Several years ago when studying Italian to prepare for a year abroad in college, we got to the national pastime of the country I’d be visiting–Italy.

The word that corresponds to “fans” is tifosi. I remember being a little surprised that the word had a connotation of being frenzied, die-hard fans passionately attending to their teams. (I didn’t realize at the time that “fans” in English is short for “fanatics”). Our casual use of the word is fairly benign and used for all kinds of uses off the ball field.

As the Italian version has stuck in my head all these years, I was a little surprised to read Robert Middleton’s ezine over the past year talking about “raving fans” as a good thing. His Sept. 19 ezine article, for example, was entitled, “How being outnumbered will gain you raving fans.”

I mean, if “fans” is short for “fanatics” then “raving fans” sound like they should be foaming at the mouth or something. However, I don’t think that’s what he means :-)

The other day, walking home from a writing session at my preferred cafe of the month (name withheld for small town reasons), I ran into writing coach and friend, Nancy Shanteau. I complained (yes, complained) that even though I brought my own 10 oz mug to the cafe (a typical small would be 12 oz) the barista still managed to make it super milky.

My words were something like, “Where is the consistency! The ambiance of the place is great, the baristas are attentive and nice, now if they only would get consistent in making their espresso drinks, I’d be a raving fan!”

Hmm, so maybe the raving fan does mean a foaming fanatic in this case (Yes, I take my latte’s seriously and since I’m off the double shot kick, I’m super sensitive to too much milk!).

Nancy, being a very good coach, turned my potentially destructive passion about the subject into a positive, creative force by saying, “sounds like a blog post!” Smart woman, she.

Which brings us to the moral of the story. Us service providers want positive, raving fans for our services and business. One of the ways this will occur is by consistently giving top quality service and results to clients! :-)