Happy employees = happy customers?
Apr 12, 2017
Happy employees = happy customers?
http://customerstrategy.net/
In short:
The relationship between employee and consumer satisfaction for large companies is weak, much weaker than believed up to now
24 January 2017
Note: This presentation is designed to accompany the blog post about the research at http://customerstrategy.net/employee-customer-satisfaction/
http://customerstrategy.net/
Conventional wisdom
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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 a small number of companies
• A Northwestern University study found a weak relationship between the two for 100 companies in the media industry
Article references are in our blog post24 January 2017
http://customerstrategy.net/
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
IntuitionLimited 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
24 January 2017
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Challenges
• There is no obvious source of public data on employee satisfaction• Companies run their own surveys and the results are confidential
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Solution: match these two
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Glassdoor overall ratings by employees explain 2.0% of customer satisfaction
50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 902
2.5
3
3.5
4
4.5
5
R² = 0.0199868706671222
ACSI vs. Glassdoor for 340 companies
ACSI score
Glas
sdoo
r rati
ng
24 January 2017
http://customerstrategy.net/
Employee satisfaction explains 16% of customer satisfaction in high-touch
60 65 70 75 80 85 902
2.5
3
3.5
4
4.5
R² = 0.159051788738126
ACSI vs. Glassdoor for 120 higher-touch companies
ACSI score
Glas
sdoo
r rati
ng
24 January 2017
http://customerstrategy.net/
No relationship at all across 220 lower-touch companies
50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 902
2.5
3
3.5
4
4.5
5
R² = 0.00271438001185531
ACSI vs. Glassdoor for 220 lower-touch companies
ACSI score
Glas
sdoo
r rati
ng
24 January 2017
http://customerstrategy.net/24 January 2017
http://customerstrategy.net/
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
24 January 2017
http://customerstrategy.net/
Notes
• Results are highly statistically significant for overall 340 companies and for the 120 high-touch companies
• Download the Excel file from the customerstrategy.net resources page to examine detail and do your own analysis
• 71 of the 340 companies did not yet have 2016 ACSI scores as of Jan 23rd 2017, so 2015 scores were used. Will update ASAP
• Disagreement and debate welcome. Add comments to blog post at http://customerstrategy.net/do-employees-drive-customer-experience
• Contact: Maurice FitzGerald [email protected]
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Thank you
24 January 2017
Please read our blog at http://customerstrategy.net/blog/ and sign up for our newsletter at http://customerstrategy.net/newsletter/