Have you noticed a decline in customer service in the UK?

I am a retail manager and I can try explain things from the perspective of someone on the front line so to speak. I don't think there's an excuse to ignore customers and not be polite initially. That's your job and it's just common courtesy to be polite to people. However, if the customer is rude then it's fair game to me. We don't deserve to be spoken down to, threatened or abused. More often than not, a nice customer gets their problem solved much more than a rude customer. Customers also have unrealistic expectations at times, especially when it comes to technical knowledge of products. But taking customer behaviour aside because it has been discussed to death, there's a huge blame to be put on companies themselves. My store has lost 200 hours worth of staff over the past few years without being able to replace them. Yet we still have a similar footfall and the same tasks to complete as before. It would be great to have everyone being available to take their time serving customers,but the stock needs putting out, the prices need changing and I don't have the amount of staff I used to in order to complete these essential tasks. Companies are stripping places bare because they want to run with the least amount of cost possible. This trickles down to under paid staff being over worked whilst they are still expected to deliver great personable service whilst being efficient. Any negative feedback, no matter for what reason, is met with an email or phone call from my boss wanting to know why. If a delivery is late, it's somehow the stores fault the customer is unhappy because we didn't do enough to make up for it There is also NO INCENTIVE to give good service, because the staff get paid the same rate regardless. If companies gave commission on sales or bonuses for reaching targets then you would see better service because the staff would get rewarded for it. Instead customers are relying on good will from staff to get great service, otherwise you get the minimum required. It's a vicious cycle because the companies only care about the money, and they don't believe in speculate to accumulate. You would think that losing customers would make them change, but it just results in more cuts.