Next Home Depot improvement project: Fix customer service.

Back in June, Business Week reported that Home Depot’s share price had dropped some 24 percent during the biggest home improvement boom in history.  One big reason for the company’s deteriorating foundation: unhappy customers, and lots of them.  In fact, Americans ranked Home Depot’s customer service as dead last against the nation’s other major retailers.

And it is, of course.  For millions of consumers, Home Depot has come to mean a ubiquitous suburban box with lackadaisical employees – if you can find one to help you – and little grocery-style self-checkout counters that clog up with shoppers struggling to ring up curtain rods and bags of cement.

Why are people driving further to Lowes and paying more at Ace?  Because you can walk through a Home Depot and spend hundreds or thousands of dollars without an employee looking at you, much less talking to you.  Or you can walk through a Home Depot and leave without spending a dime, frustrated and ticked off for wasting your time.  Whether they meant to or not, this is a company that has let consumers think they don’t care either way.

But maybe the company is ready for a renaissance – a return to its glory days when displays sparkled, cashiers smiled, the service desk returned your call and retired contractors stalked the aisles demanding to know if you needed help with that doohickey.

In the June story, BusinessWeek reported that Home Depot was planning a “major customer service incentive program” that would dole out millions to employees for outstanding customer service.  Now Reuters reports that the company is trimming its headquarters staff by 300 people as it shifts resources to the shopping experience, with plans to “refresh merchandise, hire more staff and start a customer service hotline at its retail stores.”

This is good news for investors, consumers, employees.  Everyone.  Home Depot is too prominent an American brand, too important to the communities it serves to risk losing any more of the public goodwill it has taken so long to earn.

Go to it, Home Depot.  You can do it.  We can help.
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Update: Home Depot looking to put more pros in stores.
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