Sing it Loud Singapore

Sorry for the extremely long delay in blog entries, (never again) but I was in the midst of an affair - a hot sweaty one.

No, you pre-voits, not with another woman (or man for that matter); I am totally in love with my wife - but with a city-state. Singapore, where winter means 85F and 98% humidity on a dry day. But what I found was that it also means a commitment to service excellence that is national in scope - for real. Not just for lips.

Don't get me wrong. I loved Hong Kong's vibrancy, its liveliness, and its attempts to improve the visitor's experience, but, hey, I'm easy I guess. And fickle. I told Hong Kong I loved her, but when I came to Singapore, Hong Kong became just a one night stand, Kowloon a brief but fond memory. But Singapore, ah Singapore...now here, I'm looking at a loooong commitment - I hope. Because the customer experience is not only alive in Singapore, it is growing so fast, its actually just outright hot.

The Whole Country is Committed - The Whole Gosh Darn Thing

No joke. At Singapore's 2005 National Rally Day, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced a national commitment to service excellence. The mandate extended to every person in the country, not just some small group or just a vertical industry or two. Every-single-person.Some of the salient points with my favorite in bold:

A Vibrant Global City Called Home: A Service Culture (Their title)

1. Remaking Singapore includes remaking our mindsets. e.g. not being afraid to fail, being willing to try new things, giving people a second chance, adapting to changing job market, etc.
2. Focus on one mindset change - improving our service culture
3. This is the critical success factor in developing service industry
4. We do not have a natural service culture
5. Some Singapore organisations have excellent service standards
6. e.g. SIA, Changi Airport (e.g. ICA staff), also find them in the hotel, retail and F&B sectors
7. But Singapore has a long way to go
8. All three parties - companies, service staff and customers - have a role to play in improving service
9. Companies must show leadership and adopt service friendly policies, systems and processes
10. Emphasize service training for workers - not just for frontline, but also managers and supervisors. Management must walk the talk.
11. Service staff must acquire a service mindset
12. Service jobs are honourable and can serve with pride and professionalism e.g. Ritz Carlton's mission: Ladies and Gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen
13. Service and social skills - how to carry yourself and serve others with grace
14. Our people too can deliver good service, even as life in Singapore gets better
15. Just as important is customers' attitudes
16. Hard to serve with pride if customers treat service staff badly
17. Service is not servitude
18. Service staff are not our servants or slaves
19. Show appreciation for good service
20. Good customers get good service
21. Long-term, national effort
22. Government agencies will get together to promote good service.
23. Not just for tourists. More fundamentally, it is about what we are
24. Being a gracious society, courteous and respectful to one another
25. Recognising the dignity and contribution of each citizen
26. Each person doing his part, excelling in his own vocation, and serving with pride

Okay, but this is a mandate and mandates don't mean support for the initiative. Normally, they mean that everyone was told that they HAD to support it. That's what I thought, being always the New Yawka. Bu in this case, I found out from direct experience, not only are the institutions in place to support it and the money there to back it up, but it permeates the pores of every Singa. They are immensely committed to creating a "delightful" (word I heard pretty often) customer experience and that is what they do.

An Anecdote

One of their target industries for the early stages is almost the obvious one - the hospitality industry. It is no coincidence that the PM metioned the Ritz Carleton's mission "ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen" in his speech announcing the national effort. I stayed at the Sheraton Towers, Singapore and did they EVER prove that this was for real.

Story 1: I had just arrived from the Singapore airport at 1:00am and had to wait for a taxi with over 100 people "in the queue". Even so it took no more than 10 minutes to get a cab - in D.C. that would have been close to an hour. Then, I got to the hotel, rather tired and found I had left my electrical outlet adapter in Hong Kong (probably on the nightstand...). I called down and they not only informed me that since I was U.S. I probably should use a voltage transformer and then sent one up in five minutes, but they asked me (I didn't have to ask them) about a wake up call while they had me on the phone and then about a second wakeup call 10 minutes later. Thoughtful, little thing, big impression.

Story 2: I had an interview in Singapore's Business Times (article here) and didn't know if it would appear on Saturday (no, since there's no Saturday edition) or Monday. Forgot about it on Saturday and when I remembered it, it was really late in the day. I couldn't find one in the hotel so the hotel business office searched the entire hotel for me, didn't find one, went out and purchased one for me and didn't charge me a dime. They went out and bought it for me. How much service could you expect? God, did that EVER exceed expectations.

Story 3: I was watching TV, something I do a lot more than I should- I probably exceed the average TV watcher by 2 or 3 times the amount (you name it, I watch it, and I shed tears when they combine music with closure on Cold Case. THAT much TV). But I saw quite long commercials (seemed to exceed 60 seconds) that emphatically reminded the employers of their responsibility for service excellence too and that this included how they treated their employees who were on the commercial talking about how they were treated. In subsequent discussions with the brother of Mei Lin Fung, the excellent person, Andrew Fung, at a lovely get together at Mei Lin's family home in Singapore, he gave me a sense of how the unions worked in Singapore and how they took true care of their charges and worked with the government and employees to make sure that the standard of living for the work force was good and that they had a strong services commitment to their members. Impressive, very impressive.

