Consider the time, money, and effort spent on all of your marketing efforts. Wouldn’t it be great if you could boost those results with great word-of-mouth referrals too?

It’s been said that happy, engaged employees are the best weapon you have to build high levels of client satisfaction. And with that, a high chance of having customers refer your services. We set out to prove this very point.

We compiled all clients that use both the TINYpulse employee engagement survey tool and the CLIENTpulse client satisfaction tool, then looked at the relationship between employee happiness scores and their clients’ likelihood to refer their product.

An amazing (though not that unexpected) thing happened! We found that, sure enough, when companies have happier employees, they are significantly more likely to have clients that would refer their product or service (r = .32, n = 45, p = .040).

But the story actually gets even better. We found that companies with high employee happiness scores have a 30% higher chance of clients willing to refer their services than those with low employee happiness scores.

So if you’re thinking that investing in your employees and their satisfaction is a waste of money, think again. Companies that foster employee satisfaction can enjoy stronger topline and bottom-line growth thanks a stronger client commitment to spreading their good name.