We present findings on practical experiences with national and cross-border external quality assurance procedures made by six universities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland working with the same Swiss quality assurance agency from 2012-2015. This paper is based on joint analyses undertaken by the quality managers responsible for internally coordinating the external quality assurance procedure in each involved institution. The aim of the contribution is to discuss the impact of external quality assurance on internal quality assurance and to make recommendations from which both, higher education institutions and agencies may benefit. For the analysis we used the purposes and principles of the revised version of the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG).