A Common Thread in Singaporeans: Innovation, Outsourcing & Service Culture

It all started with a candid discussion over dinner table last night. We were discussing over how outsourcing of business operations diminishes the quality of the product and reduces the lack of innovation. In adopting Steven Levitt’s Freakonomics approach, we managed to piece together a simple argument on how these three seemingly unrelated terms on innovation, outsourcing and service culture pieced reflected a common culture in Singaporean mindset. We call that the common thread, and defined that to reflect some common values present in most Singaporeans. By the time you finish reading this, we would like you to conclude whether the mindset of Singaporeans is within the first or other worlds.

Taxi Drivers in Singapore

To present the story, let’s start with the taxi drivers in Singapore. They are a pretty special breed for some very good reasons. In the tipping point language, the taxi drivers are the connectors. They are the people who know everyone because their clients are sitting in their cars, transmitting all kinds of information. Even for a foreigner, the first person he would most likely encounter is the taxi driver when he touches down in Changi Airport. If you ask around, Singaporean taxi drivers seem to be the carrier of possibly true grapevine. They seem to be the first to know when taxes will rise, when the government will build a casino and when the elections will happen. As connectors, they have become instrumental in transmissing two things: (i) our service culture and (ii) grapevine from government about taxes and other information.

Since I am one of those people who have calculated that it’s cheaper to take cab rides for the rest of my life compare to own a car for 10 years due to increasing road tax, certificate of entitlement (COE) [1], petrol costs, I have daily interaction with these strange breed of people. I have constructed a criteria in assessing the service mentality of a Singaporean taxi driver and each criteria is assessed from one to ten (with one being worst and ten being best) [2]:

1. Core competency: Their knowledge of roads and how they drive on the roads are the first indicators of their service. Most taxi drivers I encountered need to learn how to listen to different accents. Here is a tip coming from how India took all the outsourcing contracts on banking services from US. They started training their service workers to speak with an American accent, so that the caller will believe that the service provider is within the US. The Singaporean taxi companies should train the taxi drivers to listen to people with different accents. Believe it or not, if you tell them to go to the Biopolis, they will say, “Which police station do you want to go to?” [3]

2. Their whining and complaints: Most taxi-drivers have a gripe with the Singapore government. They are always complaining that the times are bad and they are getting less business because of unemployment and big companies shifting their operations out of Singapore. That’s not the best part. They always like to paint you the gloomy picture of Singapore’s economy. If you read Cialdini’s Influence (which I highly recommend), you will know that Americans are made to laugh by installing “canned laughter” sequences in the comedy. That is a form of social condition that creates a vicious cycle for people. If all the cab drivers keep telling everyone on the cab that the economy is bad and they transmit that message to the masses, the chance of finding someone with the view that the economy is bad will be quite high. To me, if they are pessimists and gloomy cab drivers, I will give them a bad rating of one. Fortunately,  this is offset by most mercedes cab drivers, who seem to tell the story in the other direction.

3. Their lack of social grace: I did a poll on the taxi drivers. I usually tip between zero to fifty cents depending on how they treat me on the cab. I justify my tip to be helping these poor people with the rising oil prices. My poll told me that five out of ten taxi drivers do not say “thank you” when being tipped. So, that’s pretty bad if you ask me.

The service industry in Singapore suffers from two problems: quality of service and post-colonial hangover. The first argument is important, because it is related to the outsourcing and innovation issue which I have written earlier. Actually, the situation for teaching service is like trying to teach creativity to high school students. Service is not something that you just do and expect something. Surveying across the board among my circle of friends, they agree that South Koreans gave the best service. Here is what one of them say, “The service in South Korea is so good that I feel bad not tipping them. When I tip them, they refuse. That is service.” Hence service is not a process but a kind of mindshare. The same goes for those sales people in the car, telecommunications and retail bank industry. Here is the problem I have once by calling to two helpdesks of a foreign and local bank. I ask them how I can do a transcation across two banks. Believe it or not, even though one is a multi-national, both the service people made the same mistake of trying to hard sell their products to me, which I am not interested. Basically, sales people in Singapore do not understand two things, when to sell and how to sell and these are issues that have something to do with quality of service. You can teach someone how to conduct a test on an electronic device, but you cannot teach them how to discover new ways of testing or find fault with the existing system.

While I agree with most people that the normal Singaporeans do not tip, it does not mean that the service you give to foreigners should be of higher quality. That asymmetrical thinking of servicing people who you know will pay the service is very detrimental and will do nothing to help in your service culture. In fact, it devalues the Asians from the eyes of their western counterparts. Singaporeans are efficient and cash oriented, so say the common view among my foreigner friends. If you only do things that will benefit you, it’s alright. So, if the overall service culture grows on the long term because of your good service and the sales people benefits whether someone tips you or not, why do Singaporeans not do that? The answer is simple, because the invisible hand that guides everyone is short term and not long term.

With these thoughts in mind on Singaporeans service culture, we can see the tipping point at work. First, the service industry propagates short sighted and bad quality services. Yes, they are fast but they do not deliver quality service. Then these are propagated for having more bad service industry people, and gradually, the change happens at one dramatic moment: there is no service in Singapore. The same is with the taxi drivers. If they keep telling you in Hokkien that the economy is bad even if it is growing, everyone will be pessimistic and move out of Singapore.

Read on… Why didn’t he think of that?

Why did he not think of that?