Marketing professionals are convinced that advertising with a toll free number can bring in 30% more orders than advertisements that carry no toll free number. Additionally, statics show that product return rates can be decreased by as much as half. Interestingly, it is learnt that customers call in to resolve their problems after buying rather than return the goods if a toll free number is provided.

There is no denying that toll free numbers are a great boon for the business community. The 800 number by itself motivates consumers to readily respond. Vanity numbers – in other words, the toll-free numbers that spell out a word or words associated with a product or brand, are far more productive though some may consider it not cost-effective. A market survey was conducted to compare the impact of numeric toll free numbers versus toll free vanity numbers in radio advertising. Half of the ads mentioned a numeric phone number, and the other half mentioned a vanity number. The results: The vanity number received a whopping 14 times more responses than the 800 numeric.

Here are some valuable tips on how to fully take advantage of toll free numbers:

When you print sales promotion materials like – business cards, pamphlets, brochures, and catalogs, make sure to prominently print your toll free number preferably in a couple of places. Make a habit of coloring or bolding the toll free number as also the words – “toll free”. When you advertise in print medium, mention your toll free number and preferably use the phrase “Contact us TOLL FREE at…”. Customers must be firmly reassured that the phone call to your business will cost them nothing. Make sure you display your toll free number on your website in several areas and be sure to include your email address so customers have two options for contacting you. If your business can afford it, create a vanity number, so that people easily remember your business and contact details.

Further, toll free numbers attract customers to your business because they give it an air of professionalism. They also increase the customer’s confidence in the security of financial transactions with your company. With a toll free number, you can also create a virtual office in your home-based business. A huge benefit of your toll free number is – calls can be forwarded to your cell phone, pager, email address, and even you home phone – thereby no longer tying you down to your office desk. Toll free numbers also carry a lot of features including audio conferences, professional voice announcement feature, call screening, call recording, call forwarding, auto attendant etc.

Please know that apart from businesses, there are enough toll free number benefits to your personal life as well. A toll free number will tempt everyone in your life to regularly contact and stay in touch with you. Even less affluent relatives will find it easy to call you regularly by getting a personalized toll free number. The toll free number benefits both you and all your friends and relatives, as they can stay in close contact. A toll free number will benefit school-going children and college-going children as they will be able to call you at any time, even when they have no money.

Nothing is serving free for the breakfast. This is the just best utilization of communication skill for instance how to sell comb to the bald person if planning and strategy are manipulated conscientiously, the positive result is inevitable. In the same way, toll free is misnomer, does not mean exclusively free call. Whenever the manipulation of this technology is wielded, consumers will have to pay for this service.

Toll free conference calls are totally free for the participant under the banner of any scheme. Companies offer many package for the consumers. They can wield it via dialing into the call conference company. The payments for the calls are made by the minute for the length of the call. It depends on the customers calls how many calls are made by the consumers. If the more calls are made, the more benefits are given to the customers. A flat rate conference call package needs participants to pay their long distance charges. The organizations which hire this technology, they pay a flat fee to set up the service.

It has many advantage of toll free conference call which is fruitful for the business men, students, scientists, sales men and the rest. If participant is unable to make it, they need to consider about it. in fact, company will bestow them play back which can be exerted by the participant with in  specified time. 

Below is a list of items you may wish to shop around before you finalize your service provider.

1.Virtual PBX Services: Many of the toll-free providers simply route the calls to a local number without presenting the various virtual pbx options such as call-hunt, follow-me, auto attendant, voicemail, dial-by-name, business hours greeting and non business hours greeting etc. Make sure these services are enabled and are provided free of cost to you.

2. Check for double-billing and cancellation charges: Most of them double bill and you may want to stay away from these providers. This will save you from surprises and hidden charges in future. Be sure to read the terms and conditions for hidden cancellation charges. They go as much as $100.

3. Auto-Attendant with voicemail: An auto attendant with an option to record your own voice as welcome greeting is a must for every business. 800PBX provides free greeting done by a professional artist.

4. Call-forwarding: Many providers forward calls however they are usually sent to your cell phone’s voicemail and not properly screened for a live person. 800PBX prompts for user input to avoid redirection to local voicemails.

5. Call-blocking and custom greetings: Expect lot of spam calls and your provider should be able to give you an option to prevent calls from user-defined numbers.

800PBX allows you to play a recorded message for the calls coming from user-defined numbers. The system hangs up after playing a message. (”XYZ corporation does not entertain calls from this number. Please hang up and call us from a different number if required.”)

6. Call-recording: Your business may require you to record all calls in order to maintain call records and for quality-training purposes. 800PBX offers this feature free of cost.

7. Fax: With an ability to send and receive faxes on internet, you save few dollars in buying and maintaining fax machines.

8. Dedicated local number: Your business will expand in future and you should be ready to add more numbers from each state.

9. Once you choose a service provider, look out if he is a reseller or someone who rents or leases the toll-free numbers. It is wise to opt your toll-free number from a direct seller.

10. Online panel and extension login: Be sure to enquire about the online panel features and check if each extension user can create his or her own rules.

11. If you have a website, make sure your provider gives your online customers to call you directly using web dial feature. If you use email for your business, an option to contact you from your outlook signature would help.

800PBX provides all the above Features for less cost along with free minutes for Each plan. Please evaluate the services free of cost for two weeks. Good luck with your new provider and 800PBX looks forward to serving you.

