February 26, 2026
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Are Current Staffing Levels Harming Customer Service and Store Standards?
A recent Gallup report around staffing levels, customer experience, and staff confidence levels in being able to deliver on customer promises has shed light on what some might call an ongoing staffing crisis in various industries, retail included.
“U.S. workers’ sense of accountability for customer experience exceeds their confidence in their organizations’ ability to deliver on customer promises as staffing levels decline,” Gallup’s Megan Mulherin wrote.
First up: The percentage of workers who strongly agreed they feel great responsibility for the quality of products/services delivered to customers hit a recent high of 43% in 2025, up from 38% in 2024. There’s just one problem, though — only 23% of all workers polled agreed with the notion that their organization always delivers on promises made to customers. Interestingly, leadership figures are 10 points more likely than managers and individual contributors to say as much.
And according to American Customer Satisfaction Index data, satisfaction across the board remains flat, despite any investments in customer experience and/or services delivery. What does that say about the current state of affairs?
Staffing Presents the Most Significant Barrier Across Industries, Including Retail
Mulherin outlined that, across industries, staffing shortages dominated the reasons given as to which barriers got in the way of ideal customer service and product delivery. More than a third (37%) named staffing as the top challenge, with training (16%), tools or equipment (9%), and unclear standards (8%) trailing far behind.
“Staffing concerns have intensified alongside continued workforce reductions. Nearly one in four U.S. employees (23%) reported their organization is reducing the size of its workforce, up 12 points since early 2023. Among those reporting layoffs, 65% said individual contributors who work directly with customers were most affected,” Mulherin stated.
While healthcare and public sector employees most commonly cited staffing challenges, 39% of retail workers said as much as well. Interestingly, while 20% of retail employees polled stated that their organization was cutting jobs, 33% said that headcount was actually increasing. The industry seems volatile, with recent Challenger, Gray & Christmas data suggesting that retailers slashed ~93,000 jobs in 2025, a 123% increase from 2024’s figures. In January of 2026, Revelio Labs recorded a net ~13,000 job loss in the retail sector, particularly due to Amazon, TJX, and Burlington’s job slashing.
It should be noted that, according to a recent RetailWire discussion, Target has publicly taken action to refocus efforts on increased staffing, with most BrainTrust members commenting on the subject saying it was wise to do so.
“Staffing sits at the center of this gap. Employees at all levels consistently identify insufficient staffing as the top barrier to delivering for customers — a challenge compounded by ongoing headcount reductions, reorganizations and expanded workloads. When employees are asked to do more with fewer people, even high levels of commitment and accountability cannot sustain consistent delivery,” Mulherin wrote, also noting that engagement was key to doing more with less (or fewer staff).
“Engagement helps explain how these internal pressures affect customer outcomes. Engaged employees worldwide are more likely to feel clear about expectations, experience less burnout and believe their organization can deliver on its promises. Successful delivery, in turn, reinforces engagement. But engagement alone cannot offset structural constraints such as persistent understaffing or misaligned capacity,” she added.
BrainTrust
Nicholas Morine
Recent Discussions
Discussion Questions
To what degree are current staffing levels harming retail store standards and customer service experiences, in your opinion? Which brands stand out as being particularly vulnerable to this concern?
Besides increasing front-line staffing levels, how can retailers best make use of existing staff? What other customer experience enhancements can be made in short order, or with little capital expense?
Poll
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The answer to this varies enormously by retailer. The problem of depleted staffing tends to show itself at struggling retailers that cut labor hours or staff numbers to defend profitability. This is usually a false economy as it creates numerous shop floor problems – poor service, mess, lack of stock, and so forth – that then drive customers away and hurt sales further. Target and Kohl’s are evidence of this. And Macy’s was evidence until Tony Spring started increasing staffing – which resulted in sales improvements.
Frontline staff have been asked to take on many more responsibilities in the post pandemic world. At the same time, retailers are struggling with profitability and therefore trying to keep their labor expenses down. One of the most effective approaches is to allocate or schedule precious frontline labor relative to store visits. Without adding more labor, this is the best way to improve the odds of conversion and delivering a good customer experience despite the labor challenges.
This is a case where quality is at least as important as quantity. Too often we see retailers settling on hires to keep bodies in the store. This compromise leads to a customer service death cycle. Not only does it lead to poor customer service for the untrained or underperforming associated it results in the quality associates often getting frustrated and leaving the retailer seeking improved job satisfaction.
The balance of the challenge is offering competitive wages against reduced staffing hours. Many retailers are trimming their operational hours to avoid cutting staffing levels so they can maintain quality. Hopefully landlords are smart enough to recognize this problem and help the retailer who as mandatory hours.
It doesn’t take much imagination to correlate low staffing levels to merchandise in locked cases.
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The answer to this varies enormously by retailer. The problem of depleted staffing tends to show itself at struggling retailers that cut labor hours or staff numbers to defend profitability. This is usually a false economy as it creates numerous shop floor problems – poor service, mess, lack of stock, and so forth – that then drive customers away and hurt sales further. Target and Kohl’s are evidence of this. And Macy’s was evidence until Tony Spring started increasing staffing – which resulted in sales improvements.
Frontline staff have been asked to take on many more responsibilities in the post pandemic world. At the same time, retailers are struggling with profitability and therefore trying to keep their labor expenses down. One of the most effective approaches is to allocate or schedule precious frontline labor relative to store visits. Without adding more labor, this is the best way to improve the odds of conversion and delivering a good customer experience despite the labor challenges.
This is a case where quality is at least as important as quantity. Too often we see retailers settling on hires to keep bodies in the store. This compromise leads to a customer service death cycle. Not only does it lead to poor customer service for the untrained or underperforming associated it results in the quality associates often getting frustrated and leaving the retailer seeking improved job satisfaction.
The balance of the challenge is offering competitive wages against reduced staffing hours. Many retailers are trimming their operational hours to avoid cutting staffing levels so they can maintain quality. Hopefully landlords are smart enough to recognize this problem and help the retailer who as mandatory hours.
It doesn’t take much imagination to correlate low staffing levels to merchandise in locked cases.