Employees are the front line of any retailer's brand.

With the tough conditions in UK retail continuing, everything that can be done to create a point of difference and a reason to shop in a particular store is an enormous help in driving sales.

To tie in with the week, run by the Institute of Customer Service, research and evaluation company Retail Eye has published its 2007 Customer Satisfaction Survey, based on almost 84,000 mystery shopping visits. The research is a quest to find out where in the UK has the best level of customer service (with the honours going to Twickenham, since you ask).

Retail employees and their skills are topics which I have covered previously in this column, with good reason. Let's face it; employees really are the front line of any retailer's brand.

No amount of fantastic stock, top locations or creative marketing can make up for staff who are reluctant to provide a pleasant shopping experience or are simply unhelpful.

Of course, retailers are well aware of this and make a significant amount of effort to deliver consistent levels of good customer service. And we are now starting to see signs of retailers being prepared to go one step further still and change their staff culture into one which encourages good customer service even ahead of sales.

As profits and margins are squeezed more than ever, balancing the commercial proposition (sell as much as possible) with the customer proposition (provide great service) becomes more difficult. Similarly though, as it becomes ever harder to differentiate on the basis of price, then there are indications that retailers may start to favour the customer proposition ahead of the commercial proposition.

The way they can do this is simple - by considering how they reward their employees and paying even more attention to the demographic make-up of their workforce.

On the reward front, we may start to see more retailers moving away from a sales or commission-based reward structure, which can be counter-productive in achieving excellent customer service. In its place, we might see teams of employees being rewarded for attracting and retaining customers and delivering high levels of customer service.

At the same time, the concept of 'retail theatre' has become increasingly important, so it must not be forgotten that the staff play an important part in this. I'm not suggesting that retailers should go out and employ a bunch of performing seals to entertain their customers while hoping that they may buy a pair of shoes as a result, but attention needs to be paid to how the employees fit into - and enhance - the retailing environment around them. And demographics play a part in this too - what sense is there in recruiting a workforce of teenagers and people in their early twenties if your target market is fifty-somethings?

I've written quite extensively about how the internet is changing the face of retail and people are now so comfortable to use it that when they do visit a store, they quite rightly expect a level of service which exceeds that of their online experience.

It's human nature that, while we will pay attention to every aspect of the shops we find ourselves in, it will be the human interactions which we remember the longest. Retailers will be doing themselves a great disservice if they choose to ignore this fact.

Helen Dickinson is Head of Retail at KPMG