Customer service plays a crucial role in building a customer base and improving customer loyalty. If you fail to uphold proper customer service practices, your prospects may look elsewhere for their needs and wants—leaving good revenue off the table.
There are a variety of tools you can utilise to improve the customer experience, one of which being an inbound business number, like a 1300 number for Australian-based businesses and organisations.
An inbound number is more than just a phone number that your customer can contact whenever they want to send an inquiry your way. This inbound number has distinct features that set it apart from traditional personal phone numbers, helping your business operations in both minor and major ways.
If you’re curious about the benefits of a 1300 number, then read on. We’ll get into the nitty-gritty and explain why having a 1300 number will put your business in an advantageous position over the rest of your competitors.
Let’s get straight into it!
1) It Improves Brand Recognition
A 1300 number is an excellent tool to assist customers and stakeholders in recalling your brand from memory, particularly as a contact point. This isn’t typically the case for businesses that utilise personal phone numbers, as these phone numbers lack the customisability offered by inbound number providers like Teleca.
The improved recall offered by this number type can be attributed to several factors. For one, a 1300 number can be customised to incorporate a sequence of letters to create memorable words or patterns for your business. For instance, a business specialising in printing services can use 1300-PRINTER as its business number.
Besides the boost in promoting customer recollection, businesses can also benefit from using these vanity numbers to boost their marketing efforts. Using a 1300 number with a recognisable sequence of numbers/letters afterwards can make your business come to mind when potential customers need or want your offering.
2) Pushes a Professional Front
Many Aussies subconsciously feel more at ease when dialling a business with a 1300 number. This is largely because an inbound number type is associated with credible businesses, organisations, and corporations, which can elevate the impression of your own business in turn, no matter your business’s size.
Furthermore, with 1300 numbers, callers don’t have to receive a generic busy line message whenever your business fails to pick up their call. Instead, they can either talk with another open agent on the line or receive a prepared voice response providing them with relevant updates. This can save them a lot of frustration and uncertainty regarding your business’s availability.
In any case, features found in a 1300 number can help make the customer feel comfortable and heard, making them more likely to trust your brand and its promise. This is because the number is often seen as legitimate and professional, which is something customers across all industries want as their provider.
The subconscious effects of business numbers also help establish credibility and trust to your brand, making customers feel more likely to choose you over the competition, especially if they’re only using personal phone numbers.
3) Offers Call Management and Analytics
As much as possible, avoid profiling your customers based on hunches and gut feelings. You should instead rely on cold, hard data to create and refine the customer experience that they seek and deserve.
With a personal phone number, caller information will be quite limited, and comprehensively tracking them all will be close to impossible. On the other hand, 1300 numbers have built-in call management and analytics features that not only give you an overview of individual caller behaviour but also an adjustable history of past caller trends.
This is great news for your business, as these data points can be used to train your customer support team and allocate and optimise your resources effectively.
As an example, some things tracked by 1300 numbers include call volume, peak call times, call duration, missed calls, customer locations, and response times. These insights help provide a more comprehensive view of your company’s customer service operations, thus making it easier for your team to come up with strategies to continue appealing to your customer base.
4) Nationwide Calling Coverage
One primary perk of a 1300 number is its local call rates. With a personal number, calling a phone number based in a region with a different area code will incur additional calling costs. This can remove the incentive of them calling your business, thus leading to your company losing out on a potential return customer.
A 1300 number does away with this by offering people from all over Australia the opportunity to connect with your business without having to pay a hefty national calling fee. This elimination of the geographical barrier helps keep your business top of mind regardless of its geographical distance from the caller.
With a 1300 number, you’re offering your customer a fighting chance to maintain a connection. This is a good thing, as you can potentially correct or resolve issues your customer may have regarding your offering.
Besides maintaining a solid customer contact point, this number can also contribute to your brand’s expansion beyond its immediate vicinity, creating more opportunities for growth and profitability in both the short term and the long term.
5) No Busy Lines
One of the major irks of a customer when dealing with a customer service line is having no one answer the phone and having to wait on hold.
Callers who frequently call your business line but meet no response will eventually lead to your business losing them altogether. They may even leave a scathing bad review or drop negative word-of-mouth to their friends, family, and community.
Obviously, as a business, you wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of this criticism. Businesses that own personal numbers are more prone to this negative outcome as calls are limited to one person at a time, unless your business offers two or more cellphone numbers.
With a 1300 number, however, you can expand your customer support operations and create as many open lines as necessary to meet customer demands. A 1300 number allows this because its primary feature allows it to accept calls, manage overflows, and automatically redirect calls to open lines with ease.
With these features, your customers will gain access to smooth and easy communication. This makes it easier for you to retain them, improving customer loyalty and making them more likely to spread the good word about your business—particularly if you manage to resolve their primary issues.
6) Voice Response and Menu Options
Another exceptional feature of 1300 numbers is its ability to set up interactive voice response (IVR) menu options. The IVR refers to the robot caller at the start of the call that guides you to the department you’re seeking without you needing to speak to a live agent.
This voice response option makes it easy for your business to essentially eliminate the time-consuming back-and-forth that customers and staff go through to manage the customer’s needs. Moreover, the automated system also helps your customers get in touch with the right contact faster and more efficiently, making for better customer service.
Moreover, your business can also set up pre-recorded messages to provide after-hours assistance or updates when specific menu options are chosen. This ensures that every customer is dealt with and in the loop regarding your business’s current availability and situation.
We hope we’ve made the importance of 1300 numbers to you. Best of luck in improving your business’s customer service experience!
To read more content like this, explore The Brand Hopper
Subscribe to our newsletter
