National foreword

This Published Document is the UK implementation of ISO/IEC TS 20000‑18:2026.

The UK participation in its preparation was entrusted to Technical Committee IST/60/2, IT Service Management.

A list of organizations represented on this committee can be obtained on request to its committee manager.

Contractual and legal considerations

This publication has been prepared in good faith, however no representation, warranty, assurance or undertaking (express or implied) is or will be made, and no responsibility or liability is or will be accepted by BSI in relation to the adequacy, accuracy, completeness or reasonableness of this publication. All and any such responsibility and liability is expressly disclaimed to the full extent permitted by the law.

This publication is provided as is, and is to be used at the recipient’s own risk.

The recipient is advised to consider seeking professional guidance with respect to its use of this publication.

This publication is not intended to constitute a contract. Users are responsible for its correct application.

This publication is not to be regarded as a British Standard.

Compliance with a Published Document cannot confer immunity from legal obligations.

This Published Document was published under the authority of the Standards Policy and Strategy Committee on 31 October 2026.

Foreword

ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (the International Electrotechnical Commission) form the specialized system for worldwide standardization. National bodies that are members of ISO or IEC participate in the development of International Standards through technical committees established by the respective organization to deal with particular fields of technical activity. ISO and IEC technical committees collaborate in fields of mutual interest. Other international organizations, governmental and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO and IEC, also take part in the work.

The procedures used to develop this document and those intended for its further maintenance are described in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1. In particular, the different approval criteria needed for the different types of document should be noted. This document was drafted in accordance with the editorial rules of the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2 (see www.iso.org/directives or www.iec.ch/members_experts/refdocs).

ISO and IEC draw attention to the possibility that the implementation of this document may involve the use of (a) patent(s). ISO and IEC take no position concerning the evidence, validity or applicability of any claimed patent rights in respect thereof. As of the date of publication of this document, ISO and IEC had not received notice of (a) patent(s) which may be required to implement this document. However, implementers are cautioned that this may not represent the latest information, which may be obtained from the patent database available at www.iso.org/patents and https://patents.iec.ch. ISO and IEC shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.

Any trade name used in this document is information given for the convenience of users and does not constitute an endorsement.

For an explanation of the voluntary nature of standards, the meaning of ISO specific terms and expressions related to conformity assessment, as well as information about ISO’s adherence to the World Trade Organization (WTO) principles in the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) see www.iso.org/iso/foreword.html. In the IEC, see www.iec.ch/understanding-standards.

This document was prepared by Joint Technical ISO/IEC/JTC 1, Information technology, Subcommittee SC 40, Governance of IT and IT service management.

A list of all parts in the ISO/IEC 20000 series can be found on the ISO and IEC websites.

Any feedback or questions on this document should be directed to the user’s national standards body. A complete listing of these bodies can be found at www.iso.org/members.html and www.iec.ch/national-committees.

Introduction

The relationship between service providers and customers has changed over time. In the past, service providers delivered services to customers who played a mostly passive role. This relationship has become much more collaborative. Value is now co-created, meaning both the provider and the customer collaborate to achieve the desired experience.

Figure 1 illustrates the development of this relationship, called the evolution of economic value. As offerings become more differentiated, customized, and personalized, their value increases, and so does the price customers are willing to pay. There are four main stages in this evolution:

Commodities — These are raw materials extracted from nature, such as agricultural or mining products. They are standardized and low-priced. Examples are coffee beans and iron ore.
Products — These are items made from commodities based on design specifications. They are manufactured to meet consumer needs. At this stage, manufacturers focus on return on investment (ROI) and key performance indicators (KPIs). Examples are packaged ground coffee and tools.
Services — These are usually intangible and focus on performing business processes. Delivering throughput and performance becomes important. A service supply chain can be used, and the overall focus is on meeting service level targets and achieving ROI and KPIs. Examples are IT services and service desk support.
Experiences — At this stage, businesses are staging memorable, personalized experiences rather than just making products or providing services. The focus is on delivering value through the customer’s overall experience. Tools such as customer journey mapping and design thinking are used to understand and improve that experience. The main method to measure success from an experience perspective is the experience level agreement (XLA1). Examples are customized services with a personalized customer approach.

In many service relationships, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) define performance targets. While some SLAs include customer satisfaction measures, many focus mainly on operational and technical targets, such as storage capacity, network errors, or processor performance. However, meeting operational and technical targets alone does not guarantee that a customer’s business goals are achieved. Customer success depends not only on operational and technical performance of the service provider but also on the customer’s business outcomes and their experience with the services.

An XLA addresses this gap. It focuses on how customers experience the services. By measuring experience, XLAs provide additional insight into whether services truly support and improve business outcomes. Achieving XLA targets emphasizes collaboration, experience, and business impact, reflecting what customers and service users genuinely need and expect.

1 Scope

This document provides guidance on the use of experience management (XM) in a service management system (SMS) based on ISO/IEC 20000‑1. The target group for this document includes professionals and organizations interested in using XM.

