Customers are essentially the most valuable asset of any business or country.

Businesses would not exist without customers. In the past 30 years, we have faster and more innovative ways of communicating with our customers — e-mail, texting, the world wide web and networking sites that have made the old forms of communicating virtually redundant. In using these modern means of communication, we should not lose the human touch that is so essential in attracting customers.

This means warmly welcoming our customers and treating them fairly with good service and competitive pricing.

To paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi who, put it so simply but meaningfully, “Customer is the most important visitor to our premises. They are dependent on us. We are dependent on them. They are not an interruption on our work. They are the purpose of it. They are not an outsider on our business. They are a part of our business. We are not doing them a favour by serving them. They are doing us a favour by giving us an opportunity to do so.”

In my view, this is a profound statement which gives the essence of our economy that is made up primarily of service business, tourism and international business, which is essential to our very survival.

In our contemporary society, we must use every means of communicating to get our welcoming message to our customers and always remember that a “satisfied customer” is potentially our best ambassador who will send us other customers.

• Sir John Swan served as the Premier of Bermuda from 1982 to 1995