Looks like Staples understands that customers are turning sour on mega-stores:

Staples, crediting its focus on profitable small business customers and smaller stores that sell fewer items, reported fourth-quarter net income of $165 million, or 35 cents per share, beating expectations of analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call by 2 cents per share...

In an interview Wednesday afternoon, Staples Chief Executive Officer Ron Sargent said the company's focus on smaller stores and customer service was paying dividends. He said the company had determined customers were more interested in good service than endless selection.

On Sunday, Staples launched a new advertising campaign with the tag line ''That was easy,'' replacing ''Yeah, we've got that,'' which the company had used for years.

''This is hitting singles, this is not fancy,'' he said. ''This is about day-to-day execution, 58,000 people just churning it out, and I think we're churning it out a lot better than the other guy.''

After a couple of bad experiences at Office Max, I'm now a regular at Staples. The true test of customer service is when you ask an employee for help with an unusual problem that is not in their procedure book. Most of the time, if it's not in the handbook, the employee has no clue how to help you. The good news for small retailers is that it's a lot easier to get 5-8 people to "keep hitting singles" than it is to get 58,000 to keep it up.