As I looked at Comparably’s recent ranking of the 100 companies with the happiest employees in 2021, something struck me: In one way or another, many of top-scoring companies have a strong focus on customer experience.

Top ten winners in the large company category include:

• Peloton and Zoom, two companies known for their customer obsession (which, as a customer, I can personally attest to myself);
• Marketing software companies Adobe and Hubspot (which have both positioned themselves at providing customer experience solutions); and
• Medallia, a customer experience and employee experience feedback company.

In the small and midsize company category, customer experience feedback company Alida ranked third.

The notion that happy employees lead to happy customers is accepted as gospel in the customer experience world. And yet, hard data points to back up this assertion are difficult to come by. Correlational studies are few and far between — and studies that show actual causation are non-existent.

In the past, one of my favorite studies to cite showed a correlation between employee engagement at big box retailers like Kohl’s, Costco, and Best Buy and customer satisfaction with those same firms. It’s a beautiful graph (if you’re into that sort of thing). But with a publication date of 2015, it’s a stretch — to say the least — to call it an accurate representation of the current market.

Comparably’s ranking is a good starting point to draw tighter connections between happy employees and happy customers. But much more data is needed in this area. I’ll be on the hunt.

In the meantime, congratulations to all the leaders making their organizations happy places to work. The world needs more of you.