Interview with Adina Brunetti: It’s All About Your Customers

We asked Adina Brunetti, hospitality expert, founder of Adina Creative Food and AB 27 Group, a few questions on how to treat your customers.

Adina, please tell us, is it really important to have customers as your business focus?

When your business has been built around customers, there are two benefits that can be experienced. It helps you understand their needs better, it can enable you make more money. That is why customer oriented culture wins. The first part of introducing customer oriented culture is supposed to define the mission of your business. In other words, it can enable you to identify the weak points of your clients. In fact, building a business based on the needs of your target audience is much easier. This is because you have succeeded in getting their attention. It is similar to thinking how they can benefit from whatever you are offering. 

During the second part of of introducing customer oriented culture, an entrepreneur can show more concern about her customer’s experience. She can choose between two options: 

• Ensuring that customers are satisfied
• Getting rich sooner than later

Between these two options, which one do you think is more important? 

Satisfying your customers?

Whichever option you decide to explore, always remember one thing: this is the fact that an entrepreneur who considers his clients/customers first will always be greatly rewarded in the long run.

Customer orientation entails how a business or its employees have strategized to ensure the needs of customers are met without compromise. It has to do with ensuring customers have the ultimate shopping experience while doing business with your company. Without customers, a business can’t generate sales or profits. They are the primary reason for your existence. This is why your mission and vision have to be built around their needs. 

Customer orientation has one major goal. Improving services rendered to customers to maximize profits. It is usually based on one idea or concept – customer is always right. This means customers will experience the best of comfort while being served. They are usually treated as VIPs to ensure repeated orders. 

Always Think of Delivering Beyond Expectations! Is that the strategy you use?

It is always great to meet the needs of customers. However, you will perform much better by overdelivering and performing beyond their expectations.  

There is a very important market law you must know. This has to do with the fact that when something can’t be measured, influencing its performances will be difficult and complicated. But how can we know whether customer service orientation culture is effective or not. There is no formular for this to be done. However, every company is expected to come up with a strategy or method on how such can be done. Some of the methods recommended will be explained below:

We at Adina Creative Food, are having the performances of employees reviewed regularly. There are many ways this can be done. You can decide to adopt methods like making personal observations, mastery shopping options, personal observations, guest surveys and checklists.

The world of business is becoming more competitive. This is why you shouldn’t ignore customer or guest loyalty. Anything short of this means your customers will start patronizing competitors. If you want to keep attracting new customers regularly and also retain existing ones, the importance of rendering quality services can hardly be overemphasized. At the ending part of this book, you will discover how to create a powerful service that is centered on customers’ needs.

Companies that are customer or guest-centered are positioned for long term success. Staff need to understand what customers need without guessing and provide such immediately. One sign that guest orientation is being achieved is when employees begin to communicate effectively with customers. In such case, the employees know that attending to customers is their top priority.  There are instances when employees are expected to use their emotional intelligence. 

In conclusion of the above, the watchword in today’s business world is employee hospitality. It enables employees to assist customers in the best way possible. You need to understand that guest orientation is an acquired skill.