A great illustration of Destiny is well known to many travelers around the world-Singapore Airlines. Their Destiny can be described as concentrating on customer needs by providing exceptional service. As obvious as providing exceptional service sounds, very few other organizations that were studied for the book Competitive Success-How Branding Adds Value’ are adept at this. Most talk about customers being ‘key’, and that customer service is their ‘point of differentiation’, but as we discovered, most do not back it up with concrete implementation. Singapore Airlines, however, does. Their entire strategy since their founding in 1972 is about superior customer service. Their justification is clear: competitors can copy planes, cabin interior design, online web usability and even uniforms, but the unique organizational practices (superior service, in Singapore Airlines’ case) cannot be copied because they are rooted deep into the DNA, the founding principles, and the general psyche of the company. New employees are hired through a rigorous regimen of varied interviews that assess whether a person is capable of delivering their unique service experience. Many of Singapore Airlines’ competitors understand this, but most have not acted on it by revamping their organizations and hiring practices to upgrade the service experience in an authentic way. For those that make the effort to change it will take years to see results. Singapore Airlines has been working on this relentlessly for 40 years and it is one of the reasons they are the recognized leader. They are not the biggest, but they are considered consistently the best. And they are guided by an uncomplicated Destiny that says they will focus on exceptional service.
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