Business phone number is an integral part of any business. It helps businesses gain brand credibility, which in turn increases trust among their customers. Along with that, it helps in separating business calls from personal calls.
Having a phone number that is dedicated to the business helps in maintaining a professional presence, which helps the company in its overall growth. VoIP Office provides a dedicated business phone number to all its customers.
Business Phone Number
Since business phone numbers serve as a direct line of communication, it is more than just a series of digital numbers. They help in building the brand of the company and are one of the direct lines of communication between partners, clients and contractors.
Whenever a market campaign gets started, the business phone numbers are one of the selling points that helps the prospective leads to reach out, which results in increased volumes of calls that will help to expand the customer base.
The business phone number is completely used for work purposes only. Which happens to be the company’s official point of contact. It is an added asset to the company itself.
Getting a Business Phone Number
To get the business phone number, a few steps have to be followed, they include,
Consider Industry & Budget
To understand the business communication needs and audience preferences, a suitable phone number has to be determined. Like, if the company is targeting local customers, then they will require a local business phone number. However, if they want to have a more global business, then they should go for a toll-free number.
Service Provider
The next step is to find a phone number provider. When selecting the provider, a few build features like call analytics, voicemail-to-text, and CRM integrations have to be considered.
The phone number service provider should have a track record of maintaining zero latency of calls. Even features like voicemail, call forwarding, and other features must be considered.
Selection of Phone Number
Selecting the business phone number is the next step after selecting the service provider. By considering the target audience, whether local, national or even international, a phone number has to be selected.
Setup Phone System
Lastly, the phone system with appropriate extensions and features is set up. Phone extensions help transfer phone calls to connect to relevant employees or even departments. This helps in connecting customers to the right person.
Like assigning 1 for sales, 2 for support, 3 for billing and so on. It makes it easy for customers to identify the correct number to dial for extensions.
Types of Business Phone Numbers
The right type of business numbers helps in effective communications, which leads to global branding. Different types of business phone numbers are,
Local phone numbers
These numbers cover a specific geographical area and are recognizable to local customers. The local phone number helps businesses develop their local presence, which is more affordable than other available options.
The selection of local numbers does not need to match the physical business address. That is the beauty of virtual numbers. It helps the customer select the phone number of the local area that fits their target market, even if they are operating from another location.
Toll-Free Phone Numbers
Toll-free phone numbers allow customers to contact companies without incurring any fees. They are important for making a company’s national brand and help generate customer inquiries.
These toll-free numbers for business usually start with prefix numbers like 833, 855, 800, 855, 877, 844, 866 and 888, as stipulated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
For those businesses wanting to project a friendly and professional image with the national or large international customer base, toll-free numbers are best for them.
Vanity Phone Numbers
For those businesses looking to build an impressive and memorable brand presence, Vanity phone numbers are really good for them. These numbers are customized numbers.
They use letter combinations to spell the company-related words and phrases like 1-800-CALL-VoIPOFFICE, 1-800-MY-APPLE and others. It helps in improving the recollection of words for advertising, which in itself is a powerful marketing tool.
The business houses rely heavily on their branding along with advertisements with catchy slogans or names, where the companies want to stand out on their own in this ever-growing competitive market.
International Phone Number
Companies catering to the needs of a large international customer base from different physical locations from different countries require an international phone number. This number could establish a local presence in another county.
Direct Inward Dialing (DID) Number
This phone number is really important for companies with high inbound daily call volume or large numbers of employees.
This number helps the caller to connect directly to the phone extension, voicemail box, or the relevant agent by going past the IVR (Interactive Voice Response) call menus.
Virtual Phone Number
The virtual phone number works via an internet connection using VoIP technology, which is more cost-effective and more adaptable when compared to traditional landlines. They are never attached to any particular location and can redirect all incoming calls to any given device, which helps in improving the movability of employees.
Business Phone Number Features
The virtual business phone application will serve well if it has features that fulfill all the important needs of the business. A few important features include,
Mobile App: Having a VoIP mobile application for phone calling is one of the important features to be considered when selecting the phone service. It allows conversations even when on the go.
Call Forwarding: This feature helps to direct calls to any other phone number.
Auto Attendant: These are menus that use voice prompts to navigate customers to the right department.
Voicemail Transcription: A VoIP service that helps convert voicemail to text or even voicemail to email will be of immense benefit to business. It provides automatic notes from voicemails.
Call Recording: This feature ensures that all inbound and outbound conversations are backed up. It helps to remember all important conversations.
Call Parking: It allows the caller to be kept on hold in the cloud and enables the employee to pick up the same call from where it was left off. It ensures that an expert attends to the call without having customers hold the call for a long time.
Call Analytics: It provides data that ensures that all employees are productive in terms of their phone calls.
Benefits of Business Phone Number
Having a dedicated business phone number has many benefits, as it helps the business grow professionally and in a well-organized way. Business owners starting in a small way find below given benefits most important, especially when expanding their businesses,
Improves Credibility & Trust
Having a personalized business number helps to recognize businesses with trustworthiness. It helps to build credibility among the partners, customers and various other stakeholders.
It shows that the company takes their business seriously and is devoted to providing professional services.
Work-Life Stability with Privacy
It is easier for Work-life balance to co-exist when there is a clear separation between professional and personal life. Just like this, a business phone number helps in managing business phone communications without any compromise on privacy.
By having the business phone number, the company staff can answer calls from customers professionally without the need to disclose their personal phone numbers. It helps in keeping a clear boundary between personal time and work.
Clear & Productive Communication
The present modern-day business phone service providers offer a lot of powerful features that help in perfecting communication functions. Like call routing, caller ID, call screening, call management, voice mail transcription and many more advanced functions.
Strong Marketing & Brand Presence
Having a special phone number, like a vanity phone number, or even keeping a local phone number with an easily noticeable area code are powerful marketing tools for businesses to grow.
It helps to boost the company’s brand presence, which makes it easier for existing and prospective customers to remember and contact the business. This helps in coming up with stronger brand recognition, which increases customer engagement to a great extent.
Valuable Data & Understanding
Business phone systems help provide important customer data along with call analytics. It includes the time of call duration, call volumes, and peak call times, along with various other benchmarks, with regard to customer communication patterns.
Analyzing the data provided helps in improving staff performance. It also helps to make a blueprint for improving various opportunities in the communication processes.
Growth & Expansion
As the business grows in its structure, similarly, the business phone system evolves, as it also makes progress and expands simultaneously. Which helps to make room for additional employees and even handle increased call volumes from new locations. This helps in supporting the company’s growth.
CONCLUSIONS
It is always advisable to keep a business phone line that works just as hard as company’s management works. Selecting a perfect phone number for business ensures that personal and work calls stay separate, and helps establish a clear distinction between professional and personal communication. Local businesses need to get a local business number so that prospective local customers can answer their calls. It gives a personal touch.
Apart from that, businesses with a national, regional, or even international presence should consider having toll-free numbers. It helps customers to talk freely without incurring any costs for their phone calls. Even vanity numbers help to boost the company brand. It helps in making data-driven marketing decisions.
Along with that, make sure that the phone system has important features like call forwarding, call routing, call recording, voicemail to email, and CRM integrations. The selected phone system should grow along with the business.