Computer Village, known as the phone headquarters of Nigeria is the largest Information and communication Technology (ICT) accessories market in Africa situated in the famous community called Otigba, located in Ikeja, the capital of Lagos state, Southwestern Nigeria. While stories of unpleasant experiences in the market abound, it’s still the one-stop shop for all things tech in Nigeria.
El-Classico phones and gadget are the number one trusted company in Nigeria right now despite the challenges faced in the market but still deliver quality products. Its customers are first that’s why they are the number one in terms of brand new or used phones, laptop in the market today. El-Classico used phones; Apple iPhones and Samsung have a very long-lasting battery, incredible Memory, superb camera, faster processor, a rich media experience display and amazing cost efficient. With an amiable friendly, family-like welcoming attendants who will guide you on the best choice of phones to buy and it’s really worth it. With El-Classico, your budget can’t stop you from buying the smartphone you really desire. No matter your budget; there is a phone for you and should in case you get a cracked or broken screen, you can as well swap for another ONLY if you buy from them.
Top-notch Blogger, Theresa Moses was in computer village to have an exclusive interview with the number one celebrity phone seller, Mr. Frank Okwonkwo, CEO, El-Classico phones and gadget. He reveals the secret to how he sold over 2.7 million phones with no single police case, challenges and more….
How did you come about the name El-Classico?
El-Classico came from the name – El-Classico, a match between Real Madrid and Barcelona and the match is one of the best football matches in the world and it’s the gathering of stars. So I thought about building a brand and I thought about what can we do. El-Classico wasn’t the first name, we came from Phone Embassy, Trade All Communications and when we want to go bigger, we said we need something bigger. That’s why we settle for El-Classico because it’s all about stars – Messi, Ronaldo, the best. If we want to be in the phone business, we just going to be the best, simply the best. And we came into the phone business for 8 years now, from the days of Blackberry, Nokia and still standing strong because of what? One simply secret. I will tell you that later.
One thing that made us the number one brand in Africa is because we’ve looked at the phone business and we found out that there are a lot of people who are scared of coming to computer village, why, because of trust issues, lack of integrity, people have come and been scammed in the past etc. I then say ok, lets change the way the game is being played. How can we make this people trust us, how can we make a customer say we are giving you this, this is what we get. Now I’d say we are not going to do the bad business, we sell over 2.7 million phones with no since police case. That means nobody has been arrested. Meaning we don’t sell stolen phones, we do our business legitimate ways. It’s not easy because at times the guy that does the bad business makes more money than you. While you that do the legitimate, have integrity, better future to go than them. You can check all the records, we’ve not have any police report.
The phone business is one of the hardest businesses in the world because every phone company has a service center, why because they know that this is electronics. Theses are what people use daily and some people pressed their phones more than themselves. If its abroad you off your phones when at work but in Nigeria, everywhere we are pressing phone. Even the phone sef don complain say una don press me too much. I want to rest, I want to rest. So what happens is that we backup what we do with strong customer service and there is a difference between customer service and customer experience. You can never get a bad phone from El-Classico and when you have issues with your phones, when the screen is broken, you come to the table and we say fine let’s do this. It’s not easy; it comes with a lot of sacrifices and lots of pains.
With over 2.7 million phones successfully sold, yet no police case, what is the secret?
We are grateful to God. We thank God and we’ve been in the business and find out why police arrest people. Because over the years people are scared to buy UK used phones because some people sell Nigeria used phones in place of UK used phones and some sell stolen phones. That’s when we said ok, we are not going to do that kind of business. We are going to sell a phone to you and be sure that’s a phone that’s coming from the right source, from the factory. We looked at it and said fine, some people out of greed wants to buy an iPhone 11Pro Max that’s worth over N400, 000 in the market value yet he wants to buy it for N250,000. After buying the ‘cheap article’ phone, in less than a week, SARS will come and carry you. That’s why we choose to build integrity because it’s a very good, crazy and difficult business but one thing is it comes with service support and lots of sacrifice. It’s not easy being a king and sitting on the throne; that’s why we are El-Classico.
Over the years we have a lot of brands that trust us such as Naija Brand Chick, our brand ambassador, Nelly Agbogu, TriciaBiz, Austin Jay-Jay Okocha, Charles Okocha, Ngozi Nwosu etc buy from El-Classico because they trust us. So the most important ingredient in your business is trust. There are lots of differences between customer service and customer experience. Customer service is what everybody does but customer experience is deeper than customer service. It’s that feeling that someone take home when he comes in contact with your business, brand, whatever you are selling. People are all busy calculating the profit, counting the money but not counting the future. We are El-Classico, we are the future.
How do you cope with fraudulent customers?
It’s not easy, this is Nigeria and as a Nigerian we know ourselves. Somebody can buy phone from you now and comeback to you tomorrow that he woke up and I don’t know what happened to this phone, it did not fall; the screen was not showing etc. but because we are El-Classico we understand how these things are. To be a brand and who we are, it takes a lot of sacrifices. Customer are the king and customers are right but customers are always not right. What we always avoid is having a problem or fight with our customers. Most times I bear the brunt that’s why TriciaBiz, my business consultant want to sack me. She says you are running down your company but I do tell her that am actually building the future. If you’re building skyscraper and a one storey building it’s not the something. So all my customers can tell you that they can verge for El-Classico. When your phone screen is broken, we say wow, come to the office let’s see what we can do. It’s not easy, but the truth about this is, let your customer have a very good experience. Even when we all are humans, some customers are special and they care and love you. All they needed is for you to solve the problem. In El-Classico we only swap phones bought from us that’s how we keep upgrading our customers. We don’t swap phones not bought from us so to maintain our internal quality control. Because I don’t know where you bought the phone, I can’t verge for the company, I don’t know the phone etc. My customers are family members and I do care for them out of the blues. We are one big special family blessed by God.
Challenges so far?
It has been a lot of challenges. Doing business in Nigeria is only God that will prepare our own special heaven because doing business in Nigeria is something else especially the phone business the phone business that you sell a phone to somebody and you’ve signed a contract with the person unknowingly for the next couple of months. When there’s no network on the phone the customer calls you, he doesn’t call the network providers. He calls you and tells you that everybody has network, it’s only my phone that does have network. What happened? You will now have to say do this, do that etc. after sometimes he will say ahh, the network has come back. So I take a lot of calls every day, hundreds of call that they can’t browse on their phone unknown to them that they have exhausted their data. It’s been a lot of challenges in the business but we thank God because there’s no business that’s easy, every business has its own ups and downs. What makes us different is our own support system. You can never get a bad phone from us. The king will answer your calls 24 hours in respective of any issue in your phone. Anybody that buys phones from us keeps being blessed because of the charity we do. That means some percentage of what we get actually goes to charity, touch people. We don’t keep all the whole money to ourselves. It’s very difficult for an El-Classico customer, family member to experience financial difficulties what so ever. We know that the things we do so it’s not easy but we thank God and we are grateful to God.
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