Forum Moderators: DixonJones
This is easy (in the UK at least) and requires no special equipment. You can set up 0870 numbers from a web based telephone co, and redirect these numbers to any telephone number you choose. The beauty of using an 0870 number over your main number is threefold:
1) You can see, via a web report, a list of every call INTO the main number - complete with caller ID, time, date and duration of call.
2) You can set it up so that when the Receptionist picks up the phone, a message says "hi - this is a caller from such and such a web site - please answer accordingly"
3) If the 0870 number is used frequently enough (20 minutes per day I think) it ends up costing you nothing.
This became a very useful tool for us when we started making productivity based deals with clients. It is easy to build a website and get a percentage of sales, but what if the caller telephones the client direct? Or what if you want a website where the client handles customer service? this made it easy for us as we could base the deal not only on online sales but also on the number of calls made from the website to the client.
I am sure there are a number of suppliers of this sort of system around the world (Sticky me if you want to know ours), but very few people seem to be using the technology for the right purpose. Certainly I haven't seen it mentioned in these forums, so I thought I'd make the post to try to be useful for the day.
Dixon.
Have you considered that you may deter users if you have a 0870 number.
I associate that with premium call costs, and would be reluctant to call such a number.
One B2B client only wishes to have the potenial customer contact them via Email or telephone. A sales person then reviews the scope of work and makes a proposal to the client.
Both the Email and 800# to a call center track to the websites that we built for them. It shows them that these sales leads were from our work and only from our work.
I associate that with premium call costs, and would be reluctant to call such a number.
UK numbers (simplifying). If you see this prefix, it means:
07xx -- mobile/cell (not cheap!)
0800 -- free
0845 -- local rate (cheapish)
0870 -- national rate (long distance)
09xx -- premium (up to GBP3 per minute)
Saying all that- we found that once we got past around a certain amount of numbers the 0870's stopped working (i.e. stopped being cheaper) and switched over to normal numbers.
You can use the system with 0800 numbers or regional numbers, but I think regional numbers take a bit of setting up.
The real DOWN side of 0800 is that it cannot be accessed internationally I believe. Depends on your market place of course.
Interestingly, we ran an extensive trial comparing "ring" rates of 0800 vs 0870. This ran over 4 months with us using 0800 and our competitor running 0870. In this particular market it is very transparent as to each of our conversion rates, regardless of whether the sale was by phone or by web.
We found that whilst we very marginally had a higher conversion rate, there was not a substantial difference in the percentage calling. Worse, the end client pointed out that on average (regardless of the call cost, which we were absorbing) their overheads for handling a sale by phone rather than by web was an extra £15! (Large call center... overspill call center... technology etc.) The service sells for probably £140 but margins are quite tight, so in the end, we decided that 0870 Encouraged users to buy online, but would not dissuade the web doubters.
Anyway... you don't HAVE to use 0870. It is just that we do because then we can set up a new service in minutes instead of weeks.
Dixon.
