Since the inception of toll-free systems back in the 1950s, businesses, as well as governments worldwide, have used toll-free numbers to their benefits, add value to their stakeholders, and as an integral part of delivering better phone experiences to their customers.
Since you are here to explore how a toll-free number can help your business grow and the advantages of a Tollfree number, chances are you are interested too in getting a Tollfree number for your business or venture.
To help you decide what makes a toll-free number right fit for your business, we have curated this list of pros and cons of using a toll-free number. After going through this post, you will be able to get a clear idea about how a toll-free number can help your business grow.
Without further ado, let’s dive into the benefits of a toll-free number
Toll-free advantages as an enabler for better customer experience and higher business growth:
24*7 customer listening
One of the best benefits of a toll-free number is that it keeps your customer support up and running 24*7
Regardless of what time of the day it is, your customers can dial your toll-free number and get real-time support through a built-in IVR facility. It makes customers feel heard and valued.
No tring-tring: Welcome greetings
Let’s consider three scenarios regarding the first thing you may encounter when you call a business helpline:
1. “Tring-tring. Tring-tring.”
2. “The number you are calling is currently busy. Please call again later.”
3. “Hello, and welcome to [Your Business Name]. Thanks for calling. Your call is important to us. We are connecting you to our care executive.”
Which scenario is better? Isn’t it the third one where you are greeted with a custom message?
With a toll-free number, you can greet each of your customers with a welcome message and let them feel respected and influential.
A toll-free number not only makes your brand look more professional but also enhances the confidence of customers in your business.
Boost your employees’ productivity
With the support of Interactive Voice Response (IVR), calls coming on a toll-free number are routed to the right person in the appropriate department.
Therefore, your staff members don’t have to waste their time manually routing calls to the concerned personnel. Tollfree number’s IVR menu well take care of that task, leading to significant time saving and boost in productivity of employees.
Simplified calling experience
On a toll-free number, you can connect as many departments and staff members as your business needs. Therefore, to access different services, your customers don’t need to remember different telephone numbers. Instead, they can call on your toll-free number and choose the desired extension.
One of the most common examples for simplified calling experience at the back of the toll-free number is phone banking, where you call on the toll-free number of your bank and use different extensions for different banking services.
Similarly, on the toll-free number for your business, you can help customers with inquiries before purchase, after-sales support, and everything in between, depending on your unique business requirements.
Better customer care
A toll-free number gives a sense of deep care to the customers since it provides free calling experience for them, an easy way to connect with your business and get instant support.
Caring brand image
Please ask one question to yourself:
“What do I feel about a business that provides me a Tollfree number to reach for a query?”
Well, you regard that business as more serious about its customer service, creating a caring brand image in your brain.
If you use a toll-free number for your business, you can create a similar model for your brand with customers.
Businesses with a caring brand image not only drive customer loyalty but also perform better on the bottom line.
Also, a toll-free number is easy to remember and unique to your brand, increasing brand recall, which, as per research, can generate 20-60% more inbound leads.
Positive word-of-mouth marketing
One indirect benefit that a toll-free number provides to your business is encouraging positive word-of-mouth from customers, which is the best publicity you can get for your brand. At the same time, it also prevents contrary word-of-mouth, which otherwise can hamper all your business efforts. You might ask how a toll-free number help in all that?
Well, a toll-free number empowers your business to provide an excellent customer experience in terms of timely support and quick resolution of their concerns. All of it leads to customers getting a delightful experience and your business getting positive word-of-mouth publicity.
Better customer retention
For the long-term growth of your business, you have to focus not only on getting new customers but retaining existing customers as well and convert them into loyal fans.
One of the most important reasons for customers to switch brands is terrible customer experience and the non-availability of timely support.
A toll-free number can help you in ensuring well-timed customer support and hassle-free experience, ultimately helping you with customer retention.
Better staff training
You must be familiar with the message you are often greeted with when you call customer support on a toll-free number: “This call may be recorded for training and quality purposes.”
Conversations done over a toll-free number are recorded and saved in the cloud database. It can be used to check flaws in the current delivery of customer support. You can fix those flaws on a timely basis, and provide better training to customer support personnel.
Call audit & insights for monitoring & improvements
With the help of live panel for toll-free calls, you can analyze call data, including the number of calls received, the number of calls missed, the location of customers, et cetera. These insights can fuel better business decisions, help you locate new opportunities and areas of improvement.
A base for business scalability
While a customer support number is a helpline for customers, it’s a lifeline for business. It’s worth reiterating that on a toll-free number, you add a staff of as many members as your business needs. It empowers your business to take care of multiple customer calls at the same time.
While a customer support number is a helpline for customers, it’s a lifeline for business.
Further, as your business grows, you can map more staff on a single toll-free number. Therefore, all your customers can connect with your business through a unique toll-free number.
A proven marketing tool
There are no two opinions about a toll-free number as an incredible marketing tool. Be it any marketing campaign; a toll-free number can add value and help to generate more leads.
A study found that advertisements with a toll-free number bring about 30% more orders than ads without a toll-free number.
Advertisements with a toll-free number bring about 30% more orders than ads without a toll-free number.
Also, businesses with a toll-free number are regarded as more credible, and customers associate the products and services of such organizations with better quality. In that way, a toll-free number automates a part of the branding and marketing aspect of your business.
Disadvantages of a toll-free number
Until now, the only disadvantage of a toll-free number that we found worth mentioning is that due to its free availability, it can lead to a large number of unwanted calls from people who are not concerned about your products or services at any level. Businesses that are providing toll-free calling facilities struggle with the wrongdoers who call toll-free as a “pastime” activity! While these calls might be a very insignificant portion of the total calls received on a toll-free number, it still represents a disadvantage of using a Tollfree service for your business.
Besides, many people count the cost of a toll-free number as a disadvantage. However, every marketing and brand building activity involves some cost. If used strategically and deployed with the help of a right toll-free provider after taking into consideration all the nitty-gritty of a toll-free number, benefits and revenue drawn with the help of a toll-free number can quickly take over the cost, leading to addition in business profits.
Conclusion: Is a toll-free number a good choice for your business?
Today, thanks to the affordability of toll-free systems as part of cloud telephony products, businesses of all size —small, medium, or large— can deploy the power of a toll-free number to take their customer calling experience and satisfaction level to a next level, ultimately leading to better customer retention, brand building, and more favorable bottom line.
What’s next?
Still unsure if a toll-free number is a right choice for your business, or why use a toll-free number? Feel free to contact our support team for any questions or give us a call on our toll-free number 1800 123 774, anytime!
To get a free demo of toll-free number for your business, signup for a 3-day free trial of a toll-free number.