THE pandemic has caused people to be wary of staying in malls, standing in queue lines in department stores and supermarkets, or generally going outside of their homes. This gave rise to several online applications that offer online shopping and home deliveries.
However, these online apps do not solve the problem of going in lines in establishments that offer personal services such as hair and nail salons.
As such, SM Downtown Premier came up with a new convenient and safe way to not only provide customers information and services but also to confirm bookings and availability of products.
The SM Central Concierge is SM Downtown Premier's new malling assistant, a single point of contact for customers who will ask for information, will need a service, confirm whether the store is open, and ask for availability of merchandise.
How does this work? According to SM Downtown Premier Mall Manager Evangeline Ditona, the SM Central Concierge, when they receive the call, they will relay the inquiry to the tenant who may have this certain merchandise or confirm the client's booking.
"We find it very useful that we set it up because given the exposure, when we go to the mall, people don't want to linger. Whatever they wanna do, they want to go do it directly, most especially if you want personal services like do the hair, do the nails," Ditona said.
"The concierge will help set up the booking. So you won't be lining up and waiting for your turn, it's really booked," she added.
This malling assistant is also a helpdesk for shoppers.
Apart from product inquiry and booking, the central concierge can also assist the clients who are looking for somebody who can shop for them. The central concierge will give the client's contact details to SM's selected instashoppers who will call them to confirm their orders and how it will be delivered.
The SM Downtown Premier is the first in all SM malls nationwide to implement the central concierge. Ditona said on the first day that the SM Central Concierge was launched, which was on September 5, they received 17 inquiries and on the fourth day, it reached more than 50 inquiries.
Most of the inquiries were for salon and other personal services, the mall manager added.
Ditona said that upon tracking the amount of services and sales generated from inquiries, they noticed that the transaction with the instashopper that they partnered with has increased because of the central concierge.
"We're really quite surprised that people are just waiting for a service like this to inquire whether they have this kind of appliance, what brand, and then can they buy this for installment. And our tenants have very positive feedback that the phones are really ringing for inquiries," Ditona said.
The mall manager further said that SM Central Concierge will continue to operate even after the pandemic, saying that booking ahead of time will save people time.
"We are the butler for all the needs. We connect our customers to all the tenants and the services that our tenants provide," Ditona said.
The SM Central Concierge can be contacted through the link: gosm.link/SMCENTRALCONCIERGE_ORDERFORM, or via their mobile number: 0915-580-3949.
It is open from 10 a.m., when the mall opens, and will close one before the mall closes, at 7 p.m. All orders that will come at 7 p.m. can still be accommodated and will be delivered on the same day.