS. (2020). ITIL® 4: Drive Stakeholder Value. TSO (The Stationery Office).

Section 5.2.6

"Measuring and assessing value realization": This section discusses the importance of measuring stakeholder satisfaction and experience. It notes

"It is important to measure stakeholder satisfaction throughout the user journey... Common metrics include customer/user satisfaction (CSAT/USAT)..." This confirms that customer satisfaction is a key metric for assessing value from the user's perspective.