Regardless of the kind of business you have, it’s always essential to provide your customers several options for reaching out to you. With this in mind, having a toll-free number may come in handy.
The best thing about toll free numbers is that you can make your line available to everyone without charge. This gives rise to questions like—what are toll-free numbers and why does your business need them?
Basically, a toll-free number is also referred to as a free phone number, which is used for calling companies without being charged for the call. It works with various types of landlines and phones. You’ve probably seen one on handouts, billboards, business websites, and pamphlets.
Instead of customers getting charged for the phone calls, the company will pay for the incoming charges. Thus, customers no longer have to worry about hefty charges when calling businesses for concerns.
If you’re using an autodialer from companies like Call Cowboy, you can easily incorporate your toll-free number to improve your efficiency and customer service. You can never go wrong with getting a toll-free number for your business. If you’re still in doubt, below are the reasons your business needs a toll-free number:
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Take Your Company’s Reputation To The Next Level
These days, it’s very easy to start your own business and market your services or products on social media. Even if it’s without a doubt an excellent way to spread your brand’s reputation and image, it won’t necessarily bring credibility to your company.
Having just an online presence won’t make your customers trust you more. If you want to get your business noticed and earn the customers’ trust, it’s a great idea to use a toll-free number. It can make a difference to your company’s reputation since it’s often associated with legitimate and big companies.
If your consumers see that they can reach you with a toll-free number, they’ll trust your brand more and increase the possibility of doing business with you.
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Improve Customer Retention
More often than not, many businesses only let their customers reach them via email or live chat. Unfortunately, this idea may leave a bad impression on your customers and affect your reliability and credibility as a whole.
Keep in mind that in today’s modern world, everything revolves around providing various channels of communication to consumers, because that’s how businesses are expected to operate these days. So, if you don’t offer your customers a convenient channel, they’ll feel underappreciated and ignored.
Having a toll-free number helps your business improve its customer service because it consequently boosts customer satisfaction. With toll-free numbers, they won’t hesitate to reach out to you because they don’t have to think about the charges of making a call.
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Boost Your Customer Service
Providing excellent customer service is one of the most crucial things you can do to make your business successful. Not only does it help you retain customers, but it also helps in boosting the image of your brand.
You should know that several customers prefer talking to people when they have inquiries or concerns regarding your products and services instead of sending a private message on your social media or business email. If you want to serve your customers better, give them options to get in touch with you easily.
Getting a toll-free number for your business is a good decision since it enables your customers to contact you without spending a dime. The great thing about a toll-free number is that it’s easy to remember, which means you can use it as a marketing tool at the same time.
So, the next time you launch your marketing campaigns, don’t forget to include your toll-free number. By doing this, your business can generate more sales since your target customers will more likely reach out to you and learn more about your offerings.
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Easy To Remember
One of the reasons your business needs a toll-free number is that it’s much easier to remember, unlike other numbers.
Since a toll-free number is easy to remember, your customers will more likely contact your business for inquiries, concerns, or questions related to your products and services. As a result, it helps improve your customer experience while enabling you to increase your revenues.
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Portability
If you’re planning to relocate to a better area, you’ll be glad to know that having a toll-free number won’t give you any inconvenience. It makes things easier for you since you only need to forward calls to other phones.
In short, your customers will still be able to get in touch with you while you’re moving your business into another place.
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Help You Monitor Your Campaigns
You might already be running some marketing campaigns and most of them are on digital media, billboards, or other prints. If so, when you assign such campaigns your own toll-free numbers, you can easily track even the minor details.
With a toll-free number, you may track the relevant details when your customer reaches out to you for individual campaigns. Moreover, you’ll learn about the most preferred time of making calls and their location. All of these data are helpful once you decide to launch another marketing campaign in the future.
There are several advertising channels where a toll-free number can be incorporated and these include email campaigns, direct response campaigns, and broadcast ads.
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Maximize Your Sales
One of the essential roles of businesses is generating sales. If you want to grow your business and develop new products and services, you’ll have to generate more sales. As a business owner, it’s your job to never stop looking for ways to boost your sales.
Other than coming up with various marketing campaigns and innovating your products or services, you must also try incorporating a toll-free number into your business to encourage potential customers to purchase from you.
You may use toll-free numbers to boost your sales by encouraging your sales team to cross-sell or upsell products and services when they’re talking to potential customers. Bear in mind that your callers will more likely buy something from your business after hearing detailed information about your products and company.
