How Do Enterprises Use Toll Free Numbers
How do enterprises use toll free numbers? Sales, service,and marketing are the most popular uses, with corporate branding via vanity numbers growing in popularity.
Toll free numbers are revolutionizing the way businesses communicate with their customers worldwide. Today’s large enterprises need to solve complex business challenges and deliver the right tools and strategies for the overall success of their company. What’s interesting is the number of varied uses for which enterprises employ international toll free numbers to keep in touch with clients, provide better customer service and expand the company’s brand presence or service area.
5 Ways Enterprises Can Use Toll Free Numbers
1. Primary Point of Contact
Toll free numbers have become a must have for enterprises and businesses of all sizes around not only as a utility that encourages remote callers to dial in, but as an indicator of the strength and professional credibility of the company. This is partly because toll free numbers were once prohibitively expensive. Only the largest companies could afford to buy and use toll free numbers. So, today, consumers and business customers alike expect to see a toll free number as a point of contact for any company worthy of respect. So, despite their relatively low-cost, most companies use toll free numbers as their primary point of contact in order to appear to be more professional, credible and reliable.
2. Tracking Marketing Campaign Results
Do you need help tracking your marketing campaign? You’re not alone. Corporate marketing organizations have turned to increasingly powerful market analytics tools to squeeze every penny of value from online campaigns. Toll free numbers are an integral part of this effort, as calls to toll free number pools can be segmented by time of day and geo to completely localize and identify the caller and the campaign ad or offer to which the caller is responding.
Example – Coventry medical insurance campaign using a toll free number to track response.
You can use a specific toll free number to track responses of individual marketing campaigns including print, billboard, radio, TV and web advertising. Marketers use this technique to pinpoint strategies that are most effective in order to generate the best results. Not only can you identify what is working, you can also use the ongoing feedback to make adjustments to your message. Toll free numbers act as a trackable marketing tool that drives inbound leads, sales and ROI.
3. Customer Service
Many enterprises utilize toll free numbers as customer service lines that help their business run more smoothly. Customers that live far from a business area may find it rather costly to pay for long distance calls. With a toll free customer care line, callers can feel free to contact a company any time from anywhere across the globe, without having to pay anything at all. With 800 numbers for business, clients worldwide can be able to reach businesses without worrying about any costs since their calls are shouldered by the recipients. For example, below is Delta Air Lines toll free customer service number.
4. Sales, Reservations, and Where to Buy
Sales and marketing organizations use more toll free numbers than anyone else. Forcing a customer to make a toll call is viewed as “friction” in the way of a sale. Customers expect to get sales questions answered at no cost.
Reservation sales are a specialized type of consultative selling. Business travelers and holiday travelers alike want to make sure they’re in the right spot with the right amenities, and that the travel arrangements they make will work well in their overall travel plan. That means customers need to ask a lot of questions, so a toll free number is a must.
Many hotels and travel agencies provide toll free numbers for their customers. By placing a toll free number on your company websites, social media channels and advertisements, potential customers will have a risk-free way to book with your company, and to ask all those questions about their planned travel.
Where to buy is a distinct and interesting use for toll free numbers. National chains with stores all across a region or nation can offer services like “find the nearest store – just enter your postal code or phone number”. Originally, where to buy lines were staffed by operators. Today however, nearly all major where to buy toll free numbers are managed by interactive voice response units (IVRs) that help customers find a store or distributor near to the customer.
5. Branded Identity
Vanity numbers are an extremely effective marketing tool for companies as well. Many successful businesses define their brand with a vanity toll free number, such as 1800 Contacts and 1-800 Flowers. The brand identity is unique and specific, benefiting from a brand based on a vanity number. Vanity numbers are of course catchy and easy to remember.
How Else Do Enterprises Use Toll Free Numbers?
There are many other popular and very practical ways in which enterprise-class organizations use toll free numbers, including some of these important applications.
- Operations and Logistics – trucking company provide freight tracking numbers, roadway service numbers for drivers, and dispatcher contact numbers
- Multinational Sales and Service – Financial, pharmaceutical, agricultural, consumer products, and building materials companies, as examples, provide national toll free numbers in each of several countries served
- Emergency Response and Disaster Recovery – Large scale Industrial, Governmental, and Educational organizations use toll free numbers to dispatch authoritative information during and after emergencies and disasters. Large school systems issue snow shutdown and early closing alerts. Companies provide late opening and shift change information. Government agencies use toll free numbers to provide evacuation details, locations of shelters, and other helpful information.