The Relationship between Employee Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction: A Meta-analysis

The present paper contains a meta-analysis of 42 empirical studies that correlate employee job satisfaction and customer satisfaction for a total of 52,966 corporate sector employees. Overall, the sample size-weighted and measurement error corrected mean correlation between employee satisfaction (ES) and customer satisfaction (CS) amounted to 0.32. Meta-analytic statistics suggest that ES-CS is generally positive but varies strongly between studies. Business type, level of analysis, satisfaction measurement approach and data collection methods were identified as significant moderators of the focal association. Results remind management practitioners that decisions on measures with effects on ES should always be preceded by an analysis which incorporates an assessment of ES-mediated change impacts on CS. For personnel and management scholars the analysis implies that future research should strive for direct tests of theoretical explanations for the ES-CS link and the explicit identification of moderators of this link.