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The Growing Importance of XLAs in the Age of Agentic AI

Publisher IDC
Published Mar 25, 2026
Length 10 Pages
SKU # IDC21046748

Description

This IDC Market Perspective highlights the growing importance of experience-level agreements (XLAs) in the age of agentic AI. Experience-level agreements are emerging as the blueprint for human-AI collaboration — shifting performance measurement beyond static service metrics to dynamic, context-aware insights that reflect both technical success and human impact. The next generation of XLAs will go further, blending short-term efficiency with long-term resilience by embedding creativity, experience risk, and agentic intelligence directly into the fabric of work contracts."XLAs are evolving from human-first IT metrics into the strategic North Star of AI-enabled work, ensuring that as agents measure, predict, and automate, they amplify — not erode — human creativity and innovation at the heart of the future of work." — Meike Escherich, associate director, AI-Enabled Future of Work, IDC

Table of Contents

10 Pages

Executive Snapshot

Key takeaways

Recommendations actions

New Market Developments and Dynamics

When service-level agreements ruled, and artificial intelligence was a sideshow

Today AI-enabled XLAs act as human potential

With agentic AI, XLAs become context aware and instantly responsive

Human creativity becomes a measurable outcome

Governance shifts from "keeping the lights on" to "enabling human judgment"

Constructing tomorrow's experience operating system

Calibrate experience capital and experience debt

Include experience-risk and creativity indices

Move agentic experience management from insight to orchestration

Write contracts that reward innovation, not just efficiency

Advice for the Services Provider

Designing XLAs for human-AI collaboration excellence

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