Looks like Home Depot is finally catching on to its customer satisfaction problems:

Home Depot Inc. co-founder Arthur Blank on Wednesday said the home improvement retailer could boost sales and earnings by balancing an efficiency drive with a commitment to great customer service.

"The success we had at Home Depot in its first 23 years was really based on focusing not on the bottom line but by focusing on customers, hearing what our associates were telling us about our business," Blank said after speaking at a leadership forum in Atlanta.

How did Home Depot lose its customer-focus? There was a changing of the guard (Arthur Blank retired) and gettting the next generation of leaders to understand and follow the original vision is one of the biggest challenges there is in business. And it looks like Home Depot screwed it up, hiring a CEO who did not understand what any small retailer knows: your stores live or die based on your customer's happiness:

Nardelli, who arrived from General Electric Co. in 2000 with no retailing experience, spent his first year cutting costs. Now, he is boosting worker training to improve customer service and spending millions to remodel aging stores which face more competition from newer Lowe's warehouses.