Business

Do I Need a Toll Free Number for My Business?

Perhaps you’ve been wondering whether your business should offer toll free numbers to your customers. After looking at your competitors, you may believe that offering a toll free way for your customers to contact you is out of your reach. The truth is that if you want to cast the widest net to do business with as many potential customers and clients as possible while presenting yourself as a professional entity, and provider overall greater functionality, then toll free numbers are essential. In this article, we’ll take a look at why you need toll free numbers for your business.

Reasons Why You Need Toll Free Numbers for Business

Ease of Accessibility

It’s important to note that some of your potential customers may not have the ability to dial long distance. Or, they may subscribe to a telephone service that charges fees for long distance calls. Either way, by using a toll free number, those customers can access your business worry-free and without cost. This ensures that even the economic status of your customers or their choice of telephone service won’t be a barrier to doing business. In the customer’s eyes, toll free numbers are a way of doing a small favor for them, which can be reciprocated in the way they positively perceive your business.

Professional Appearance

If you want your business to quickly gain the look and functionality of a professional business, toll free numbers for business are the immediate solution. When you browse a Fortune 500 company’s website, you’ll notice that all offer a toll free way to get a hold of their sales team or customer service branches, including internationally and domestically. Most professional entities, like banks, government institutions, nonprofits, and so forth offer these numbers to not only provide conveniences, but also to boost their public image. It’s clear that it’s a method that works.

This is especially true for startups and bootstrapped businesses that want to enter the market right out of the gate. Without the same marketing budgets or available capital, these small businesses can essentially “fake it ‘til they make it” to gain footholds among their target audiences and compete with established businesses. By using every available means of matching your competition, you can establish a foothold in new markets rapidly.

Routing Options with Virtual Phone Number Providers

Toll free numbers are best used in conjunction with the functionality of virtual phone numbers.

Essentially, virtual phone numbers are phone numbers that route calls to another phone number, known as the destination number. Made possible by advances in cloud computing and VoIP communication (“Voice over Internet Protocol”), calls can be routed anywhere in the world. For instance, if you had a toll free virtual phone number, you could funnel calls from Mexico to the United States (or vice versa) instantaneously. This is important, as international callers may be charged by their telephone service provider for calling toll free numbers located outside of their country.

Service providers can offer add-ons and services that can augment how toll free numbers function. For instance, by subscribing to a virtual phone number with call recording, you can simultaneously handle inbound and outbound calls with the security that the quality and content of calls gets backed up. You can then evaluate whether your employees are adhering to your code of conduct and offer the best customer service, or you can have a legal record of a customer interaction if a problem should arise in the future.

Virtual phone numbers increase the reach of your business at minimal cost, especially when the service is compared to establishing a brick and mortar presence in a new country — something not every business is prepared to do. And, considering most customers prefer to handle their transactions without having to run errands between physical branches, it’s a timesaver as well. Additionally, considering toll free numbers are routed just the same as local phone numbers, there’s no perceived difference or delay when calls are made.

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