As a small business owner, it’s in your best interest to use every tool you can to drive operational efficiency and business growth.
One tool that companies can leverage is an inbound number. Unlike personal phone numbers, businesses and organizations use inbound numbers to receive calls from multiple sources.
Specifically, a call center agent or a designated department within the business office answers these calls and supports customers with their specific inquiries.
Beyond connecting customers to companies, an inbound number offers many other features that make it a valuable asset for growing small to medium enterprises.
Are you in a learning mood? This article explores seven reasons why an inbound number is essential for up-and-coming enterprises. Let’s examine these reasons in more detail!
Allows 24/7 Customer Handling
One major perk of an inbound number is its ability to handle multiple callers at once.
With a personal phone number, you’re limited to one line and one caller at a time. This can become a major operational bottleneck, especially as your customer operations ramp up. Furthermore, it also relies on you being always “on call”, which can be a major obstruction to your work-life balance.
A personal phone number not only limits how many customers can reach you, but can also delay operations when multiple staff members need your attention at the same time.
Inbound numbers ease this problem. Inbound numbers like Telcoworks inbound 1300 numbers can be configured to connect to multiple lines with a respective representative for each line.
This means that multiple calls can occur simultaneously, increasing customer satisfaction and handling capacity. With automatic call distribution systems, callers can be rerouted to the right department more easily.
If you run a business that receives a fair amount of calls daily, having an inbound number can significantly optimize your communications. You can also set up your inbound call system to connect with agents day and night, ensuring that all customer queries get answered. This will make your business run more efficiently in the long run.
Improves Customer Service Quality
Another perk of an inbound number is its ability to improve the quality of service for each customer query.
An inbound number lets you manage a dedicated customer care team, ensuring customers can reach a subject-matter expert whenever and wherever. It also lets customers reach your company with shorter wait times than personal phone queries, which is a huge plus.
Customer support assurance is great, but that’s not all. Inbound numbers also include built-in dashboards and analytics that supervisors and agents can use to track individual progress, giving a quantifiable basis for performance and prompting adjustments based on these metrics.
With an inbound number, customers can feel at ease knowing they’ll receive quality, professional service. This can make them more likely to contact you in the future and helps you continue building customer loyalty.
Pushes a Professional Image
Credibility goes a long way in building customer trust and ensuring business continuity. If you want to stand out from the competition, a business inbound number can be a great way to project a credible, professional image for your business.
Inbound numbers like a 1300 number often stand out from standard personal phone numbers because of their unique starting code. This can be even more effective if you use vanity number techniques to boost your marketing efforts, like 1300-FLOWER for your flower and bouquet crafting shop.
When you include 1300 numbers in your marketing campaigns, whether through digital or physical channels, you can boost your business’s impression rates and speed up customer acquisition.
This is because these numbers often give the impression of a big, established business. This can be the difference-maker in getting customers to choose your business over competitors who rely only on personal phone numbers.
Streamlines Communication Channels
Let’s face it: manually calling a staff member to walk across the office to answer a query on a fixed telephone line can be excruciatingly time-consuming. Not to mention quite unprofessional.
It’s also a waste of time for customers to ask receptionists to provide the personal phone number of a specific staff member or department office. Unfortunately, for companies using non-inbound phone numbers, this is the reality they’ll face daily.
With an inbound phone number, however, this back-and-forth is virtually eliminated.
These numbers ensure that callers can connect to open lines with assurance. Receptionists and customer care agents can also easily reroute calls to their respective end destinations with a push of a button.
This reduces wait times and helps customers and companies get things done more smoothly. With an inbound number, employee productivity skyrockets, and customers become happier—what more can you ask for?
Tracks Customer and Agent Performance Insights
An inbound number isn’t only useful for taking in and handling multiple callers. It’s also a great analytics tool for gathering customer information, marketing insights, and team performance metrics.
Inbound numbers provide insights into your customers in various capacities. As soon as the call starts, the receiver can see personal information such as where the customer is calling from, the caller’s history, and other details that help them provide the right support.
Furthermore, calls can also be tracked and recorded for further internal use. This can provide insights into customer trends and patterns, helping supervisors and agents improve their services in data-driven ways.
Key performance indicators can also be tracked with the built-in inbound call system. The inbound number’s software systems track metrics such as average resolution time, first response time, abandonment rates, and tickets handled per hour.
This gives supervisors a quantifiable metric to track individual agent performance, prompting them to take action accordingly.
Scales According to Needs
Do you value flexibility? With an inbound phone number, you won’t have any trouble scaling up or downsizing your operations.
Many inbound number providers let you upgrade or downgrade as your business needs change.
Don’t have enough call volume to justify a high-tier plan? Need a higher plan to accommodate an influx of new callers? You can downgrade or upgrade your plan, respectively. All you have to do is inform them and make the changes on their website. They can do it, no questions asked.
This flexibility lets you adjust expenses based on business needs. Pricing plans in each tier differ in monthly caller capacity and feature offerings. Be sure to review each plan’s details and decide whether it fits your needs.
Facilitates Nationwide Operations
As mentioned earlier, an inbound number works as long as the receiving number is connected to it. This means that you and your CS team can answer calls from anywhere with telecommunications infrastructure.
For example, you can reach a 1300 number from anywhere in Australia, including Tasmania. The number is also subject to local toll rates, meaning Sydneysiders can call Melbourne-based offices and be charged as if they’re calling within their local area code.
This reduces the barrier to calling and encourages more customers to contact your company with their queries, no matter where in the country they’re calling from.
Furthermore, nationwide operations let you set up offices anywhere in the country. This lets you tap into talent nationwide and have them work remotely to support your operations.
This also benefits you as a business owner. You don’t have to switch numbers to the local area code every time you’re out of your main office. You can stick with one business number connected across multiple branches, which is especially convenient for businesses with nationwide operations.
Conclusion
Inbound numbers are a versatile and indispensable tool for small to medium-sized businesses. Their ability to enhance customer service, streamline communication, and provide valuable insights makes them a worthwhile investment. By implementing an inbound number, businesses can foster stronger customer relationships, optimize operations, and ultimately drive growth. With their flexibility and scalability, inbound numbers can adapt to businesses’ evolving needs, making them a valuable asset in today’s competitive market.
Not sure if you're the bottleneck? Find out in 2 minutes →
