When thrust into the role of acting as an ambassador for your brand, it’s hard to argue with the benefit of having happy employees. For one thing, their attitudes will be immediately reflected on the customer. Beyond the first impression, unhappy and unfulfilled employees tend to seek different employment opportunities, creating high turnover rates. The constant carousel of new people makes maintaining a well trained and knowledgeable staff difficult. When the store staff isn’t experienced and well-informed, they aren’t going to be as helpful to the customer, even if they have a great attitude.

Another finding of interest was that 57 percent, “believe employers are exploiting the recession to drive longer hours and lower pay from their workforces.” If this is indeed the case, it may help maintain staff in the short term, but it creates employees who have already checked out the minute things get batter. The net result is another huge loss for maintaining a customer friendly environment.

A better medium to long term approach would be to plan for the recovery. Use the tighter job market to be highly selective when hiring and then nurture those employees so they will be more likely to stay when their options open up. Show them your commitment by enabling them through training and incentives to not just serve, but delight customers. The key thing to remember is that the employment door swings both ways. Putting customer experience as a factor in employee relations will ensure that it swings your way more times than not.