Imagine all that. All in all, an experience economy experience.

And this was just a little of it. There were countless other examples of how committed to the customer experience the nation and its citizens really were.

First the Last.

I have had a hard time figuring out how to even write this blog entry. It could conceivably be so long that we could hit the next ice age before I finish writing it so much happened.

In very brief sum, here are the highlights

• BPT Partners did training to people from Singapore, Thailand, Japan and Sri Lanka that meant for every 10 people in the room there were 15 cultures represented. The training which will be covered in some detail over the next two weeks went exceptionally well with a great deal of responsive interactivity with the audience.
• Thanks to my dear friend Mei Lin Fung, the CLV guru and influential overseas Singaporean I've spoken of in the past, I was able to meet with the core leadership of the financial community and much of the government while there.
• I met with representatives of some 15 or so government agencies, all in a state of differing conditions when it comes to CRM. There were three things I noticed from this meeting. First, that there are so many CRM "systems" in place there is only a modicum of thinking being done on the CRM strategies or culture shifts necessary to provide the new forms of the customer experiences. Second, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) was the most advanced when it comes to thinking about CRM and the customer. I was particularly impressed with Rosina Howe, who is the CIO of LTA. Her approach to eGovernment and CRM was as creative as I've ever seen and clearly recognized that innovation was the way to go. She wanted to figure out how to approach CRM when in fact the government had a monopoly on services and thus didn't seem to "need" CRM because things were working. She didn't get a CRM consultant who would normally provide her with a pat answer that might be based on their "experience" and not necessarily wrong, but not particularly innovative. Instead, she sponsored an essay contest for students and the winner came back with the following GREAT answer for constituency based CRM: while public servic does a good job for the majority, customer services should be designed for the minorities who don't have the biggest voices such as specific approaches, programs, processes and cultures organized around the elderly, the disabled, etc. Ms. Howe told me that she had an epiphany around CRM in the course of this and wishes that there was a CSO - Chief Service Officer too. She was a great lady and I wish that I could get her to the U.S. to speak on her approach to CRM, citizens experiences and government services. Awesome.
• I was honored to be at a luncheon with the most important individuals in the Ministry of Finance, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and SPRING (the government agency driving the service excellence initiative) where I was treated to the Chinese New Year dish, yu shang, a totally fresh and delicious noodle and raw fish salad. Mr. Lim, who has recently been appointed to head up the Economic Development Board in Singapore, hosted the luncheon and told me that "I'd have to work for my lunch" which meant I joined in the Chinese tradition of all luncheon participants using chopsticks to toss the yu shang together - a really great honor for me.
• I spoke to roughly 210 members of the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) in an evening seminar on "Service Excellence, Customer Delight: CRM & Financial Services" with apparently very good results. The venue was the National Library Building, one of the coolest pieces of contemporary architecture I've ever seen with glass everywhere including what I would have to say are glass "ledges" outside the building. I spoke on the 16th floor with a breathtaking view of the city - but not with a screen. Gulp. I use screens to jog my memory about things. I wuz feelin' good that night and rocked, if I do say so myself - and I do.I spoke to the bankers about transforming a product-centered culture to a customer-centered culture. It was a frank discussion on the financial services industry and how product-pushing was counter to its future. I identified some of the measures that would be successful if they were wiling to listen. (see slides here)
  
  
  
• I've been asked to write a bylined commentary on the same subject for the prestigious Asian Bankers Journal which I'm in the midst of writing as I write here at some ridiculously late hour of the night that I should be in bed at.
• The Singaporean government is so serious about citizen input that they've formed formal feedback groups that actually have chairpeople and members that are focused around areas of expertise. For example, the areas that feedback groups cover are housing, transportation, relationships to the new world economy, small and medium businesses, environmental issues, healthcare, and workforce development, social programs etc. What is even more remarkable is that they have an annual Feedback Group Conference that is addressed by various group heads and a major minister but the addresses are no more than 15 minutes because the rest of the time is the feedback of the citizens (2000 or more) that attend on the feedback groups' varying white papers. I attended the 2006 Annual Conference of Feedback Groups and was astounded at the level of interaction between the government, the citizens and the groups and the seriousness that the feedback on the feedback was taken. In fact, at the end, there was an evaluation form on everything ranging from an assessment of the quality of the white papers that wree presented and the logistics and the responses to the questions. So there was a request for feedback on the feedback of the feedback of the Feedback Groups. Or something...

This is just a taste of what happened. As time moves on, I'll mention a lot more on what was discussed, opportunities and how it looks. Its not often you find an entire nation committed to the improvement of service that is clearly focused around the experience economy or my words for it, the customer ecosystem. It is an opportunity to see how entire nations can devote public services with a committment from all its citizens to achieving what we've all been trying to do. Let's watch this one closely. We got a real chance here to help make something of something that is already being made.