Additionally, multi-line phones will require human operation, including at least one receptionist to manage every incoming call. The receptionist monitoring a multi-line phone system is no doubt a busy person. Having to answer calls, put callers on hold, and route the calls to the correct extensions can be exasperating because humans can only do so much at one time. As a result, many calls are missed, messages are lost, and business is not functioning as efficiently as possible. While one can hardly expect any receptionist to answer every single incoming call, it is an essential component to good business practices and excellent customer service. Without either of these things, business can really be impacted negatively. First impressions are key.

With the additional benefit of a toll free number, not only will all calls get answered in a prompt manner, more callers will be enticed into calling a free line, as opposed to having to dial long distance using only a local number. Toll free numbers make sense for any business, no matter the size or specialty. The virtual technologies that are used in conjunction with the toll free number eliminates the need to purchase a costly multi-line phone system and instead simply port phone calls to other already-established phone numbers. For instance, staff can have calls routed to local land line numbers or cell phones, so calls can be taken on the go – something you can not do with a multi land line phone.

Businesses need to remain flexible and pursue both old and new technologies to make the company fully functional right from the start. If a business does not have a national presence, a toll free number can certainly help to increase their marketing efforts using the toll free line ad add flexibility and functionality to any office.

There are many different companies that offer toll free 1 800 numbers to businesses. They are usually priced by the number of minutes per month they afford. If you are only going to be using the phone for 100 minutes or less each month, you can pay as little as ten dollars monthly, but if you own a large business with lots of phone lines, you’ll have to likely pay more in the range of $100 a month. It all depends on what kind of service you need.

If you want to be available internationally, you have to pay more. Fortunately, international 1 800 numbers are rarely needed by most businesses. It just isn’t practical. Even if you are a large shipping company, you will only have to talk to people in large companies a moderate amount, and they will gladly pay the cost to call you internationally as part of the cost of doing business. It is in the end much better to let them foot the bill than paying the high and often extreme rates for international toll free numbers.

As a consumer, be wary of 1 800 numbers. I remember when I was growing up, they were all free – that was what “1 800″ meant. And most of them are still free. Many people are still not warned of this, sometimes people will get a number that starts with those numbers, but charge a high toll to call it. They may even tell you somewhere that there is a toll usually – at least they are supposed to, but even if they do, they will try to hide it, in small print at the end of a commercial or something like that so it is hard for you to notice.

Before you know it, you may be paying as high as $2 per minute when you thought you were actually calling for free. This tricky scheme is especially common overseas where the telecommunication regulations controlling the phones and the phone companies are not as tight as they are in the US.

Many consumers are certainly cost-conscious which is why they are online, researching the best deals before they decide to make a purchase. By providing a convenient and free way for customers to reach out and order the product they are interested in without further thought of additional costs of a phone call, your company stands a better chance at making the sale. Customers, while technologically savvy, will still likely rely on the human touch. Many are still skeptical about entering personal information into online applications or order forms. But there is something still safe about communicating with a real person over the phone.

As companies selling products continue to grow, the toll free phone number can certainly grow with it, without additional cost or need for upgraded phone equipment. Your toll free phone number will get a lot of attention and therefore your company will need to be prepared to handle the increase in phone calls. With the virtual PBX phone features that accompany a toll free phone number, a company can easily establish individual extensions and set up different departments for staff to handle sales calls or offer customer support advice. The user friendly online management system enables office staff to implement an effective means of communication that can handle an increase in calls, even if they are coming into the office simultaneously. Callers will never receive a busy signal and will always be greeted in a timely manner by a personalized message and an auto attendant. The auto attendant will answer and forward all calls at the direction of the caller. No more long hold times that may have in the past discouraged potential new customers from waiting or calling back.

A toll free number system has been operational since the 1960’s and the industry has been growing ever since. The traditional toll free number started out to be 800 but has since expanded to include 888, 877, and 866. Companies from all industries have recognized and employed a toll free number to assist their business growth and make calling even more convenient for all customers or clientele.

The traditional 800 toll free number system has been around since 1967 so it is automatically assumed by many consumers to be the only “true” toll free prefix. As the years have passed, different variiations on the toll free number prefix have been produced to include 888, 877, and the most recent prefix of 866, which was brought into use in the year 2000.

However popular the new numbers have grown over the years, there are many consumers who still do not feel totally confident that these different prefixes are in fact toll free calls that do not incur charges. Because of consumer hesitation, many companies refrain from ordering prefixes for their company other than 800. Due to this belief, it has become increasingly harder for business to snag an 800 phone number over the years so companies have had no choose but to institute a different prefix. There has been help from the media and web resources that have offered a deluge of information to assure consumers that the different prefixes are still, in fact, toll free phone number.

Since then, the new prefixes seem to be coming into fashion, particularly the 866 prefix, which has surpassed the 877 prefix in popularity. This has, in turn, prompted many businesses to feel comfortable with utilizing the 866 prefix for their business needs because they know their customers will understand the call is still free.

There are several advantages that businesses who use the 866 prefix:

It is less likely that your employees will have to waste time answering calls going to the wrong number since there is a slim chase that any other business had the number previously due to its newness.

There is more of a chance for a business to get a customized phone number that allows the company to have more marketing power.

Using a service that allows you to choose your prefix and customize your business toll free phone number is a much better route than approaching the local telephone company. Most phone companies will only issue your business whatever number they have next on their availability list, without much concern for your wishes. If you want an effective marketing tool, it makes sense to invest in a good toll free number, customized to service your business. You make the call about what prefix you wish to have but ultimately, all toll free prefixes have risen in recognition and will no longer be a cause for concern to consumers.