One of the strongest relationships among the elements of Heskett, Sasser and Schlesinger's service profit chain is verified between employee satisfaction and client's satisfaction. This paper reports the results of an exploratory study on the Brazilian operation of a world-wide leader of elevator technical assistance, in which the relationship between these two elements and their influence on the client retention rate was evaluated. The research data were treated with statistical discriminant and cluster analysis. The findings identified the relationship between employee and client satisfaction in 25 of the 27 business units studied. On the other hand, the factor that largely influences the client retention rate in this business environment is client satisfaction, while employee satisfaction is almost null. The results have important academic and managerial implications, given the limited amount of studies in this area and drive actions for the business success.