Image Source: Telephone Line
A while back I post “10 Google programs to operate your small business for FREE.” Running a business requires a lot of attention to the business operation. Saving your business operation cost is equally important to make profit. Make your customer’s life easier and save their money will bring you more business. It’s also important to make your customer trusting your business. Providing great products is not enough. Give your customer a great customer services is also important.
I have tried many ways to lower the cost of my business operation. I found reliable web hosting from ANHosting.com. I use Google’s free calendar, gmail, and alert for my day to day business operation. I use free AOL pictures to store my huge photo collections.
What’s next money saving add-on for my business operation?
Recently, I added a toll free phone number to my online business. I was using AIM Phoneline for a while. It’s a great service, but it’s not free to my customers. You can read more about it at “Best communication tool for your home based business – AIM Phone Line.” I decided to get a toll free number from Kall8.com. Kall8.com offers great 1-800, 1-888, 1-877 and 1-866 toll free services. It’s a pay-as-you-go type of services. It costs just US$2.00 to setup and US$2.00 monthly fee to get start. It charges US 6.9 cents per minutes. With this toll free phone number, you can receive voice mail, fax and redirect / forward the toll free call to any phone you like in the United States. You can also forward the calls to different phone numbers based on the schedule. For example, you can forward the calls to your cell phone between 8 AM to 5 PM, and forward the calls to your home office phone number. If you signup with multiple toll free numbers and forward to the same phone number, you can also enable the call announcement. This will tell which toll free phone number your customers are calling. You can manage all those under one account.
I can receive the voice mail through email. I can also listen to the voice mail on the web. I am very happy so far with their toll free services. There are also other add-on services you can get with very low monthly fee.
If you would like to add the toll free phone number to your business, you can check it out at Kall8.com.
Thanks for sharing this toll free number tips, certainly a great tool to help mobile SOHO business that is always on the run while still keeping a decent professional presence.
@DotServant:
Thank you! Yes. It’s actually a great way to keep communicating with your customer while you are traveling. One cool way to combine this service is to conjunction with AIM Phone Line. So I forward the toll free number to my AIM Phone Line number. So I can receive calls anywhere in the world.
Isn’t that cool?
Those rates are pretty reasonable. I don’t use toll free but i do use a local call rate number. This is because, if I’m marketing to a particular town in my area – I don’t want potential customers to realise that i don’t have their town area card. If they did, some of them may chose a business based in their own town instead.
I love google’s free calander
The ad tracking feature of toll free numbers is an invaluable tool for businesses. In my business I signed up with the online company http://www.tollfreenumber.org for my toll free 1 800 phone n umber and it has worked great. The ad trackking capabilities is far beyond what most other phone companies offer.
@CatherineL:
The local number seem to be a great idea for marketing. I believe that a toll free number may make your business look better than the local number does.
@DarkWave:
Who doesn’t like Google Calendar? I use Google Calendar over Yahoo Calendar. It’s one of the greatest services I have ever use. It’s too bad that it doesn’t have a desktop version.
@Bill B:
Thank you for your information.
Definitely its a good idea to have a toll-free number for your business, but it can be really expensive maintaining that number. So I guess it depends on whether you are willing to spend a lot on that number in order to offer something of value to your clients.
@Toronto Headline News:
I agree with you. The good thing with Kall8 is that I can set my maximum monthly budget. It’s very important to calculate the ROI on toll free call. I am hoping to bring in more trust from my customers, which is priceless.
Yes it is a good idea to have a toll free number, but as a consumer, it always occurs to me that the cost of it is ulitiamtely passed on to the consumer.
@Recliners:
It depends on where you shop. There are many company transfer your calls to a third party phone line which will cost your money to talk. In some case, they charges your international long distance fee. I hate that.
I have heard many Internet Marketer mentioned BBB, HackSave and 1-800 number on your site will increase your conversation rate. I will see if my 1-800 number make difference.