Allphones reimagines the one-stop mobile shop

MANILA, Philippines - Australian Geoff Hester admits he found it “quite humorous to go to (local) telco stores… and have to take a ticket and wait to get served.”

But therein obviously lay a golden opportunity to do things better — a chance for Allphones, Australia’s leading mobile phone retailer, to have its turn at bat.

Allphones Philippines, under the aegis of Taodharma Inc. (of Julio Sy Jr.’s 36-subsidiary Tao Corp. conglomerate), now presents itself as a “one-stop shop for the latest mobile devices and postpaid plans,” while priding itself in superior customer service, coupled with paperless processing of transactions.

Hester says the company was a kindred spirit for Allphones as the two share the “right attitude, which is entrepreneurial,” not to mention a commitment to a “superior customer experience.”

‘The other thing that’s quite phenomenal here is that most people I know have two devices. That’s amazing. It’s not like that in Australia,” he adds.

“That’s the Australian model that we picked up and we can use deploy and use here,” says Hester, chief executive adviser to Allphones Philippines. Hester and his team spent the better part of a year “just to understand the market” and see how Allphones can offer a “much better customer experience.”

The resulting paradigm is one that combines the best of big brand-exclusive stores — which feature an array of live demo units potential customers can try out for themselves — with the sheer variety of smaller retailers.

Since opening its first store in Marikina in April 2013, Allphones has quickly aggressively grown its number and breadth of outlets in the country to 46 — from up north in Baguio down to Davao in Mindanao. Hester insists: “We believe there’s an opportunity for at least a couple of hundred stores.”

Meanwhile, Allphones Philippines COO and GM Ricardo “Blue” Avelino shares that Allphones carries an assortment of smartphones, tablets, power banks, headsets, chargers, phone covers, memory cards and more.

“Almost anything connected to a phone,” he says, adding that a typical Allphones outlet (ranging in size from 45 to 100 square meters) would have 54 live demo smartphone units on displays and eight in-store consultants.

These consultants, avers Avelino, are thoroughly knowledgeable about the myriad of models across 11 brands available in the store. “There’s a huge amount of investment in training,” he says.

The instruction also includes modules on dealing with various customer dispositions. “We have learned a lot since we just set up our systems,” says Hester in response to a STAR question. “We had to re-address how we do the selling process in the store… this is all about having a superior and fantastic customer experience… It’s not natural for Filipinos to pro-actively approach sales staff.”

For her part, Allphones Philippines marketing head Maureen Gallant observes that Filipinos have started to become more mature and discerning about their devices.

“I think they are value seekers,” she says. “They want the best deal and the best value. It does not have to be specific to a brand. That’s why a consultative approach is important to us.”

Allphones also offers prepaid and postpaid handset products exclusively for Globe Telecom. “We teamed up exclusively with Globe Telecom for contracts… Globe is spending an enormous amount of money on its network — for the latest LTE technology, its billing systems. It was a very good fit for us,” explains Hester, reporting that Globe has been accommodating with Allphones’ paperless transactions performed on iPads and sent wirelessly to Globe offices.

“We (also) have the opportunity to do our own plans,” Hester continues, and lauds the latitude that Globe has given the company to do so. Allphones and Globe have inked a six-year deal until 2019.

Allphones is also bringing in its tried-and-tested product and service deals and bundles that offer even more value-for-money propositions.

The best part is that, clearly, there’s no reason to believe you have to wait long before an Allphones outlet opens near you.

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Check out www.allphones.com.ph for more information.