Too Much Information: Customer service at tourist offices

My original business mentor was my first boss, as in the owner of the first company I worked for after university. He was a hard task master, but he was one of a handful of exceptional people who I worked for or with. He wrote the definitive, early tome on the application of work study to office tasks.

One of the problems of applying an essentially scientific approach to office work (in its widest sense, to mean customer encounters as well) is how you factor in that service element. I'm not sure that anyone has ever really come up with a good solution.

Why do I mention this? Yesterday I was at the tourist information office in Alcúdia. I have long been impressed with the time, attention and care that are given by staff at information offices, but it is the first of these - time - that I wonder about. I was in the queue, sort of. Was I in a hurry? I was asked. No, no. I had only come to ask whether they wanted a further delivery of HOT! I could wait. And so I did.

The couple in front of me - Catalan speakers - asked for a guide to Alcúdia. This they were given. They didn't ask for anything else. But what they got was a lengthy explanation as to all manner of aspects of Alcúdia. You could see that they were wanting to edge away, but the information kept on coming. The queue was getting longer.

When they finally left, I was left wearing a perplexed expression. Why had this encounter taken so long? I'm sure they were grateful, or were they? Those behind in the queue might not have been so grateful.

This is far from a criticism. On the contrary, the attention was exemplary. When one hears criticisms of attitudes to tourists in Mallorca, you couldn't fault it, as rarely can you fault the attention of the tourist offices. But I couldn't help thinking of days going through the work study textbooks.

An answer, you might think, would be to automate some of the information giving. Or to simply have sheets of information, in different languages, that can be picked up. But both have drawbacks. Not everyone wants to use a terminal. Not everyone realises that there are sheets to pick up. Not everyone doesn't want direct personal service. Which is, I guess, the crux of the issue. Then there is also the tourist offices' own "scientific" need - that of registering the number of enquirers and from which country they come. What they ever do with this statistics gathering, I don't know. If not very much, then you wonder why. That old boss of mine once told me, in no uncertain terms, to stop wasting time on gathering information that was of no practical use. But maybe it is put to practical use.

There was, I felt, a sense of being too helpful. Again not a bad thing. Of course not. But being too helpful, in spending a significant amount of time in one encounter does, and you could see it, place the officer under certain stress. From being very or too helpful, it is not such a big step to becoming less helpful because you are under too much strain, caused by the degree of attention given.

The other factor though is the level of resourcing. Alcúdia is under-staffed. And they know it. There just isn't the budget. It's a similar story elsewhere. Playa de Muro for example. One officer, super helpful and super giving of information. Lots of it. But she needs the occasional day off. Result? Office closed. Only Pollensa seems to have sufficient numbers of staff, though you wonder for how much longer given the need to cut costs*.

Service is vital, and the tourist offices are in the front line. What they do is generally excellent, but maybe a rather more pragmatic approach is needed. The staff are placed under a good deal of pressure, and sometimes perhaps heap it upon themselves. Time and motion have long been dirty words in a service environment, but some sensitive application might not go amiss - for everyone's benefit.

* And talking of cutting costs in Pollensa, this year's admittedly always minor Sant Pere fiesta in Puerto Pollensa has been combined with the Fira de la Mar that had previously occurred in September and which was, in terms of timing, a pretty daft event as one could, with some degree of certainty, predict that there would be the mid-September deluge to rain on its parade - which is exactly what happened last year. Information on the WHAT'S ON BLOG - http://www.wotzupnorth.blogspot.com - but it's not in anything like the same league as the Puerto Alcúdia Sant Pere.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.