Help!

A recent survey report from PricewaterhouseCoopers said that only 41 percent of customers are satisfied with their shopping experiences. Once again, retail gets no respect.

Throughout the booming 90s, consumers filled the malls, shopping and spending, all the while denouncing the shopping experience. In survey after survey, they rated the activity somewhere between studying algebra and visiting Buffalo. It was cookie-cutter, boring, unrewarding.

So FAO Schwarz fabricated a giant, smoke-snorting Trojan horse. Disney created retail theater out of all the memories in its vault, from Pinocchio to Pocahontas. Barnes & Noble provided comfortable furniture for resting, reading and sipping a mocha grande. Urban Outfitters created stores out of distressed metal and chain link. Old Navy added funky jukeboxes, woody station wagons and T-shirts packed like veal scallopini.

REI gave shoppers a mountain to climb. Levi's gave shoppers a pool for custom-fitting their own jeans. The Gap provided stations for shoppers to log onto Gap's own web site. Fresh Fields made art out of produce presentation. Crate & Barrel made art out of household presentation. ABC Carpets simply made art.

Did any of this make shoppers happy? Hah! The first chance they got, they threw themselves on the altar of the Internet. It was so much more satisfying – you didn't have to leave your living room.

One e-tailer after another has since swallowed the pellet with the poison. Bricks-and-mortar has prevailed. The consumer has spoken. So why isn't she happy? Well, she told Pricewaterhouse, customer service is abysmal. There aren't any salespeople. And the ones there are aren't very helpful.

But this might be retail's time. The jittery economy is tightening the job market. For the first time in a long time, enthusiastic, trainable, glad-to-have-the-job workers may really be out there looking for work.

In his new book, Retail Success (Willoughby, $25), consultant George Whalin says that great stores don't happen by accident. “In order to sell a lot of merchandise,” he writes, “stores must be visually interesting, well-conceived and easy to shop.” Part of that, he says, is understanding what shoppers want and need, and meeting those needs. And yet, “every day, customers get ignored” or, worse, “are treated as an intrusion.” Whalin says, “An overheated business climate allowed sales and profits to grow in spite of worsening service.”

Well, the economy isn't sizzling anymore. Retailers will again have to become aggressive and innovative to capture their share of the disposable dollar. Maybe open-sell, interactive kiosks, self-checkout technology and the other substitutes for personal interaction aren't going to do it anymore. Maybe – once she's drawn in by the exciting storefront, gets guidance from the great high-tech graphics, sees the four corners of the store via uninterrupted sightlines and wanders up the wide, limestone-marble cruciform aisle toward the brilliant, seductive merchandise presentations – a shopper wants someone to say, “Can I help you?” And know how to help.