By Sarah Nicastro, Founder and Editor in Chief, Future of Field Service

Experience Management (XM) has become a core strategic imperative for Unisys, as Patrycja Sobera, SVP and GM of Digital Workplace Solutions, shared in a recent episode of the UNSCRIPTED podcast. There was plenty of food for thought within the discussion for leaders who understand that it’s impossible to differentiate service today based on stellar execution alone. Customers want more – and Unisys has achieved success delivering just that by embracing XM, in theory and in practice.

Patrycja, at the forefront of this transformation at Unisys, is passionate about how XM brings service to life, shifting the focus from transactional outputs to holistic human outcomes. “Experience management is really no longer a nice to have, it is a strategic imperative,” she says. “It puts the focus on, have we made someone’s day easier, more productive, more meaningful? For me, that’s the kind of real measure of success.”

Broadening Your View from SLAs to XLAs

For years, businesses have measured performance with traditional SLAs—uptime, ticket resolution, and response times. However, Patrycja explains that the incorporation of XLAs (Experience Level Agreements) isn’t about eliminating SLAs, but about taking a leap forward in how you view, and deliver, value to your customers. “XLAs really are focusing on experience… did the service actually help the user? Did it enable their productive time? Did it make their day better?” Patrycja explains, urging leaders to rethink their metrics: “Are you a valuable part of those objectives? Or are you just checking a box?”

Unisys began focusing on XM around five years ago, and a key aspect of the success it has achieved since was founding its Experience Management Office (XMO). The XMO acted as a testbed for moving from reactive, to proactive, and even predictive, interventions. The results Unisys has achieved are compelling:

• “Over the last twelve months alone, we have registered something like 150 use cases for experience management office where we’re able to deliver proactive automations.”
• “7,000,000 proactive automations in the last twelve months are removing IT frustration… so that it doesn’t become an incident or a call to the service desk.”
• “We’ve given back 100,000 hours in productive time to end users in the last twelve months alone. That’s not theoretical—that’s real impact.”
• “For one client, we saved 30,000 pounds of carbon impact by refreshing devices based on performance instead of warranty cycles.”

These proof points that Patrycja offers show how service delivered well, when paired with a focus on the human outcome that service impacts, can create experiences that customers deeply value. Removing frustration, having more time, making a positive carbon impact – these outcomes look beyond something like first-time fix to contextualize what service means in the lives of those you serve.

Expert Advice for XM Success

For companies seeking to innovate within service, Unisys’s success story provides a stellar example of how to apply the XM framework to reimagine your customer value proposition. For those not yet entrenched in the XM world, Patrycja offers some advice on how to implement XLA’s well:

• Start simple: “You can actually start from a relatively simple starting point around just looking at device performance and overlaying this with sentiment data.”
• Be agile: “XLAs are finite. They need to achieve something—improved happiness, efficiency, cost savings, whatever it might be. My preference is they should be around six to twelve months if you’re doing a large transformation.”
• Get stakeholder buy-in: “One of the most important things is to really get that commitment from stakeholders. This is C-level execs meeting with us monthly on the experience governance board to really see which XLAs are still right and bring meaning to what’s important to them at that time.”
• Don’t overcomplicate: “I’ve seen some really complex XLA frameworks… If I’d seen this for the first time, I’d be equally scared. Simplify, explain, and show the value in a very tangible way.”
• XLAs thrive in complex environments: “Complexity is perfect for XLAs because they can help uncover gaps in collaboration between teams and bottlenecks that traditional SLAs wouldn’t catch.”
• Measure what matters: “Focus on total experience vision, integrating the entire digital workplace, including field services, asset management, and the service desk.”
• Don’t overlook the human factor: “You have to have employees that are positive, engaged, empowered, and onboard to be able to have the impact that you’re trying to have with the customers.”

Experience Management and XLAs have redefined how Unisys creates value, engages employees, and delights customers. Could the same work for your business? Patrycja shares a reminder for business leaders that the premise is simple, but impactful: “Are you actually making someone’s day better? If so, you’re on the right track.”