An old movie from the 1950s informed us that “love is many splendored thing.” Well, at the risk of offending all of the romantics out there, we suggest that “love is many virtual numbers.”
Admittedly, it’s not the most lyrical turn of phrase. But if you’re a business owner or executive who needs to lower costs, increase productivity, and improve the bottom line, then poetry isn’t on the agenda: getting a hosted cloud phone system with virtual numbers is!
Here are the 7 reasons why your business will LOVE virtual numbers, and why your employees will wonder how they ever managed to survive without them:
1. Give everyone their own extension — for a fraction of the price.
Virtual numbers are not linked to an old-fashioned copper phone line. Instead, they are completely digital and can be assigned to any device, such as an IP phone, desktop softphone app, or mobile smartphone app. The end result is that everyone on your team, including seasonal and temporary workers, can immediately get their own extension for a fraction of the cost.
2. No Need to Buy Corporate Smartphones
As noted above, virtual numbers can be assigned to any smartphone. As such, you do not need to buy corporately-owned smartphones and supply them to your employees. They simply make and receive business calls on their personal smartphone using an app. You will save thousands of dollars a year, and your employees won’t have to carry around two devices.
3. Forward Calls to Any Number
You can easily forward incoming calls to a virtual number to any other phone number. Plus, you can use time-of-day routing to optimize the customer experience. For example, before 9 am and after 5 pm calls can be routed to a contact center instead of going to voicemail — which many customers don’t want to do; especially millennials.
4. Establish a Local Footprint (When You Aren’t Local!)
You can get virtual numbers that are local to different geographic areas. Not only is this easier for customers to remember, but it avoids long-distance charges. Plus, it makes your company appear local — which can be a distinct and decisive competitive advantage.
5. Track Incoming Calls for Marketing Campaigns
Let’s say that you just launched a marketing campaign that includes both radio ads and online ads. With virtual numbers, you can easily assign different numbers to the campaign, and access detailed analytics to see how many calls are coming into each number, when each call was made, and how long each call lasted. Ultimately, you can use this data to see where you are getting the most bang for your marketing buck.
6. Make a BIG Impression
Large enterprises publish several phone numbers for various departments, such as sales, service, billing, shipping, and so on. With virtual numbers, small businesses can do the exact same thing — even if they have a single receptionist answering the phones. What’s more, since the virtual number that was dialed will be displayed, the receptionist (or anyone else answering the phone) will know what department the caller is trying to reach, and can, therefore, answer the phone accordingly. It’s a great way for small businesses to make a BIG impression!
7. Protect Privacy and Boost Your Image
Last but not least, virtual numbers are “owned” by your business — not by your individual employees, even if they are using an app on their personal smartphone. As such, when they make outgoing calls via the app, your business’s name/number appears on caller ID. This is important for privacy, and it also helps boost your image.