If you’ve just started a business, you may be wondering if you need to get toll free numbers. You may not know how a toll free number works and you might ask yourself if you will need one for your business.
You’ve seen toll free numbers advertised in commercials, on billboards, business cards, and on websites but if you are a small business owner, you’re probably wondering if you need one or are they really just for the big guys?
Benefits of Toll Free Numbers
The truth is, all businesses can benefit from having a toll free phone number associated with their company. Not only is it better for your customers (because you don’t want them to have to pay to contact you, right?) but it also helps your business stand out amongst the competition. 800 numbers encourage communication between customers and companies. But that isn’t there only use. Check out these essential uses of a toll free number for businesses.
Purchasing Toll Free Numbers
Toll free phone numbers are available for purchase from several different phone forwarding services. These companies provide a virtual phone number that can keep you connected to your customers 24/7. When a customer dials your toll free phone number, they will be patched into wherever you want that call to go to. That means you can take calls from your store, office, home, cell phone, or connect the call to a virtual call center.
How to Get a Toll Free Number
Having a toll free number is as simple as signing up for one. There aren’t any surprise expenses or costly equipment to purchase. Plus these services often come with a variety of included features. These features include email, fax services, voicemail set-up, call recording, and forwarding services.
Create Both a Local and a Broad Presence
Having Toll free number allows you to be in two places at once, as well as to be two businesses at once. Whether you are after the group that prefers a clean, corporate image, or you are interested in local customers who like to buy from their communities, you can target both! Virtual toll free number providers offer local numbers as well as numbers at meager costs which means you can have a national presence and a local presence no matter where you are located.
The Portability Factor
If you want to move your business, a toll free number and other virtual phone numbers are easy to port from one place to another, including from one telephone provider to another. So there is no need to fear commitment to one provider as long as you are committed to your business. And if you do happen to move across the world or out of the state, you can still maintain your relationships with the customers you had in your first location with your toll free phone number.
Customer Relations
Toll free numbers do improve customer and business relations. If a customer can’t get in touch with a business, why would that person want to do business with them? Would you want to buy from a company that you can’t get a hold of? What if there is an issue with the product? Where would you turn? Toll free phone numbers include customer service and when customers have a reliable number to call when something goes wrong, or they only wish to compliment your product, you begin to establish trust in the relationship and eventually, that trust turns into customer loyalty. The more comfortable you make communication for a customer, the more likely they will be to return.
Toll Free Numbers have a Big Impact
Customers won’t forget you. Toll free numbers are such a hit because they’re easy to remember. They are even easier to remember if you choose to purchase a vanity number. Vanity numbers generate more sales because words are much less complicated for people to remember that over a sequence of numbers.
Tracking your marketing efforts is more straightforward with a toll free phone number. Having a toll free phone number allow you to create extensions, one that you can trackback from an advertising campaign, the phone book, and another for your website. After a campaign has a run or an amount of time has gone by, you can go back and look up how many people called from each particular extension. Were more people calling from finding the number on the website? Or did the campaign you ran double your numbers? It’s all effortless to figure out just by glancing at your account management page.
With all of the benefits of having a toll free number, it’s no wonder that businesses across America have used them for years. And now thanks to giant strides in the technology industry, these toll free numbers are easier to purchase than ever before.