Talking about your feelings is not something you’d normally associate with IT, but it is integral to delivering exceptional digital services and experiences for your employees.
This month, Services Director Stuart Salt joined the CEO of Bright Horse, Neil Keating for a webinar on Managed Services, Digital Experience, and XLAs, sharing insights on this evolving IT trend as well as practical tools and tips on measuring digital experience.
What are Digital Services and Digital Experience?
Like most industries, IT has shifted from a traditional command and control model to be more people centric in its approach. All employees constantly interact with IT as part of their job. Whether it’s sending a WhatsApp, googling a website, meeting via collaboration software, or using app suites – our experience of digital enablers stacks up and whether good or bad, needs to be measured in a more nuanced way.
A recent Gartner statistic stated that by 2025, 50% of organisations will be measuring some form of digital services and experience and the increasing number of roles like Chief Experience Officer advertised, supports this growing trend. It’s a given that organisations want their employees to remain engaged and productive so measuring Digital Employee Experience (DEX) is key to progress and company growth. So how can we do ensure this happens?
Traditional Mechanisms vs Digital Experience
Measuring employee digital services and digital experience requires a layered approach and should augment measurement methods that are already in place such as SLAs, KPIS, Net Promoter Scores etc.
Experience Level Agreements (XLAs) are one way of doing this, primarily, they are an evolution of SLAs and importantly, focus on what’s important to end users and not the IT team. Traditional measurement methods tend to be end point focussed, in silos and drive outputs, however XLAs analyse end users’ collective experiences and for drive outcomes. Deciding what these outcomes are should be is the first step in measuring digital services and experience.
5 Steps to Get Started
It’s important to note that there is no one size fits all and there are different types of XLAs for different companies, depending on where they are in their customer experience maturity. Below is the process we work through with our clients to get started.
- Review digital experience, digital services and operational data to date to discover common themes.
- Filter and prioritise themes i.e., what can you control, improve, deliver?
- Create an ambition statement.
- Assess what tools are needed to measure digital services and digital experience – both technical and survey questions – weight emotional measures against technical ones.
- Agree XLA measures between client and MSP. Agree on rewards and incentivisation. XLAs are not like SLAs with penalties for not hitting targets.
What Tools Are Required for Exceptional Digital Services?
- ITSM tool – most organisation have this already to do surveys.
- DEX tool – your MSP may have this already.
- Dashboard – you can run this is Excel!
5 Tips
- Don’t fear doing this! The key is to start small and expand as your organisation evolves. By keeping it simple and constantly evaluating employees experience, you can ensure you’re you’re getting the outcomes you have identified.
- Listen. Be open to all feedback good and bad, show your employees that you’ve listened, you understand the issues and will respond with an action to resolve. Perception is reality – believe the feedback!
- Start small. A large team is not required. Start with one person (owner) and keep team small and expand as you get more feedback or go virtual – some companies we work with have virtual teams in place to manage this. Ideally, get a blended team to get a well-rounded respond.
- Educate. Ensure all company stakeholders are invested in this succeeding, if necessary, take time to educate stakeholders about the benefits and be aware a cultural change may be needed as people are familiar with logical measurement rather than emotional responses.
- Take the first step. XLAs are not just for large organisations they are for any organisation that wants to evolve and grow and measure digital experience effectively. The trend towards customer experience and quantifying end user experience will continue to grow so it’s crucial to start planning now.
Free XLA Consultation
If you want to learn more, please get in contact to arrange a free XLA consultation with myself. I’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have, and we can explore how XLAs could take your digital experience to the next level.
Contact Stuart at [email protected]
You can also find our free whitepaper here.
Stuart Salt, Services Director
