It has long been recognized that an organization will find it difficult to build customer satisfaction and loyalty unless that organization is successful in engaging its employees in the effort. In other words, customer satisfaction, value, and loyalty are inextricably linked to employee satisfaction and engagement.

Burke’s tools and techniques for linking employee and customer data fall into two categories:

• Tools for linking comparable data and measures
• Tools for linking relevant data and measures

When employees are asked to rate service attribute importance and/or performance as they perceive customers will rate them, and subsequently, such employee data are contrasted with actual customer importance/performance ratings regarding the same attributes, the analysis focuses on comparable (i.e., “apples-to-apples”) measures. Burke calls this reflection mapping, since the focus is placed on the degree to which employee perceptions reflect or "mirror" customer perceptions of service attribute importance/performance.

Findings from reflection mapping typically are used to "educate" employees about the priorities and perceptions of customers, so that internal perceptions and priorities can be refocused (as needed) and aligned with customer expectations and requirements.

In contrast to comparable measures, consider the following two survey items, one gathered from employees, the other from customers:

“How much would you agree that employees at Company ABC are empowered to use their judgment when quick action is needed to handle a customer problem or request?” (Employee Survey Item)

“How much would you agree that employees at Company ABC respond promptly to your problems or requests?” (Customer Survey Item)

These two items are not identical, and therefore, not directly comparable. However, the extent to which an organization effectively manages the issue of employee empowerment to handle problems or requests clearly will have a cascading effect on customer satisfaction with how promptly such problems or requests are handled. In other words, the employee issue and the customer issue are relevant to each other.

Understanding the linkage among relevant pairs of items enables an organization to identify action opportunities that will benefit both employees and customers. Specifically, it enables an organization to:

• Pinpoint the employee issues which, if addressed successfully, will enable employees to address the relevant customer issue more effectively
• Gain employee buy-in for efforts to improve customer satisfaction: As the customer issues targeted for action will be linked to items that are important to employees, there should be little (or less) employee resistance to organizational changes directed toward improving customer satisfaction in relation to such issues

The diagram below illustrates how, by modeling the relationship between a pair of relevant customer-employee items, across a banking client’s multiple branches, Burke was able to align the targets for these two measures. By achieving the targets for employee empowerment, the company would be able to achieve desired end financial results.