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A sailing school and sailing club in Ireland - another great experience reconfirmed instead of "not much too expect"? Completely wrong! This is where one Wow after the other is created purely by putting the customer first, showing flexibility, and just saying sorry if something goes wrong. I can strongly recommend insc.ie to organizations and individuals - here you are in good hands!

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Why is this not yet the real experience in case of flight cancellations but instead the customer has no control, long waiting times and a lot of hassle - technology should enable the following ideal experience already today:

Today is Friday April 1st. Mr John Smyth is going to London for a meeting at 1500 on Tuesday Apr 5th. He books a flight from Dublin at 1000 to allow time to get to the destination and prepare for the meeting. His return flight is at 2030 from Heathrow to Dublin.

Mr Smyth books a seat in row 2 on both his outbound and return flight, and also books a bag on his Zurich-Heathrow flight as he has a number of documents he has to bring to the meeting.

On Apr 4th there is a major snowstorm forecast for later that day in the UK. John wakes up on Apr 5th to hear there is major disruption at LHR and then receives an SMS to say that his ZRH-LHR flight is cancelled.

John logs on to his airlines website and looks at the cancellations for the day. While John’s 10am flight is cancelled (along with a number of other morning arrivals in to Heathrow), his even flight is still due to operate.

John decides to phone his colleagues in London and advise them he will join the meeting via conference call instead. He logs on to the website, choses the refund option, and opts to get a full refund for his flights, seats, and bag.

The car that he had pre-booked via the airline website is also automatically cancelled and refunded. John receives a refund to his credit card 5 days later, on April 10th, from the airline and the car rental company.

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First sailing experience. Difficult to coordinate work and pleasure. But - WOW - the international sailing school in Dun Laoghaire understands this. No problem, I can adjust. I am the customer they say. And what is even better - when I arrive, this image and perception is reconfirmed.

Everybody behaves like I am the customer and I am welcome, and they do everything to ensure that I feel well. I already know after the first day of training that I will become a club member, and I will recommend them to many other future sailers!

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Another Irish WOW experience: radiocabs, Irish taxi company where you can also book online, have introduced a process where each taxi driver will call his client 5 minutes bofore arrival - just to ensure that he can relax and knows that his / her taxi will arrive on time. WOW for piece of mind!

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Premier Inn Hotels - even offering all types of phone chargers in the lobby - WOW!!!! It is a problem I have so often, phone running out of power, no juice... And in the rooms: message on the bathroom mirror advising that should you have forgotten anything just ask reception, they will help .... How do they know? It is the details that make the customer experience... Understanding your customer is what counts....

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Have a look at http://www.hipmunk.com/ - great graphical flight search and ways of ranking - this makes a difference!

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Time to think - Air France / KLM really looked at how their customers behave and added an option to save your request (for free) or to even save your request with the price offered for up to 30 days (dependent on the specifics) for a price of 15EUR. Well done, I am happy to pay 15EUR if it allows me to relax and to rethink again...

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Free Wifi instead of being ripped off for a couple of minutes - at Geneva and Nice airport, in the Heathrow Express, in the pub at the Thames in London and almost every restaurant or cafe in Kiev and in Cannes... WOW!