Satisfying Customers Through Satisfied Employees: Exploring the Emotional Mechanism Linking Employee Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction

Abstract

Creating superior customer satisfaction has been the primary objective for service firms. The importance of service employee satisfaction in enhancing customer satisfaction has been emphasized in past research, yet there is limited research exploring the mechanism linking them. As service employees are mainly responsible for service delivery, the interpersonal interaction between customers and service employees has been found to substantially affect customer perceptions of services and considered as the key to customer satisfaction (Brown and Lam 2008). Past research also indicated that employee satisfaction can enhance customer–employee interactions, which, in turn, increases customer satisfaction (Homburg et al. 2009). Thus, there has been particular academic call for exploring the mechanisms linking employee and customer satisfaction. Integrating emotional labor and emotional contagion theories, this study attempts to bridge this research gap by developing and testing a framework that includes the mediating emotional mechanism through which employee satisfaction affects customer satisfaction in service context.