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Give Your Business A Competitive Edge
Branding plays a big role in the success of any business, and having a toll-free number can make a difference to your branding. By providing your potential and current customers with easily accessible and reliable business contact numbers, you can guarantee that you’ll be able to catch your customers’ attention.
A toll-free number is typically used by companies to build a trustworthy and professional image for their customers. With that image, you can stay ahead of the competition because it’s a given that everyone would want to work with credible businesses. Thus, despite the price of your products, your customers will trust you and find your products worth every penny.
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Establish Your Presence
Whether you’d like to have a corporate image or connect with your local customers, they’re not impossible to achieve if you have a toll-free number. A telephone is still the business owner’s best friend and depending on your selected toll-free number provider, you can avail yourself of a phone number that enables you to have a national and local presence wherever you are.
Who Must Invest In Toll-Free Numbers
There are different kinds of businesses that can benefit from investing in a toll-free number and these are the following:
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Small Businesses And Startups
Whether you’re an established business or just getting started in the industry, getting a toll-free number makes sense. If you’re a startup, a toll-free number can provide you instant credibility since people recognize such numbers as trusted phone numbers.
If you’re a growing small company, using a toll-free number will let you widen your reach, enable your business to scale, and change your phone system without causing disruptions to your customers’ calls.
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Franchise Businesses
Whether you’re just planning to franchise your business or you’ve successfully franchised your business, getting a toll-free number is never a bad idea.
With a centralized business phone system and a number that connects all of your franchises, you can expand your operations to different locations across various cities.
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eCommerce Businesses
If you’re running an online business and don’t have a brick-and-mortar store, it’s beneficial to get a toll-free number.
Other than credibility, a toll-free number provides your online business a nationwide presence, so you can appeal to all of your customers anywhere as compared to using phone numbers with local area codes that make you seem like a local or new store.
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Home-Based Businesses
Like startups, a home-based business needs to project a reputable image to attract customers and let their existing customers feel like they’re dealing with an established business that can meet their requirements.
Using a toll-free number in conjunction with a virtual phone system will help your home-based business look and sound more credible and professional.
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Local Service Businesses
If you’re operating a local business without a physical location, you must consider purchasing a toll-free number. It will make it easier for your customers to remember your business, particularly if you’re advertising it on billboards or at the side of your service vehicle.
Once you expand your services to some regions, your toll-free number won’t be limited within your local area.
How To Choose A Toll-Free Number Provider
Buying a toll-free number is an important step for any business in stepping up their game. It provides your customers a way to get in touch with your business for free while giving your brand a professional image. However, once you decide to get one for your business, you might find it challenging to choose the best toll-free number provider.
To help you make a wise choice, make sure to keep the following factors in mind:
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Pricing
Before you shop for a toll-free number, you’ll have to know your budget. Take note that each plan for a toll-free number may vary widely. Other providers offer low monthly rates, but only a few of them offer amazing functionalities and features.
On the contrary, some providers have higher monthly rates but offer bundled and affordable calling plans so you can budget your communication needs. So, depending on your budget, make sure to know the pricing of your preferred toll-free number of providers.
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Customer Service
Even if problems with toll-free numbers are rare, there are instances when you might need the help of your provider’s customer service. When this happens, you’ll want to talk directly to real people so your concerns can be solved quickly.
Therefore, when searching for a toll-free number provider, you must never forget to consider customer service as one of the important key factors. If you want to know how the customer service of your chosen provider works, you can search for online reviews. Read what other people have to say about their customer service and determine if it’s a great choice to work with your preferred provider.
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Availability Of Toll-Free Numbers
Due to the popularity of toll-free numbers for businesses, their availability is becoming a commodity, particularly in terms of good numbers.
The best toll-free provider can offer you a range of numbers to choose from, which can boost your chances of finding the right number for your business. A good toll-free number is something that represents your business best. It should have a pattern and multiple zeros. In this way, your target audience and current customers can easily remember your toll-free number.
Wrapping Up
Most business owners have forgotten how business was done before social media and the internet became popular. Even if it’s crucial to have an online presence to become a successful business, it doesn’t mean that you should forget about providing quality support to your customers.
Moreover, although it’s easy to chat with your consumers on social media platforms, it must not stop you from having a toll-free number for your business. Besides, most people still prefer talking directly to your sales representatives instead of just getting emails. So, no matter the type of business you’re running or the industry you’re in, toll-free numbers can make a huge difference in growing your business.
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