Below is an Autogenerated Transcript

In 1990, Singapore had a problem. Singapore was manufacturing at a low cost. Motorola, Sony, Seagate, Philips all leave Singapore. And where does it go? China. Right. Because they are the world’s factory and all of the back office in the call center and the data processing leaves Singapore for another big country with lower cost labor. India. Singapore had a problem. 

They decided the way to solve that problem was to become the best in the world in service. Like they wanted to become the global capital for service excellence. But they needed help because everybody had been trained to work in factories. So they say, okay, how are we going to handle this? Let’s go out into the world and find somebody who can help us to solve our problem. And they found a guy who was comfortable with a microphone and had big white socks.

I came in 1990 and I said “Great, what’s the situation here?” They explained. I said “What do you want to do? They said, Service Excellence. The first question I asked them is, what is service? What do you mean by that? If we’re going to be excellent, we have to have a good definition. I asked 100 different people, What is service? You know what? If I asked you all to answer that question and write it down, I’d probably get 100 different answers. Some people are saying, “Oh, you know, service is giving people what you’d like to get, as if they were like you, right? Where the customer is always right, which is wrong. Right? Or you know, make other people happy, which isn’t necessarily the right thing to do in a medical situation. So I said, we have a problem here. We’ve got to solve this problem. What is service?  I look back in my history, I created something and I wrote a definition.

Service is taking action to create value for someone else. 

The reason this definition solved the problem is it applies in every industry. It applies in every culture. Every language to every situation from the front line supervisor, manager, boardroom. Makes sense? Does it apply to us too, as speakers? Isn’t that what we’re doing? Taking action to create value for the clients and the audiences that we serve. But then we had another problem. If that service, what is service excellence? So I decided to crack that one as well. Read it with me. Ready? Go.

Service Excellence is taking the next action that will create more value for someone else. 

Why are you here at this convention? Isn’t it to learn like what could be my next action that will create more value. That’s why it’s all about growth so help you become better and stronger. So then we had to solve another problem. Okay. We got definitions. How do we teach people to continuously improve service every day in every way for everyone inside the company, outside the company? 

I help solve that problem. We created a whole series of ten principles on service and workshops. can apply internal as well as external. But then we had another problem. What about the leadership of the organization? Do they know what to do? So we worked out seven fundamental rules of behavior for leaders and service organizations. Then we had one more problem. What’s in between these two? We identified 12 areas of activity fundamental building blocks to create a service culture inside an organization. So a lot of work!

But that’s what you do if you’re committed to solving a problem. Now, of course, I also wanted to make learning fun. So it was not just called services, I called it Up Your Service, an uplifting service. I’ve had the privilege of working in Singapore now for almost 30 years.