XM can focus on various aspects of experience with the services by customers, users, personnel, suppliers and other interested parties.

XM practices are intended to optimize the value to interested parties and to improve the quality of the services provided. XM is not a stand-alone methodology but should be integrated into the existing or new SMS which is used to operate the services.

NOTE This document does not distinguish between organizations providing services to internal or external customers (known as internal or external service providers). XM applies to internal and external service providers and their respective suppliers.

2 Normative references

3 Terms and definitions

4 Overview of ISO/IEC 20000‑1 and ISO/IEC 20000‑10

5 Introduction to experience management (XM)

5.1 General

XM aims to add value to the customer and the service provider by focusing efforts on collaboration, experience and impact on business operations. XM can be applied to all organizations, including organizations that provide services themselves and organizations that provide services together with suppliers. XM can be used for services provided to internal or external customers of the organization.

For XM to be successful, there should be support and commitment among interested parties (e.g. customers, personnel, suppliers). XM is a way to connect interested parties and increase their impact on the values they aim to realize. Consensus among the involved interested parties is important to ensure that XM is uniformly used across the organization.

Assurance is a crucial aspect of XM. Assurance is achieved by applying the XM framework, with continual improvement as an important part of the implementation of XM. Improvements should incorporate feedback from customers and other interested parties. This should be based on the following five activities:

collecting the drivers of experience from the interested parties;
interpreting the drivers of experience to align them with expected experience;
developing the measurements, measuring the performance and reporting the results of the measurements to relevant interested parties;
involving the interested parties in discussing experience measurement results and identifying issues and improvement opportunities;
initiating improvement actions based on both positive and negative feedback.

Open feedback from the interested parties is an important source of information. Improvement actions should be documented, prioritized and implemented. The effect of the improvement actions should also be measured. This is a continuous cycle, similar to the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) Deming cycle: experience measurements are performed continually, capturing satisfaction with the implemented improvements.

Focusing control efforts on the above points creates a feedback loop in which openness, transparency and collaboration are the key elements, while promoting continual improvement.

5.2 Experience level agreements

5.3 XM measurement types

XM uses three types of data, X-data, O-data and T-data:

X-data are the experience data gathered from interested parties that interact with the services;
O-data are operational data, usually reflecting service performance targets such as mean time to repair an incident, service availability or service capacity;
T-data are technical data that shows the availability and performance of individual configuration items (CIs), such as available storage capacity, network interface errors and processor capacity.

The correlation of these three types of data leads to a result that should provide input to improve the services. Examples of XI questions include:

To what extent do service issues disrupt your working day?
How happy are you with the time it takes to resolve your issues?
How confident are you that your service issue will be fixed completely when you call the service desk?

An experience reference matrix (XRM) can be used to report on this, showing the results of X-data, O-data and T-data measurements, their correlation and an interpretation of the results. The XRM is used to verify if the agreed XI targets have been met. Figure 3 shows an example of an XRM.

5.4 XM framework

The XM framework is the foundation of XM. The XM framework is made up of three stages, which should be followed to fully implement XM (see Figure 4): values, elements and success factors.

These three stages implicitly form a hierarchical process within or between organizations, with each stage in descending order adding depth to the process. Values are the top stage. This stage is the “why” of XM: what is valued most in an organization. Elements focus on the strategy needed and what it takes to implement and achieve the goals of the strategy. They give substance to the values by assuring them by means of agreements at a tactical level. Success factors are operationally necessary to follow up on the agreements made based on the elements.

An organization can only effectively use XM if it has incorporated all three stages of the XM framework (values, elements and success factors) in its SMS. It is important to define XIs which are subjective indicators of the stages that contribute to the desired experience. Measuring these XIs provides information about the extent to which the experience has reached the desired level.

5.5 Values

5.6 Elements

5.7 Success factors

The three success factors are:

mindset — empathizing with customer experience, understanding the customer perspective, considering the customer’s point of view;
toolset — tools to monitor and measure experience with the services and to interpret the results;
skill set — the practical competence needed to support the services to achieve the desired experience.

The success factors indicate what resources are most important and what should be adapted or supported in another way. Behaviour is the main focus here. This not only concerns an individual’s behaviour, but also the type of leadership style, whether XM is supported by management, how it is supported, and how the different interested parties work together.

These success factors are very similar to existing requirements in ISO/IEC 20000‑1:2018, Clause 7. This will be discussed in more detail in 6.7.

5.8 Managing XM during delivery and operation

Once all three stages of XM have been implemented, the XM practices should be maintained during service delivery and operation. The activities that are needed to be performed during these stages are described in 6.8.2.1 of this document.

6 Experience management in an SMS based on ISO/IEC 20000‑1

6.1 General

6.2 Challenges

6.3 Overcoming challenges

6.4 Context of the organization

6.5 Leadership

6.6 Planning

6.7 Support of the SMS

6.8 Operation of the SMS

6.9 Performance evaluation

6.10 Improvement

Bibliography