Taking a business global is both attractive as well as challenging for an entrepreneur. International expansion gives a businesses access to faster growing economies but at the same time, it involves adapting to new cultures, different time zones, communicating in newer languages, and many other significant differences.
To handle these challenges smartly, it’s important to streamline and smoothen the process of international expansion. International phone numbers for your business help you achieve the same by making the process of international expansion easier, and pocket friendly. These numbers might not resolve all your problems but they hold your back while you expand your territories globally.
How do international business phone numbers work?
Setting up local offices or call centres in each country you’re expanding to, can be both complicated and expensive. It’d easily drive away at least 20% of the total revenues you’re earning from that country. International phone numbers for your business saves you from such expenditure.
International business phone numbers are domestic virtual numbers of each country you’re operating in. When a prospect/customer calls on these virtual numbers, their calls are being forwarded to the actual phone number which is mapped at the back of these virtual 1800 toll free number.
In this scenario,
- Caller incurs local call rates because they call on a local number of their own country.
- Businesses using such numbers are able to operate from a single country because at the end, calls are being forwarded to their domestic contact number.
This diagrammatic representation will give you a clear picture of the same.
However, just buying an international virtual phone number isn’t enough if you actually want to realize it’s full benefits. It must be accompanied with the right set of features.
9 ‘right ways’ of using international phone numbers for global business
First, automate your business call management
First things first. Along with international business phone numbers, you must buy a full-fledged call management system that automates your business call management.
Reason being, once you buy international phone numbers and map your existing domestic phone number behind them, call flow on your single domestic number will increase. And I believe, you don’t want to miss even a single international business call lead. Right?
Get the time zones right
Different countries, different time zones; well, a little complicated task to handle. A call management system (CMS) makes it easier for you.
CMS comprises IVR where you can set call routing to specific agents as per the time zones assigned to them. This, hence, ensures 24*7 business availability for all your callers irrespective of their time zones and geographical locations.
Let voicemails handle your absence
No matter to what extent you’ve automated your business call management, there could be times when your business calls go unanswered. Agents might be busy on other calls, they might be on leave or there can be any other reason.
IVR lets you handle these situations by letting the callers leave their message in voicemail. One thing, however, must be ensured, that these voicemails are kept organized and a call back must be arranged at the earliest.
Allow your CRM and CMS to work together
Why to work and peep into two different windows, when one can suffice? A call management system gets easily integrated to your CRM through APIs.
CRM integration, thus, helps you see all your customer data in a single window at once. This also helps you generate tickets or leads automatically in your CRM.
Make your callers feel special
With different countries, comes different languages. People in France speak french, people is US speak English, and so on. Ofcourse, you’d not want to greet all of them in the same language.
IVR helps you greet your callers with a personalized welcome message in the callers’ native language. You can also set up customized welcome greeting for different festivals or events.
Kick away ISD calling charges for your callers
One of the most direct benefits of using a virtual number is that it eliminates ISD calling charges for the callers. Callers call on domestic phone numbers of their own country which involves local call rates only.
Not only this, even if you make outgoing calls from your CMS, you incur lesser charge as compared to actual ISD charges.
Leverage the power of your call recordings
I must mention, this is one benefit every company looks for. A CMS gives you free call recording facility that helps you record all your business calls.
These call recordings can be used to monitor call quality, train new employees, understand buyer persona of your international customers, and build call intelligence system.
Make ‘Call Only Ads’ your new favourite
Call leads are undoubtedly the best leads a business receives. This is because, here verbal communication is involved, and hence, chances of converting a caller into customer is more as compared to leads with whom we communicate on written platforms.
So, once you get virtual business phone number for each country, you must use them in Call-only Ads targeting customers in those specific geographies.
Peep inside your business calls insights
You never spend your resources blindly. Do you? So, same goes for your business calls. Your business call analytics reports helps you know your business call volume, caller demographics, peak calling hours, calls missed or received and many other information.
So, you can measure which specific geography is driving you more number of calls, your peak calling hours, at what time most of the calls are being missed, etc. Further, these information can be utilized to determine the quality and quantity of agents to be assigned for a particular geography and time-zone.
Takeaway:
International phone number is a boon for global businesses. So, stop battling with on-call global communication issues and automate your international call management with the help of international business phone numbers. International business phone numbers will definitely increase your business call leads, enhance your international customer service, and give your business a professional outlook.
