Call Routing Services and Phone Numbers

Your business phone numbers are a crucial component of your organisation. They are presented on all letterheads, websites, emails and promotional material and are the direct line between you, your customers, suppliers and other key business contacts.

Before July 2015 many UK businesses operated with 08xx main business phone numbers for their incoming calls. These non-geographic telephone numbers were commonly used to increase sales and raise the profile of your company. However, research performed by telecoms regulator Ofcom highlighted that consumers were frequently confused by 0845, 0843, 0870 and 0844 business phone numbers and were often hesitant to call them due to lack of clarity concerning the costs of these types of calls.

Aside from the 0800 or 0808 numbers which are recognised nationally as being Freephone numbers and of which are now included in UK mobile phone bundles, many 08 numbers can actually act as a deterrent to your customers. You want a business phone number that potential customers aren’t afraid to call.

Geographic numbers, also referred to as virtual numbers or 01/02 numbers, allow any business regardless of location to apply local area numbers to generate more calls. This means that your business can be based in one city, but your customers think they are dialling an area code for somewhere else.

The benefits of having an 01/02 phone number are that you can have a prestigious telephone address for your business whilst being somewhere else entirely. If you reside in one part of the country but might wish to drum up business somewhere else, geographic numbers can create the impression that you are situated in the target customer’s town or city.  Also, because geographic numbers are portable, it means that no matter where you may decide to relocate your offices, your telephone number goes along with you.

All calls from UK landlines and mobiles are charged to your customers at the standard rates for 01/02 and 03 business telephone numbers which are crucial in today’s competitive market where everyone is looking to save money.

Location is a big factor in how prospective customers perceive your business. It is a known fact that customers feel safer if they shop locally. That way, if any problems arise they can simply pick up the phone, safe in the knowledge that the business they are dealing with is not too far away and so any problems shouldn’t take too long to be resolved. Your customer or prospect may not make the call if your number seems uninviting and expensive to call. The more familiar your phone number is to your clients, the more likely they are going to continue to call you.

Call routing systems are alternatively known as Automatic Call Distributors (ACD). It refers to the ability to route calls to different people and locations depending on a variety of factors. The most basic type of call routing is call forwarding were you simply forward the call to the next available user should the number dialled be busy.

Intelligent Call Routing, however, offers many more advanced options and capabilities. ICR forwards the call based on a specific set of instructions. These instructions define how the call should be handled so that the call is routed to the right person in the right department using criteria such as:

• Geographic origin of the call
• Phone number the customer is calling from
• Phone number the customer dials
• Time of day or day of the week the call is received

This improves customer service by directing the calls to the agents who can best answer the client’s questions at the right time.

Better call management means better customer service, and a good call routing strategy benefits everyone. Being able to resolve enquiries quickly and efficiently is always going to yield a far better customer experience than waiting on hold. That’s why improving the customer service experience starts by helping your customers reach the right departments faster. With call routing, you can have online access to a full range of monitoring and managing tools to empower your business with the perfect customer service.

Tech Advance provide inbound telephone services that are feature-rich and can improve customer service through tailored call plans to suit your business. You can access a full range of call routing, monitoring and managing tools to empower your business with the perfect customer service.

Key features include:

• Intelligent call distribution ensuring each of your customers gets through to the right person every time
• Quality caller experience allowing you to easily monitor your call activity with an option to escalate any calls when needed
• Flexible working so your agents can work from anywhere and take inbound calls for multiple departments from one device
• Gain access to historical and real-time data so you can address any training needs that may be required or identify where you need extra resources during peak times
• Quickly escalate difficult customer queries if your agents need support from more senior members of your team
• On-demand, scalable service giving you the option to only pay for what you need and allows you to scale up or scale down with the growth of your business
• Disaster Recovery – Pre-configure a backup plan for telephone call routing on the numbers in the event of a disaster recovery situation. If there was an emergency in your business, or you are unable to get into the office, you can set up a Call Routing option so that all your calls are routed to another number. This could be in your second office or if you are a small business, you could have them routed to your home. Either way, your customers need never know that you are dealing with a disaster and business can continue as normal.
• Call queueing – queue callers with announcements if all your employees are busy. This is an ideal solution for peak call periods such as ticket sales when you don’t want callers to get an engaged tone and hang up.
• Call recording – record incoming phone calls in the cloud through the platform.
• Routing plans – you can set your calls to route differently at different times of day, on different days of the week. Also, spread calls evenly over different teams at different sites.
• Routing by number called – route calls to a number on different teams/site, dependant on where they are calling from.

Tech Advance know how important inbound calls are to your business.  With our intelligent telephone numbers and call routing services, we guarantee you have access to all available standard UK local numbers beginning 01 or 02. With around 650 area codes across the UK to choose from, that’s a lot of scope for your business.

We can also configure any of the above types of inbound telephone numbers to ring in a way that you choose, by using the technology in the network or the cloud, without you having to spend thousands on an expensive on-site phone system.

With our intelligent call routing platforms, we can enable features like automated answering with greetings, queue announcements or press 1 for “sales” and 2 for “service” type systems.  We can even make your calls ring different locations at the same time or in order. This includes mobile numbers and landline numbers which can prove critical if you have a mobile or distributed workforce.