On the other hand, the better a retailer's past performance, "the less it focuses on short-term economic conditions as a business driver," Rosenblum writes. The data showed that 40 percent of retail laggards believed that the economy was one of the top three business challenges they face; just 12 percent of retail winners felt that way.

To Serve (Your Customers) and Protect (Your Margins)

Retailers are aware of the need for better customer service offerings and tools for both the customers themselves and the employees who are supposed to serve them, according to several RSR studies.

"The customer is alive and kicking, and even in tough economic times her expectations for quality customer service in retail stores remain high," Rosenblum writes. "Retailers recognize this, and customer-centricity continues to be the Holy Grail for those who seek to come through these economic times as sustainable winners." (See "Retailers' No. 1 Tech Priority Is Business Intelligence" for more on how retailers are aiming to serve customers better.)

But the top challenges for retailers, who have been hearing about their customer service failings for years, are still tall. The number-one cited business challenge in the survey was "improving customer service while holding the line on payroll costs." Number two was its corollary: the need for more consistent store execution. In other words, Rosenblum points out, "retailers, while inured to the noise, are even more acutely aware of the need to fix the problem."

According the survey results, retailers admit that they suffer from the same fundamental problems and challenges, however, "the more successful a retailer is, the more likely it is to see opportunity in the current economic haze," Rosenblum writes. For example, retail winners are "specific and emphatic on the importance of employee-customer interactions," she notes, "but they also recognize there are customers and situations where self-service technologies are as or more appropriate than finding and conversing with employees."

In the RSR survey, 90 percent of the 126 survey respondents reported that employee-facing tools and technologies had at least some priority in their strategy to drive customer satisfaction, versus only 67 percent in a similar study done in 2007. Also, 85 percent of respondents said that customer-facing tools had at least some priority in their strategy to drive customer satisfaction.

That perception and importance that winning retailers place on enabling their customers (and employees) with technology tools is evident from the survey data: 93 percent of retail winners says there's opportunity in adding customer-facing self-service technologies, versus just 33 percent of retail laggards. In addition, the laggards identified by the survey data appear to be "fighting a death spiral" against new IT-enabled technologies, Rosenblum notes.