Below is an Autogenerated Transcript

Now there are 3000 immigration officers who work at Changi Airport and if you said to them, “Be more friendly”, some of them would say, “It’s not my job to be friendly.”

“I am a border control regulation, enforcement, and Government position. That’s my job.” And the officer would not be incorrect about that part of the job. But the other part of the job is to help the airport become the world’s friendliest airport. So how are we going to, what are we going to do? So they came up with an idea. The airport hired a consultant who wrote a script. They wanted every immigration officer, 3000 of them, to say this to every passenger, 66 million of them, this- “Good morning and welcome to the Republic of Singapore. On behalf of all of my colleagues in the Immigration and Control Authority, we hope you had a nice flight and we’re happy that you’re here. May I see your passport, please?” What do you think happened with that script? How long do you think it lasted? Not even one shift.

They brought it out and gave it to the immigration officers, they looked at it and said, “Are you kidding?” They said, “Give it a try.” “Good morning. Welcome to the Republic of Singapore. On behalf of all Immigration Authorities. I’m glad you’re here. Can I have your passport, please?” They said “No, no, no, no, no. Would you please say it with meaning and emotion?” “Good morning. Welcome to the Republic of Singapore. On behalf of all of my colleagues in the Immigration Authorities, we’re so happy you’re here. We hope you had a nice flight. May I see your passport, please?” And of course, then the KPI for speed started dropping and dropping and dropping. And they realized this idea, this script, it was not workable. Maybe it was a good idea, but it wasn’t real. You couldn’t do it, and you could never say it 66 million times and feel it. So they got rid of it.

They came up with the second idea. On every immigration computer terminal, they put a mirror, facing the officer with a sticker on the mirror that said, “Smile.” It backfired. The scores went down, we couldn’t figure out what went wrong until they put video cameras out to observe what was going on. And here’s what was happening. You know, when you wait in line until it’s your turn, and then someone looks at you and goes like this, like the immigration officer says “You’re next”, you know. At that moment when you start walking towards the immigration officer, what often happens is that the officer maintains eye contact with you while you’re walking in. But if he’s got a mirror, he goes like this and then he goes, in the moment of disconnecting from the passengers’ eye contact, unintentionally producing a less friendly experience for the passenger. Like, “Why did he look at me and then look away? What’s he looking at? Now he’s going to look at me again.” So they took away all the mirrors. They came up with a third idea. On every immigration counter for arrival and departure at Changi Airport, you’ll see a box of candy. They’re mint. Breath mints. And the immigration officers have now been trained that the script has only two words. In fact, I’m going to make all of you immigration officers now. I’m going to teach you the script.

Ready? Ready? Okay. You’re an immigration officer. Somebody walks up to you and you go like this. “Passport.” Ready? Go. Very good. Very good.

The moment they give you the passport, you do the second word in the script. It goes like this, “Sweet?” Okay, Ready? Everybody go and go. “Sweet?” Now you have to use your hand. Here we go. Here we go. Ready? Go. “Sweet?” Do it again. “Sweet?” Do it again. “Sweet?”

Do it. But you can do it because all you’re doing is saying, “Passport.” And then when they handed over, you, “Sweet?” The moment you say sweet, the passenger goes “Oh, yes sweet.” and they are distracted so you can get your work done. Cool. Friendly scores went up.

Now I tell you this story because I want you guys to remember something. The first improvement idea turned out to be not workable. The second improvement idea looked like a good idea, it turned out to not be a good idea. But you would never know it until you tried it. Same thing at Al Ansari. You want to continually improve service, you want to implement digital interfaces, you want to improve, you want to offer new things in the market. Great. But don’t expect that every idea is going to work. Part of a culture of always stepping up is being willing to try new things, to come up with new ideas to say, “Well, what about this?”, “What about that?” And then choose a few ideas to actually give a try and then look and see what happened. And if they don’t work, don’t say, “Well, that was stupid. Let’s just go back to what we were doing before.” Say, “Great. We learned what didn’t work. Now how do we get better? How do we get better? How do we keep stepping?” How do we keep stepping up step by step?