You step off the plane, weary from a long flight. As you walk through the terminal, you can’t believe your eyes. The airport is immaculate with walkways as wide as roadways and not a speck of litter anywhere. Airport employees eagerly greet you with smiles and ask how they can help.

Have you stumbled upon some air traveler’s mirage? Is this an illusion in the familiar airport desert of grim décor, stressed out passengers, rude counter agents, and crowded gate areas? No, this oasis of pleasure is what things are really like at Changi Airport in Singapore—and is the perfect illustration of what service can (and should) look like in our global economy.

“Consider how frustrating service can be in airports today,” said Ron Kaufman, author of Uplifting Service: The Proven Path to Delighting Your Customers, Colleagues, and Everyone Else You Meet (www.UpliftingService.com). “Typically, passengers are focused on where they are going. They are often tired, or stressed, and can be easily upset. And the process often makes things worse. Lines move slowly, agents can be impersonal, and going through security can feel like you’re part of the day’s prison intake. Airport service has to be unpleasant. Why do we accept it as the norm—when it can be so much more?”

Kaufman’s intention is not to pick on airports. Bad service is rampant in every industry. How do you start your own uplifting service revolution? In Uplifting Service, Kaufman pinpoints several building blocks of a service culture. These building blocks include the following:

1. Engaging Service Vision.
“Many Partners, Many Missions, One Changi.” That’s the engaging service vision that unites everyone who works at Changi Airport. At Changi, a coffee shop worker can tell you the departure gate locations and the fastest ways to get there. Airline employees know where you can buy last-minute souvenirs. Airport police can tell you how to find the post office and what time it opens. At this remarkable gateway, everyone works together to create positive experiences every day.

“That’s what engaging service visions do—they unify and energize everyone in an organization,” said Kaufman. “They pose a possibility each person can understand and aim to achieve in his or her work, role, team, and organization. It doesn’t matter whether you call this your service vision, mission, core value, guiding principle, credo, motto, slogan, saying, or tagline. What matters is that your Engaging Service Vision is engaging.”

2. Service Recruitment.
Are you “Googley”? Are you able to “Create Fun and a Little Weirdness” at work? These important considerations are made during the hiring process at Google and Zappos, respectively. These companies know it is much easier to build a strong culture by hiring new people with the right attitude than to hire people for their skills alone and then try to align them around a common service vision.

“Each new hire either makes your culture stronger or makes your challenge to build a great service culture a little harder,” says Kaufman. “The right people pull naturally in the right direction. While cultural misfits may be incredibly talented, well connected, or experienced in a specific area, their impact on the team can be confusing or downright disruptive. Every new hire sends a message to everyone else. Either you are committed to your service culture and hire good people to prove it, or your commitment is shallow lip service only, and your next hire also proves it.”

3. Service Orientation.
Unfortunately, many company orientation programs are far from uplifting. Often they are little more than robotic introductions: This is your desk; this is your password; those are your colleagues; these are the tools, systems, and processes we use; I am your boss; and if you have any questions, ask. Welcome to the organization. Now get to work. These basic introductions and inductions are important, but they don’t connect new employees to the company or the culture in a welcoming and motivating way.

“Orientation goes far beyond induction,” said Kaufman. “Zappos really gets this. Its four-week cross-department orientation process is an example of new-hire orientation at its finest—deeply embedding and delivering on the company’s brand and core value, ‘Deliver WOW Through Service.’ Zappos understands that new team members should feel informed, inspired, and encouraged to contribute to the culture.

4. Service Recognition and Rewards.
Service recognition and rewards are a vital building block of service culture. They are a way of saying “thank you,” “job well done,” and “please do it again” all at the same time. Recognition is a human performance accelerator and one of the fastest ways to encourage repeat service behavior.

“While money may seem like the most obvious reward for employees, it isn’t always the most effective,” said Kaufman. “Genuine appreciation fully expressed makes a more lasting impact on any employee. And there are tons of great ways to reward and recognize. You can do it in public, in private, in person, in writing, for individuals, or for teams. You can do it with a handwritten letter, a standing ovation, two tickets to a concert or a ball game, an extra day off, dinner for the family, a star on the nametag…and on and on. Recognition and rewards are great ways to show gratitude from customers, admiration from colleagues, and strong approval from leaders of the organization. They can drive service commitment and behavior to even higher levels and are more memorable and emotional than simply receiving money.”

5. Service Role Models.
Four times a year, the general manager of a well-known exclusive hotel in Paris becomes a bellman. The refined gentleman greets guests at the roadside, places their bags on a luggage trolley, and escorts them to their rooms. He uses these opportunities to get feedback from guests about what they do and don’t like about the hotel and any other suggestion they’re willing to share. On these days, he eats in the basement cafeteria with the rest of the staff, and talks with them about their jobs, answering any questions they might have. He cherishes these four days, as do the members of his team.

“He’s the epitome of a service role model,” said Kaufman. “But what’s important to remember and to emphasize with your team is that everyone is a service role model. Leaders, managers, and frontline staff must walk-the-talk with powerful personal actions every day. Being a service role model is not just for senior managers and members of the leadership team. It is what happens every time people can see what you do, read what you write, or hear what you say in an internal or external service situation.”

Ron Kaufman is the author of the New York Times bestseller Uplifting Service: The Proven Path to Delighting Your Customers, Colleagues, and Everyone Else You Meet (www.UpliftingService.com). He is the world’s premiere thought leader, educator, and motivator for uplifting customer service and building service cultures in many of the world’s largest and most respected organizations, including Singapore Airlines, Nokia Siemens Networks, Citibank, Microsoft, and Xerox. He is the founder of UP! Your Service, a global service education and management consultancy firm with offices in the United States and Singapore. Ron is a columnist at Bloomberg Businessweek and the author of 14 other books on service, business, and inspiration. Ron has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and USA Today.