Why Toll Free Numbers Are Beneficial For Small Businesses?
In this modern era of the startup
ecosystem, most businesses are looking for better and efficient ways to connect
and engage with their customers. Every business requires a phone number to
operate, even if it’s entirely online.
In this era of social media and
digital marketing – telemarketing is still in demand as the number of mobile users
is increasing exponentially. Therefore, your business should incorporate a
telemarketing strategy to build a trustable brand and to offer services to your
customers seamlessly.
Toll free numbers help startups
and small businesses in a similar fashion. It can project your business as a friendly
and reputed organization to the customers.
In this article, we will discuss why
toll free numbers are beneficial for your business and how you can leverage
this telecommunication technology to its full potential.
Let’s first start with the definition.
What Are Toll Free Numbers?
In the simplest terms, toll free
numbers allow a caller to call a business free of cost, on the other hand, the
called party (business) will bear the charge of incoming calls.
Now, you might be wondering how does
it help your business? Most early-stage startups and small businesses are quite
conscious of their ROI. Well, by the end of this article, you will have a
better understanding of how a toll free number for your business will make
up for every cent that you spend in your customer service and marketing
campaigns.
Types of Toll Free Numbers
Generally, toll free numbers fall into
these categories:
a) Universal International
Freephone Number (UIFN): These toll free numbers are beneficial for large
scale businesses who want to address a global audience. For these toll free
numbers, users irrespective of their location are not charged for the calls.
However, these toll free numbers are quite expensive and are only suitable for
startups who operate in multiple countries.
b) Country-specific Toll Free Numbers: There are two types of toll free numbers in this category:
- International Toll Free Number: These toll free numbers are internationally valid but are only toll free for your opted country. For example, if you have taken a toll free number of the USA, then your customers from the UK will be able to make a call to your business, but they will be charged for it, unlike in UIFN.
- Domestic Toll Free Number: In this type, your toll free number will only be valid for the location you have opted for. Users dialing from other areas will not be able to call your business. For example, if you have taken a toll free number of USA, then your customers from the UK will not be able to call your business as this toll free number is only valid for the US region.
How Toll Free Numbers Can Help Your Small Businesses?
Now that you have got a better
understanding of toll free numbers. Let’s see how it can help you in scaling
your business.
1. Build Credibility
Having a toll free number for your
business helps you to build credibility. Your customers will recognize you as a
serious and reliable business entity. The trust then helps you to convert those
prospects into long-time loyal customers.
2. Better Customer Retention
With a toll free number, your
customers will never think twice to make a call to connect with you for any
purpose whether related to product support or any other inquiry.
You can also get IVR features with
your toll free number to quickly transfer your customer’s call to the right
department.
IVR stands for Interactive Voice
Response. With this feature, you can set up a voice script to play after your customers
call your number. The best part is that your customers will be able to interact
with the voice script and navigate according to their requirements.
Additionally, you get other advanced
features to track, manage, and increase your team’s efficiency.
3. Easy To Remember
Toll free numbers usually start with
prefixes such as 800, 888, 877, 855, or 844. These numbers are generally easy
to remember for your customers. They can reflexively dial your toll free business
number from their smartphones without taking the trouble of looking
elsewhere.
The best part of toll free numbers is
that you can also take vanity numbers that can resemble your brand.
Let’s suppose, you own a flower shop.
So, to make it easier for your customers to order flowers from your store, you
can take a vanity number like 1-800-FLOWERS, which is easy to remember.
4. Better Portability
As business operations grow, the
requirement to change office location may also arise over time. With a toll
free number, you do not have to worry about reinstalling your phone system again.
Reliable toll free number providers such
as The Real PBX offer plug and play support. You only have to undergo the
hassle of relocating your office, whereas, the cloud telephony migration is
taken care of by the toll free number provider company.
5. Affordable Communication
Channel
There is a common myth floating around
the internet that only big corporations can afford toll free numbers, which is incorrect.
Every startup and small to medium scale businesses can leverage the benefits of
a toll free number.
Many providers offer pay as you go
plans, which means you need to pay for the resources (or call minutes) you are
using with your business toll free number. These pricing plans offer more
comfortable scalability options for you as per the business requirements.
6. Make Your Marketing
Campaigns More Effective
Nowadays, every business includes its
contact numbers on their billboards, handouts, pamphlets, website, or other
marketing materials like infographics, ebooks, etc.
With toll free numbers, you can create
unlimited extensions with which you can quickly transfer customer calls to
various departments. For example, a customer looking for more information about
your product and services, their calls can be routed to your product support
department and likewise for other operations.
Additionally, you can route your
customer calls based on their location or source. For example, customers
calling your business after looking at your pamphlet placed near Washington, you
can transfer their calls to your office situated in the Washington area.
7. Better Reporting
No marketing campaigns can be
successful if you haven’t implemented any workflow to analyze them. Small
businesses need to know the ROI of their marketing campaigns.
With toll free numbers, you can know
how many users called you from a specific region and other important metrics
quickly to understand how you can better cater to the needs of your
customers.
Where You Can Get A Toll Free Number And Why You Should Choose The Real PBX?
There are many toll free number
providers in the market which you can choose from as per your business requirements. However,
choosing The Real PBX as your toll free provider comes with additional perks that
you will not get elsewhere.
Excited to know? Let’s get started:
1. Use Before You Trust: We offer 10 days of free trial to check our services. In rarest of scenarios, if you are not satisfied with our toll free number services for your small business, you can cancel the trial anytime.
2. 24 x 7 x 365 Support: With The Real PBX, you get full support related to business communication system from certified professionals even on weekends and holidays.
3. Zero Installation Charges: We don’t charge anything for setup and installation of your business toll free number.
4. No Long-term Commitment Needed: The pricing plans are quite flexible. You pay only for what you use (number of minutes for your toll free number). There are no long-term contracts with us, and you can cancel anytime.
Conclusive Thoughts
Toll free numbers can help your startup
business to build a healthy relationship with your existing customers and prospects.
We hope this article will have given you enough information on whether to go
for a toll free number for your business or not.
In case you have any queries, write to us at support@therealpbx.com or call us our toll free numbers (+1-888-892-9646, +44-800-048-8104, +61-286-078-789) to connect with our cloud communication solutions expert.