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Despite the world’s economy starting to pick up, companies still need to understand that customer service is the number one priority. As one recent report shows, now is definitely not the time to ease up on customer service. The Marketing Science report says the customer experience actually matters more to customers than it ever has before. Marketing Science, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, found that the fact of the matter is that customer service is more important to people when the economy is healthy than when it is struggling.

Before this report was released, the prevailing wisdom was that companies needed to focus on their customer service when the economy was struggling. But the authors of the report claim said they found that customer service matters quite a bit more when the economy has actually recovered from a downturn and is chugging right along.

In order to carry out the study, researchers say the combined date they were able to retrieve on a state level gathering of customers of a Fortune 1000 international airline carrier. The study looked at the purchasing behavior of these customers as well as their perceptions of the firm. The final data showed that a 10 percent gained in customer experience also resulted in a 10 percent gain company revenues when the economy is not doing so well. However, a 10 percent gain in customer service when the economy is better will yield a 20 percent increase in revenue.

The researchers behind the report have stated they believe the reasons for these changes are rather simple. When the economy is poor, shoppers are looking more at the price of things, than they are the customer service they experience. When people have more money to spend and the economy is good, they care more about how a business treats them, than what the prices may be at these stores.