Will recession bring better customer service?

I've been trying lately to find silver linings in the clouds of recession that hover over us.

On a personal level, the economic downturn has forced my family to think more about how we spend and save our money. It hasn't been fun, but the lessons we have learned and changes we have made will serve us well when better times return.

On a more general level, I'm hoping the economic downturn will lead to an improvement in customer service.

That sounds counterintuitive, I know. With people getting laid off and companies trying to "do more with less," you would expect customer service to suffer. And I'm sure it's true that, in some cases, increasingly frazzled workers are finding it harder to stay positive and helpful.

But they also may be a bit more motivated to go the extra mile to make sure they keep their jobs, and that could lead to improvement in customer service. If it does, I hope both the workers and the companies that employ them see that good service is important, regardless of the state of the economy.

I was reminded of this recently when a reader sent me an e-mail about a column I wrote in February 2003 regarding Circuit City's plan to fire its best salespeople in order to save money.

"I read it with interest in light of their going out of business," Linda wrote. "I wonder where they would be today if they had kept their best salespeople. They might still be in business — that decision probably turned out to be very shortsighted. Anyway, it was interesting to read the column in hindsight. I just thought that I would remind you of it."

I'm glad you did, Linda. In the 2003 column, I talked to a Circuit City employee who was among the top salespeople at one of the company's Salt Lake-area stores. When the company announced that it was going to shift to an hourly pay structure for all employees, many of whom had worked on commission, he was one of thousands deemed "not eligible" for that hourly wage because of his high commissions. He was laid off.

"One of the only reasons people were still going to Circuit City … is that (sales) people knew what they were talking about," said the employee to whom I spoke. "That's how we made our living."