Feels Like Team Spirit

Easter is here and tourists are flocking in. They come expecting sun and what do they find? Oh well, never mind. What they also find is an abasement of language. While some words – gay, pants, sad – acquire additional meanings, some do not move on, but become un-words. There is no word that is as un-wordly as “team”. Yet, the poor tourist will find him and herself surrounded by, confronted by, greeted by, wished by, served by teams. Tour operators have teams, hotels have teams, even some bars have teams.

“Your so-and-so team.” We will be here to attend to your every need, we will be as one. One for all and all for one. We will all adhere to principles of the highest standards of customer service and will work to the greater good of the company we represent with shoulders-back, chest-out pride.

That’s what you are meant to believe. That’s what “team” is meant to mythically convey. It is of course managerialist doublespeak. The word means nothing of the sort, because it hardly ever means any of the above. It is an un-word.

Put two people together and you have a team. Put more than two people together and you also have a team. Actually, you don’t. What you have are more than one person as part of a pair or a group. You do not have a team. But by saying that you do, you seek to convince customers – tourists – and probably also yourself, that you are somehow guided by some light of righteousness that will indeed attend to the every need. Team is an un-word and it is usually complete drivel.

There didn’t used to be teams, except on a sports field. When management consultants realised that there were some new wads to be made, they delved into the world of sport and found that there were teams. They then highlighted examples of great teams. Liverpool FC of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the New Zealand rugby team under David Kirk in 1987, and others. They divined the factors that made for teams.

Shared objectives and goals, clearly defined responsibilities but also flexibility, clear lines of communication, total support from a leadership figure, the right systems, the right training, the right mix of abilities and skills. These were some of the factors, and some organisations set about putting them in place. They were not wrong to do so, and nor had the consultants been wrong to invent these factors. Away from the sports fields, some teams did emerge, but for the most part they were teams by name alone. Puffery, gloss, delusion and misrepresentation. Un-teams.

“You will be a team-player,” usually in a fast-moving and dynamic environment. Thus chants the recruitment ritual, and so the tourist, in the hotel, at the airport or wherever will be in the hands of just such a team-player, even if he or she isn’t and hasn’t the faintest idea what it means. But they will have said they are, because what else are they supposed to say. “No, I am a socially-inadequate loser with psychotic tendencies.”

Teams, team-players. They are lost in lexicography. But are found in teams because someone has said that they are teams and probably have the t-shirt or the uniform to prove it. And like sports teams, they will even have their names to add to the impression. Your reception team, your entertainment team, your kiddies-club team, your kitchen team, your toilet-cleaning team. They will smile from display units and will be teams.

Why do they do it? Partly because team is an un-word, one used by default and one now demanded by convention. But used properly, as in the concept of the team is applied correctly, then it can be powerful in delivering true service. Some businesses locally do deliver this, sometimes systematically perhaps and sometimes by luck or instinct. They do actually employ people who are genuinely team-players. They themselves have good team leaders. And more often than not, they are the ones which don’t puff themselves up behind the “team” facade. They do it anyway.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

That Petrol Emotion: Petrol stations and loyalty

Low down the list of tourist must-do’s would be a trip to a petrol station. It would be an essential in order to find a way of moving an overpriced hire car from A to B, but as to being a cultural must-do, then hardly. Nevertheless, the petrol station is something, or has become something, of an economic and social metaphor for Mallorca.

Petrol stations are under threat of closure, the consequence of decreased traffic, in particular the heavy vehicles for construction. While car rentals are, in August at any rate, topping out at 100% supply, consumption has generally declined by up to 10% over the last year. To add to the lower revenues from petrol and diesel, the petrol stations have also had to contend with the vagaries of untypical summer weather. More rain around has meant cars being washed naturally and has led to up to 20% loss of business going through the car washes.

Earlier in the season, petrol station owners, in some areas, were complaining about a fall in tourist demand and having to rely on local business. This demand has increased, now that high season is here, but the regular, repeat custom is the bread and butter, one that must sustain the petrol stations during the off-season.

However, there has been a change in the style of many petrol stations, one that threatens the repeat, local business. Petrol stations, some at any rate, were part of social life. One, my own, was a place where, like the supermarkets can still be, you would wait while the customer before you or some old boy who just happened to walk in for no obvious reason, exchanged views as to the state of the local goat market. Not that you could buy a goat, though one suspects one might have, at some in the past, been able to do just that, along with a litre of diesel.

What you got was, yes, frustration at having to spend several minutes listening to something largely indecipherable, but also service that was akin to that during the grand days of motoring in England. Like the barber might ask if anything for the weekend was required, so the pump attendant might ask if anything for the engine was needed, and then provide it.

Well actually, it was never really like that in Mallorca. But the petrol station was friendly. I used to be given a bottle of cava at Christmas. It’s not like that now. Change of ownership, a revolving door of staff, the fall in revenue and the prevention of any unnecessary additional loss through “shrinkage” – the use of pre-payment. Along with all this has gone a knowledge as to who the customer is, one who gives regular, repeat business. I don’t want to be spoken to in English. I don’t want to have to show ID if I use a card. I don’t want to pre-pay, even if I understand why. But it feels like an affront, as is the ID. They knew me before. It was never asked for.

Maybe it’s a case of being more business-like. Perhaps. But the regular business the petrol stations crave should be a mutual arrangement. My loyalty to my particular petrol station is being undermined by a more distant customer encounter. No attempt, it would seem, has been made to try and understand who the “regulars” are.

There are aspects of business in Mallorca that do service very well and that haven’t looked to distance themselves. Banks, despite the growth of remote, internet banking, are a prime example. It is this closeness that, while maybe old-fashioned, counts for much. The petrol stations are counting on their regular business, but they are doing their best to lose it and in the process shift away, ever more, from a natural, albeit quirky service that was once the case.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

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.