See other posts on American efficiency.

Overall, a wealthy city state (I guess HK …too) is often saturated with service providers. Standard of living and standard of service is higher than a big country like the U.S.. In the U.S., I would say the cheaper service providers tend to give poor customer service. In Singapore, even the cheaper ones are fine.

I feel the large service providers in the U.S. tend to have complicated policies or services, so the associates may not be well-trained.

Lawsuit culture – the service providers may be more risk averse.

–Some of the more efficient service providers:
United Healthcare
Blue cross
GS
BofA and Citi – not so much waiting

The government service level is much higher in SG, but how about other countries? This could be SG’s preeminence.