A low or no toll national number, such as a 1300, 1800, or 13 number, can be a powerful business tool to unlock better customer interactions and encourage people to contact your business rather than your competitors.
The benefits extend beyond encouraging more people to call your business. A national number can provide your business a range of powerful tools and information to extend your reach, improve your service, and enhance your brand.
In this article we will explain how national numbers work, and how they can deliver significant benefits to your business.
Sophisticated control over call distribution
National numbers can be setup so that the business has complete control over how calls are managed and distributed. The options are endless.
- Calls can be routed based on the location of the caller. If you wish to connect callers with your nearest business location you can do that automatically.
- Calls can be routed based on the time and day of the week. You can distribute calls to offices in different states to extend your effective working hours. You can forward calls outside of your business hours to voicemail, or an answering service, or to a person on after hours duty. You can even dynamically route calls based on the availability of staff across all of your business locations.
- Calls can be sent to automated flow processes. Callers can be played an introductory greeting, given a menu of options to choose from, and automatically routed to the right team, at the right business location. This can be done using normal fixed line numbers, but when combined with a national number even a small business can provide their customers with the “big business” experience, but perhaps with better levels of service.
- Call distribution can be changed in real time. Need to arrange an emergency diversion of calls away from specific locations because of public holidays, or staff absence, or workload – simply login and make the change in real time, at any time you want to.
If you can think of a requirement, the chances are you can achieve it.
Reduced or no cost encourages more customers to call
In general, national numbers are designed to reduce the cost to the caller of calling your business.
- 13 and 1300 numbers allow callers to pay only the cost of a local call, regardless of the location they are calling you from.
- 1800 numbers allow called to pay nothing when calling your business.
Instead, the owner of the national number pays the cost of the call.
There are options available if you wish to restrict how customers can use your national numbers, such as not allowing calls from mobiles, but in general most customers choose to accept the costs involved in the knowledge that in return their business is encouraging more customers to call them, and improving customer service at the same time.
Powerful analytics and reporting
National numbers are often paired with powerful analytics and reporting platforms that can provide valuable insights into your customers and their preferences. You can analyse many metrics such as:
- where your callers are calling from
- when they are calling
- why they are calling
- what type of service are they calling from
- and much more
Most platforms will allow you to automate your reporting, and trigger alerts or updates when specific things happen.
Basically, a wealth of information is made available once you establish a national number for your business.
Final comments
We recommend that businesses of any size consider adding a national number to their communications system. The costs are very affordable and businesses can leverage a national number to improve their customer service and operations in so many ways, that it just makes sense for even a small business to have one.
It does not matter what phone system you have (you can have a national number even if all calls are sent directly to your mobile!) how many staff or office locations you have.
All that matters is how you choose to present your business to your customers.