I think serum will definitely interfere with the liposomal transduction. GIBCO has an optimized medium for Lipofectamine. Usually you need to reduce the serum concentration for the culture medium immediately after transfection. However, Efectene (Qiagen) is specially designed to avoid serum interference, therefor they said you can use normal medium. I do not know the reagent you are using. However, I think it is better to reduce the serum concentration for a while after transfection.
Another factor is the cell type. Some cells are refractory to liposomal transduction. It is very possible that for you cells, 20% is the best you can get. If this is the case you may want to consider some other ways. Actually 20% is not that bad. If you can select them with G418, you will easily get enough cells for your experiment.