Toll free numbers
Give your customers an affordable, flexible and effective way to reach you
A toll free number offers your company a large and professional presence, giving your customers confidence in your business and enticing sales calls. Unlike a mobile phone number or fixed line number, callers know that someone will be on the other end of the line when they dial a toll free number.
With a toll free number in place, your callers pay nothing, or the cost of a local call, and you own the number. You also gain access to customised solutions to handle your incoming phone traffic (such as routing and message services).
Benefits for your business
- Encourage sales calls, increasing sales and revenue
- Never miss a sales call
- Your business appears large and credible
- Increase hours and days of operation
- Customers pay local call cost, or nothing at all
- Monitor and measure calls
Toll free numbers have a variety of uses:
Marketing & advertising
Toll free numbers are especially useful when used for marketing and advertising as they allow the customer to monitor, measure and improve marketing ROI.
Customer service
Used to monitor and manage customer contact.
Payment lines
Using a 1800 number specifically can help to encourage customers to make payments (as it’s a free call).
Sales rep support Lines
Using a toll free number would allow that company to monitor how much support time each rep requires. It may also allow them to identify areas where additional training is required.
Franchise locator
Toll free numbers can be effective when used for franchises or multi-location businesses, as when combined with the appropriate call management product, can allow consumers to speak directly to their closest store or business location.
Examples of how toll free numbers have provided value to businesses
Rail travel booking company
This company has a large busy call centre servicing enquiries and bookings for rail travel within Australia. Customer contact is via Toll Free numbers terminating directly into their call centre.
How did a toll free number and reporting data assist this company?
- They completed the picture providing originating information they could not obtain from their call centre reporting software
- They highlighted problems and irregularities that they were previously unaware of.
- The Toll Free Top 20 report highlighted a number of exceptionally long duration calls each month.
- Customer enquiries did not take that long to service
- Staff were spending time on personal calls that were not business related
- The company was not only paying for the call but they were paying staff whilst on these calls
- Calls were being lost in queue because staff were on calls
The solution
The Call Centre Manager printed and placed the Top 20 Report in the call centre where all staff could see it.
The impact
- The long duration calls ceased
- Staff spent their time servicing business related calls
- More calls were answered
- Less calls were lost in queue
- More bookings were achieved
Large hotel chain reservations call centre
This company has a busy call centre servicing customer enquiries and bookings for their many Hotels throughout Australia.
How did a toll free number and reporting data assist this company?
- They completed the picture by providing an external view of call volumes into their call centre
- They could determine where their calls were coming from by region and even individual caller
- They could compare the toll free number reports with their internal call centre reports
- They discovered that the toll free reports showed a higher volume of calls coming into the call centre than their internal reports contained.
Time was spent analysing and comparing the information in their internal reports with the toll free number reports.
- We discovered that their phone system was not programmed to report on calls with a duration of less than 10 seconds (this was the length of their pre recorded welcome message)
- Potential customers were hanging up when they heard the pre recorded welcome message
The solution
- They programmed their internal system to report on all calls
- They had to decide if they should continue with the welcome message
The impact
- They now had a means to measure customer contact outside of their internal system
- They could make informed decisions to rectify a problem they previously did not even know existed
- They could make changes to increase reservations
- They could identify other areas of call handling that could be improved to increase efficiency
Next step
For more information about toll free numbers call 1800 881 272 or Click Here to send an online enquiry and we'll call you back within one business day.
Related Links
1300 numbers >
1800 numbers >
13 Numbers >
New Zealand 0800 & 0508 numbers >
International Toll Free Services >