Get business with your phone number - part I
This guide sets out some of the ways you can maximise the gains from encouraging people to phone your business, and how to ensure they are handled correctly and that they receive the most professional image of your business.
Encouraging Initial Contact
A business’ inbound calls are usually customers with queries, suppliers calling for accounts, sales calls, colleagues, call centres “updating their database”, personal calls and, on top of this, new prospects responding to advertising.
Many small businesses understandably find it difficult to maintain a professional image while dealing with an overload of inbound calls. As a result, callers face engaged tones, answer-machines, irate staff or worse, the phone ringing out entirely.
This could lead to lost business – 80 per cent of new callers won’t call back if they’re greeted by an engaged tone, 80 per cent also hang up when they realise they’re connected to an answer-machine. Lost calls are a waste of marketing spend.
When advertising a number for your business it is vital the number is prominent in adverts. Particularly so in directories such as Yellow Pages where readers quickly scan adverts for a company that is relevant to them.
Some points to consider:
- Ensure your number is prominent
- If you are local, tell them where you are based.
- If you’re not local, use a 0800 freephone number and state ‘Call free on…’
- Always use an 0800 or 0845 number (non-geographic number) if you have one
- State clearly what you do – customers always look for someone listing the exact service they are looking for
The Contact
Once a prospect has rung your number you have no more than a few seconds to ensure you present the most professional image of your business.
- Always answer calls within five seconds (or two rings)
- Make sure the person picking up the call represents themselves suitably, answering slowly and clearly in the company name and giving their name to the caller
- Never use an answer-machine
- If you cannot achieve all of these points you will certainly lose business.
What are Non-Geographic Numbers?
Many companies now use 0845 or 0800 numbers for the prospect’s first point of contact.
An 0845 is a lo-call number where callers pay the cost of a local call no matter where they are in the country. An 0800 is a free phone number where callers pay nothing to ring you. These create the impression of a service that is available anywhere.
Unlike standard numbers, they are not associated with any particular area of the country. Calls to these numbers are translated by the telecoms network and routed to the number/s that you have nominated to handle these calls. These numbers will provide callers with an easy way to respond to your advertising and will increase your response rates.
The Henley Centre for Forecasting showed that the inclusion of an 0845 number in advertising can increase response by 50%.
Benefits of a Non-Geographic Number
There are definite perks in opting for an 0845 or 0800 number:
- Your customers call you for half price or even for free
- Trade anywhere – you have a national presence with an 0845 ‘Non-Geographic Number’ (NGN)
- You still keep your existing phone number – your new 0845 number simply routes to your existing number
- You protect yourself from ‘Big Number’ area code changes
- Use different numbers on different mailshots so you can track the effectiveness of marketing activity.
- An 0800 number can be programmed to call one location then another if no answer
- Take your 0845 number with you when you move
- No special equipment needed
- Quick set up
The Technical Possibilities
It is a common misconception that you have to set up a new telephone line to receive calls to your 0845 or 0800 number. This is not true. Calls to your 0845 or 0800 number can be set up to ring in on your existing business line.
NGNs are also programmable, so should you operate from a number of locations, the number can recognise the caller’s region and route the call through to the nearest regional office, for example, a builder from Bradford calls a Builders Merchant’s 0800 number.
The system recognises his 01274 Bradford area code and routes his call through to the nearest regional store in Leeds.
If the first point of contact is engaged, the system can be programmed to ‘bounce’ the call to the next nearest location, say in York.
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