Customer operations and XLA glossary
Plain definitions of the terms behind experience-led customer operations, from XLA and SLA to the metrics that make up an experience score.
Experience Level Agreement (XLA)
A measurable commitment to the quality of a customer's experience, not just the speed or availability of service. An XLA is scored as a weighted composite across satisfaction, resolution, sentiment, and effort, calculated on every interaction rather than a sample.
Service Level Agreement (SLA)
A commitment to operational performance such as response time, handle time, and uptime. An SLA measures whether the operation moved, not whether the customer was actually helped.
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
A survey measure of how satisfied a customer was with an interaction, usually a single rating collected afterward from a self-selected sample. Useful, but it sees only the customers who choose to respond.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
A survey measure of how likely a customer is to recommend a company. A lagging indicator of loyalty collected periodically rather than on the interaction itself.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
A measure of how much effort a customer had to expend to get an issue resolved. Lower effort correlates strongly with retention, because customers leave after hard or repeated interactions.
First Contact Resolution (FCR)
The share of issues resolved on the first interaction with no callback or follow-up. A core driver of both cost and satisfaction, and a key component of an experience score.
Sentiment Analysis
The automated reading of tone and emotion in an interaction, used to detect frustration, satisfaction, and risk on the contact itself rather than from a survey sent afterward.
Resolution Quality
Whether the issue was actually and correctly resolved, judged on the substance of the interaction rather than simply whether a ticket was closed.
Average Handle Time (AHT)
The average duration of a customer interaction. An efficiency metric that says nothing on its own about whether the customer was helped.
QA Sampling
The traditional practice of manually reviewing a small share of interactions, typically 3 to 5%, to assess quality. By design, most interactions are never seen.
100% Interaction Analysis
Analyzing every customer interaction rather than a sample, removing the blind spot in sampled QA and making experience scores trustworthy because they reflect every customer.
Experience Assurance
The practice of measuring and committing to the quality of customer experience across all interactions, the way operations teams have traditionally assured service levels.
Customer Operations
The function that runs customer support, technical support, retention, and back-office work as a managed operation, increasingly measured on experience rather than only on volume and speed.
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)
The practice of contracting customer operations and back-office processes to an external partner that runs them as a managed service.
Workforce Management (WFM)
The forecasting, scheduling, and real-time management of support staff so that capacity matches demand across channels and time zones.
Real-Time Agent Coaching
Guiding agents during a live interaction based on what is happening on the contact, rather than reviewing the interaction after it is over.
Want this measured on your own operation?
We will analyze a sample of your real interactions and score them against these metrics, so you can see where service levels look fine while the experience is not.
Book a CX Operations ReviewTell us about your industry.
30 minutes with our operations team. Industry-specific scoping, written gap summary in 48 hours, honest next-step recommendation. No call data required to start. We respond within one business day with a written gap summary and honest next-step recommendation.