Service That Moves People (Literally and Figuratively)

I didn't think I was doing anything special.

At the time, I was 21 and working for a small tour operator, supporting a major group event. Around two thousand Australians were travelling to Rome, and my job was to coordinate the bookings, arrange pre- and post-travel logistics, and be on the ground during the event to make sure everything ran smoothly.

The lead-up all happened over phone and email. Complex, but in my mind, I was doing what I'd been hired to do.

Until one afternoon, standing in the streets of Rome, someone came running up to me.

"Are you Arielle?"

"Yes?"

Their face lit up. "I just wanted to thank you. I've never left Australia before. This trip was my dream, and you helped make it happen."

A few days later, someone else from the group asked for a photo with me. Then another. Many of them were in their 50s and 60s, travelling overseas for the first time, and they wanted to meet the person behind the emails.

I had never met any of these people face to face. Everything had been remote: calls, itineraries, follow-up emails. But to them, I wasn't just someone who had processed their booking. I was part of the reason they got there.

When routine looks different from the other side

Most of my work had been behind the scenes. You answer questions, solve problems, double-check documents. It's fast-paced, sometimes stressful, and often thankless. This was the first time I'd travelled with a group of clients, and the first time I got to see what my work had actually meant to them.

Whatever you're delivering, it's your everyday. You know the product, the process, the system. But on the other end is a person for whom getting there smoothly, or getting there at all, is the whole point. The product has to do its own job. But how someone feels navigating their way to it, and through any friction along the way, is shaped entirely by the people handling it. That's the part service owns.

And often, that feeling comes down to someone who simply took the time to care.

The meaning lives on the other side of it

I didn't walk into that role expecting to feel particularly connected to it. But I did have a history with Rome. I'd first been there as a teenager, on a school history tour, and I remember standing in the Sistine Chapel in the middle of a crowd, completely still, just looking up. It made me feel both small and connected in a way I hadn't expected. That feeling was part of what eventually drew me toward travel as a career.

Returning in a work capacity felt unexpectedly right. But the most moving part wasn't the city. It was seeing, first-hand, how a service interaction that had started months earlier over a phone call could ripple out into someone else's joy, gratitude, and growth.

At 21, I didn't fully register the weight of it. It's only in hindsight that the lesson became clear: what feels small to you can feel enormous to someone else.

One more thing

I can remember the times I've received genuinely good service. I can also remember the times I've been dismissed, rushed, or made to feel like a nuisance.

Your clients remember those moments too.

So if you're in a client-facing role and wondering whether it matters: it does. You may never see the photo. You may never get the thank-you. But someone out there remembers how you made them feel.

That's worth showing up well for.