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From Italy With Love: Lessons Learned in Customer Delight

Recently we went to Italy on a trip of a lifetime. Italy remains beautiful, rich in history, delicious from the gelato to the pasta, and a shopping mecca. This was an organized trip for three couples where all we had to do was show up at the airport. Our little group met with the travel agent and we all received an itinerary in advance. We didn't necessarily read it, but we did receive it!

We all have many opportunities to be a star to our clients. Come with me to Italy and see opportunities, mostly missed, to create customer delight.

We were met at the Rome airport with a small van provided for the tour. Picture six adults, four having traveled first class with the maximum of three pieces of luggage per person. Each with the additional optional two pieces of carry-on. Now we stand in the hot noon sun and try to sandwich seven people and 19 pieces of luggage into a mini van.

Before you chuckle over the image of the luggage laden Americans, keep in mind one thing. The only guidance, limit, or suggestion we had for luggage was the mandate from the airlines. We all had fulfilled the amount of luggage per person and the weight allowance.

We had been traveling for 24 hours. Some of us had eaten some had not. We faced a four-hour ride in the now overstuffed van. Guisseppe, our tour guide, was challenged to see out his right side, and we were uncomfortable with 4 people stuffed in the second seat. How delightful if the van would have met us with cold drinks and fruit.

We got to Sorrento on the Amalfi coast. The hotel was a huge disappointment. It was like an Italian Howard Johnson's. The only way you could only get into shower was to ease into it sideways. The plastic white chairs on the balconies were a dead give-away that this was not a trip of a lifetime. Comparisons to our stay at the Ritz and the Crillon in Paris did not bode well.

We called the travel agent back home. Unhappy, but eager to be thrilled with our next stop. Now he had our cell phone. Surely he would check in with us.

Positano and Ravello were as picturesque as promised. An hour in each town?

For our trip to Florence we were met by a super sized van. Enough room for our luggage and all of us. Yeah! In Radda, the return of the mini van. We were forced to wave good-bye to our luggage and hope we would see it again in Rome. Surely, the travel agent would check in with us.

Siena, Radda, Orvieto, the Chianti region, one medieval town after another, one

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