LAS VEGAS-Starbucks Coffee Co. Chairman, President and CEO Howard Schultz told a crowd of a few thousand retail executives here Tuesday that when the time came for his firm to shut down hundreds of stores and revamp the business in 2008, he did so because he realized the chain had lost sight of its customer service ideals.

Schultz, speaking at the Tuesday’s ICSC RECon luncheon at the Las Vegas Convention Center, said he authorized a $32.5 million mandatory store manager meeting to convey that managers of the top coffee chain should “take personally the expectations of every customer. “We had managers that were seeing 1,000 customers a day, but somehow we had grown so much that we had convinced ourselves that any bad experience by one customer didn’t matter. But in reality, this matters more than anything else,” he said.

His comments on customer care come at the beginning of expected new growth in the industry, where many retailers plan to start opening new stores again in 2012, after about three years of holding off and finding efficiencies. Starbucks is one of these stores, jumping up again with an annual plan to open 500 new locations by October 2011.

Schultz said that there are three changes to consumer behavior that are about to surface, that every retailer should know before finalizing growth plans. He said customers need ways to find deals because of the troubled economy. Also, social media and other technological changes such as mobile shopping should not be ignored. “The traditional methods of marketing, advertising and public relations have changed forever,” he said. “These social tools, which include more than just Facebook and Twitter, should be used to build relationships, not to try to just sell more product.”

He also extolled the virtue of being a strong community partner – because the community is sure going to need it. Many states are near bankruptcy, and public services and jobs are on the chopping block. Companies that do the right thing for their local communities and provide assistance during troubled economic times will be rewarded with loyal customers, Schultz said.

The coffee chain leader spoke as this year’s RECon event started to wind down, with most sessions over for the more than 30,000 attendees. The expo halls will still be open, but wrapping up, on Wednesday.

Many attendees tell GlobeSt.com that they are pumped up from the positivity from this year’s ICSC show. Walter Wahlfeldt, managing director for corporate retail solutions for Chicago-based Jones Lang LaSalle, says struggling markets are starting to stabilize, and new concepts are popping up. “We’ve seen companies looking to outsource their growth requirements, as efficiencies were completed throughout the retail industry,” he says.

Guy Ponticiello, also a managing director with JLL, tells GlobeSt.com that capital markets have returned, as investors are now looking to enter what they consider a bottomed-out market. These investors include San Francisco-based Mesirow Financial, which is investing $300 million in net lease concepts, he says.

Howard Paster, president of St. Paul, MN-based Paster Enterprises, tells GlobeSt.com that he’s starting to see national retailers looking for spaces. “Rents are still compressed, and it’s still tough for some centers to find tenants, but there’s a feeling that things are getting better,” Paster says. 

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