For three straight months, the number of vacancies at businesses nationwide has topped the number of unemployed people. This trend has wrought more than pay bumps and bonuses, The Washington Post reports.
Shifts go unfilled, analysts say, and managers are lowering hiring standards to keep the doors open. As the competition for labor intensifies, the quality of service at businesses tends to deteriorate, says Forrest Morgeson, director of research for the American Customer Satisfaction Index, which crunches more than 200,000 consumer survey responses each year.
The ACSI’s national measure of consumer happiness, which ranks moods on a scale of 1 to 100, has slid from 77 in the first quarter of 2017 to 76.7, where it has sat all year—the longest period of stagnation since 1993.
This halt in improvement follows a steady rise in satisfaction since 2016, a result, analysts say, of the proliferating technology designed to ease commercial friction: smart order pads and improved data collection to hone employee training.
Medallia, a customer experience software firm, said customers are increasingly prone to avoiding stores, restaurants and service providers because of negative interactions.
This discontent coincides with growing expectations, says Emma Sopadjieva, Medallia’s head of research: an important share of U.S. consumers said they have “higher customer experience expectations” than two years ago, largely thanks to online options.
“It’s make-or-break time now,” Sopadjieva said. “One bad experience can really hurt your brand.”
Even though employment is up, wage growth has remained sluggish since the Great Recession, which economists say could be dragging down employee loyalty.
Workers who realize they can ditch long hours and rude customers for better prospects may be quicker to let the cheerful facade crack, says Martha Gimbel, the research director for the Hiring Lab at Indeed, an employment website. “Workers are going to be less willing to put up with situations that aren’t ideal,” she says.
As service workers find more options, employers are casting a wider net for talent, and possibly lowering their standards.
