Original meta research covering 336 businesses that sell to American consumers and proves that there is no relationship between employee and customer happiness. This is of course opposite to popular belief. The author retired as VP of Customer Experience for HP Software in 2016. Maurice has led customer experience teams on and off for 40 years. He also manages the Net Promoter System (NPS) Forum on LinkedIn. A link to the original data is included.

1. Do Happy Employees = Happy Customers?
NO!

2. In short:
The relationship between employee and consumer satisfaction
for large American companies is essentially zero, contrary to
what most people believe
30 March 2017 http://customerstrategy.net/
Note: This presentation is designed to accompany the blog post about the research at http://customerstrategy.net/customer-employee-satisfaction/

3. Conventional wisdom
30 March 2017 http://customerstrategy.net/

4. Existing research
• Most articles only cover single companies
• The message tends to be something like “Google employees and customers are
both highly satisfied, therefore one drives the other for all companies”
• James A Harrington showed employee satisfaction was not a major
factor in customer satisfaction in an article in the American Quality
Digest covering 100 companies in the media industry
• A Northwestern University study found a weak relationship between
the two for 100 companies in the media industry
Article references are in our blog post30 March 2017 http://customerstrategy.net/

5. WYSIATI
• Nobel-winner Daniel Kahneman talks about ‘What You See Is All
There Is’. He says our brains are lazy and want to jump to any
available immediate conclusion without much thought
Intuition
Limited data
(for example, only employee
and customer satisfaction)
Conclusion based on
the assumption that
the limited data is all
that matters
• If we had to brainstorm a list of things that drive customer satisfaction,
employee satisfaction would be on the list, but nowhere near the top
for most companies
30 March 2017 http://customerstrategy.net/

6. Challenges
• There is no obvious source of public data on employee satisfaction
• Companies run their own surveys and the results are confidential
30 March 2017 http://customerstrategy.net/

7. Solution: match these two
30 March 2017 http://customerstrategy.net/

8. Glassdoor overall ratings by employees
explain 0.9% of customer satisfaction
30 March 2017 http://customerstrategy.net/

9. Employee satisfaction explains 3.3% of
customer satisfaction in high-touch
30 March 2017 http://customerstrategy.net/

10. Employee satisfaction explains 1.1% of
customer satisfaction in low-touch
30 March 2017 http://customerstrategy.net/

11. 30 March 2017 http://customerstrategy.net/

12. Not surprising
• This is a study of large companies. In many cases, no employees of a
company have any interaction whatsoever with customers. Products or
services are provided by resellers or franchisees. Support may be
outsourced
• There are companies such as Amazon (High ACSI, average Glassdoor)
where it is rare to interact with a human
30 March 2017 http://customerstrategy.net/

13. Top 10% for both employees and
customers
Used Ford Glassdoor number for Lincoln and Toyota number for Lexus30 March 2017 http://customerstrategy.net/
Company Category ACSI Glassdoor Touch
Chick-fil-A Limited-Service Restaurants 87 3.9 H
Lincoln (Ford) Automobiles and Light Vehicles 87 3.9 L
Trader Joe's Supermarkets 86 3.9 H
Toyota Automobiles and Light Vehicles 85 3.9 L
Google Internet Search Engines and Information 84 4.4 L
Clorox Personal Care and Cleaning Products 84 4.1 L
Apple Personal Computers 84 4 L
Lexus (Toyota) Automobiles and Light Vehicles 84 3.9 L
Mars Food Manufacturing 84 3.9 L
Subaru Automobiles and Light Vehicles 84 3.9 L
H-E-B Supermarkets 83 4.1 H
Procter & Gamble Personal Care and Cleaning Products 83 4 L
Wegmans Supermarkets 83 4 H
Costco Specialty Retail Stores 83 3.9 H

14. Bottom 10% for both employees and
customers
Only one Glassdoor number available for the two Mediacom
and Windstream businesses30 March 2017 http://customerstrategy.net/
Company Category ACSI Glassdoor Touch
Mediacom Subscription Television Service 54 2.7 L
Mediacom Internet Service Providers 57 2.7 L
Windstream Internet Service Providers 59 2.8 L
Windstream Fixed-Line Telephone Service 65 2.8 L
G6 Hospitality (Motel 6) Hotels 65 2.5 H
Frontier Airlines 66 2.5 H
DISH Network Subscription Television Service 67 2.6 L

15. Counter-intuitive: top 10% for
customers, bottom 10% for employees
Only one Glassdoor number available for both Samsung businesses30 March 2017 http://customerstrategy.net/
Company Category ACSI Glassdoor Touch
Samsung Household Appliances 84 2.9 L
Kmart (Sears) Health and Personal Care Stores 84 2.6 H
Safeway (Albertsons) Health and Personal Care Stores 83 2.9 H
Samsung Personal Computers 83 2.9 L
Dillard's Department and Discount Stores 83 2.6 H
Kraft Heinz Food Manufacturing 83 2.5 L
Newegg Internet Retail 83 2.5 L

16. Counter-intuitive: bottom 10% for
customers, top 10% for employees
Only one Glassdoor number available for both Samsung businesses30 March 2017 http://customerstrategy.net/
Company Category ACSI Glassdoor Touch
LinkedIn Internet Social Media 65 4.4 L
Twitter Internet Social Media 65 4 L
Tumblr (Yahoo!) Internet Social Media 67 3.9 L

17. Notes
• Download the Excel file from the customerstrategy.net resources page
to examine detail and do your own analysis
• All ACSI data is for 2016. Most Glassdoor ratings are from mid-2016,
with a small number from January 2017
• Disagreement and debate welcome. Add comments to blog post at
http://customerstrategy.net/customer-employee-satisfaction
• Contact: Maurice FitzGerald mfg@customerstrategy.net
30 March 2017 http://customerstrategy.net/

18. 30 March 2017 http://customerstrategy.net/

19. Thank you
30 March 2017 http://customerstrategy.net/
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