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Now here’s another organization clearly distinguished by the service they provide: it’s Changi International Airport. How much do you know about the airport? Not that much as an operation, right? But you go through it every time you fly. So let’s take a look. For 30% of those visitors, their experience in the airport is their entire experience of the country. Hence, it’s a rather important project.

Thousands of people go to work at Changi, but only 1,300 work for the airport group, the private limited that actually runs the airport. Where does everybody else work? Police, Customs, Immigration, Airlines, Retail, Food and beverage, Bank, Doctor’s office, Guardian form, right? Now that poses a challenge. Because if you are a passenger in the airport and you’re lost and you’re walking around looking for help, who will you ask for help? Turn to your partner. You’re lost in an airport. Where do I find? Who will you ask for help? Talk to your partner. Go. Tell me. Tell me. You’re not going to go to the ‘Where’s the information’ counter. You will ask anybody who’s wearing a uniform. And you don’t care what uniform they’re wearing.

Which means the police need to know where are all the gates and the people at the gates need to know where’s the bank. And the people at the bank needs to know where’s the post office. So they’ve got to create an entire culture where each part of the organization is taking responsibility for helping the other parts of the organization also succeed. Because they share a common customer, a common goal, right? They say we have many partners, many missions. There’s only one Changi. They continuously innovate to improve the experience of customers.

The immigration officers were getting bad scores for friendliness. Oh, you’re giving me… A menthol. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. So Changi Airport tried to fix the problem. They came up with a script that they wanted the immigration officers to use. The script was like this: “Thank you very much for coming to Singapore. We hope you had a nice flight.” “May I have your passport, please?” “How long will you be with us?” “What’s the purpose of your stay?” Blah blah blah blah blah. Then the immigration officers hated it because they also had a KPI called keep the line moving. Right? So then, then they came up with the second innovation. They put little mirrors on the terminal facing the immigration officer, with a little note that says, “smile”. But you know what they used it for? They go… It wasn’t very nice.

So the third innovation was this: simply a box of sweets on every counter and a new script because you have to have standard practice. So the new standard practice is now two words, two words. The whole script. Person comes up, he goes, “Passport.” That’s word one. Here’s a second word: “Sweet?” That’s it. Streamline. Take a point of complaint and turn it into a compliment.

Do you know that people still bring things to the airport you’re not allowed to bring on board? Yeah, by accident most of the time. Like my wife is a hairdresser, among many other things. And do you know that hairdressers’ scissors can go up to $500? But they’re still not allowed on the aircraft. So fine, mail it back to yourself or mail it ahead to where you’re going, right at the point where the complaint was going to happen. Instead, we’ll turn that into a point of compliment.

Here’s another interesting point: how’s the toilet doing? Butterflies in an airport? Why is that? Because the project is to create a personalized, stress free, positively surprising experience. And so they’re constantly looking for new ways to do that within the overall project called Making Changi Airport extraordinary.