June 29, 2022
June 29, 2022
While every single call is essential for a business, the business number on which the call is made is equally crucial. Investing in complex and costly hardware-based phone systems with physical phone lines is no more the only option. In today’s digital age, virtual phone numbers for business phone systems offer a flexible and affordable solution to build a strong and professional phone presence for businesses of all sizes. In this post, we are going to discuss everything about virtual phone numbers for business phone systems. Let’s go!
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A few years back, hardware-based business phone systems were used by companies around the world. These phone systems used telephone devices connected from the telecom carriers to the phone unit via physical telephone cables. These telephone devices were tied to individual phone numbers and were limited to the premises of the company or business. With this, some of the major challenges faced by businesses using traditional phone numbers were:
With the above-mentioned points, it is clear that traditional phone systems were not able to provide businesses with all the benefits required in today’s dynamic communication landscape.
A virtual phone number, also known as a virtual DID number, for business, is simply a telephone number but it is not tied to a physical telephone line. Instead, modern-day cloud-based business phone systems offer virtual phone numbers as a part of their feature set. A business can make and receive calls using a DID number for enterprise in the same way as that of a regular phone by connecting via the cloud or the internet. A company’s inbound agents as well as those working remotely can make use of virtual DID phone numbers to interact with customers and prospects by accessing their business phone system on an internet-enabled device.
Let’s use an example to understand the concept of Virtual Business Phone Numbers.
Imagine you have a small consultation company called XYZ Consultants. As a growing business, you certainly want to establish a professional and solid phone presence without the need to invest in expensive physical phone lines and telephone equipment. This is where the role of a virtual business phone number comes into action. Having a virtual phone number for your business allows you to route and manage calls efficiently, helping in establishing a professional and flexible phone presence.
Virtual Phone numbers are not tied to wired networks. These numbers are hosted on a cloud-based platform or hosted phone system. Customers can simply dial the virtual number to connect with a business and the call will be routed to an agent based on conditions like time, location, availability, etc. If the business is using an IVR, the call will be routed to the concerned agent based on the caller’s query.
Virtual Phone Numbers offer much more features than your cell phone number. Here are some key features to look for when selecting a virtual phone number provider:
Multilevel Interactive Voice Response i.e. Multilevel IVR or auto-attendant feature of virtual phone numbers provides callers with prerecorded greetings and a predefined menu with options to choose from so that the call gets routed to the most suitable agent or department. It helps in establishing a professional image of the business in front of their customers. Also, it is of great use in business scenarios where there are multiple teams and departments.
Call forwarding and call routing options allow businesses to effectively and efficiently manage their calls while ensuring that each call gets directed to the right agent or department.
Let’s understand this through a simple example. Suppose that an incoming call arrives on your virtual business phone number and your IVR menu prompts with options like “Press 1 for billing, Press 2 for Sales, Press 3 for customer support, and so on..” Now if the customer presses button 2 from his dial pad since he has a sales-related query, then the call will be directed to an agent in the sales department.
If you still don’t know the best thing about virtual phone numbers, then here it is. Any call that arrives outside your usual business hours does not get missed away. Virtual phone number systems offer customers the option to leave their voice messages which can be later accessed by the agents as Voicemail. So this is for sure that most of your calls get acknowledged which significantly reduces the likelihood of losing any good opportunity. What makes it even better? The voice message can be received on a specified email as an attachment for easy access.
The call reporting and analytics feature of virtual phone numbers compiles all the data associated with customer calls and presents it in a well-organized and graphical form. This makes it very easy to understand the profitable sections of the business as well as the areas that need improvement.
A simple example is the call volume analysis. Having reports and analytics for your business calls helps you in identifying the peak traffic hours in a day, week, or month. This helps you in allocating your resources in a better way so that adequate staff is there to handle high call volumes.
Mainly, virtual phone numbers come in 3 forms, as mentioned below:
These phone numbers are such that they resemble the phone number of a locality. For example, you have your business set up in the US but you still can show your presence in Australia by getting a local phone number. This helps in breaking the regional barriers to your business growth.
As the name indicates, these numbers are free for the caller to make calls as the charges are incurred by the business. This serves as a good way to encourage customers and prospects to call the business. These numbers usually begin with prefixes 800, 855, 866, 877, or 888, etc.
These types of numbers are usually a combination or mixture of numbers and words. The biggest advantage of vanity numbers is that they are easy to recall. This increases the likelihood that people are going to remember a brand through its phone number. Suppose a business that deals in paints may want to convey the same through their business phone number. This is possible with the help of vanity numbers as they can have their virtual phone number as 1-800-PAINTS.
The most important step to getting a virtual phone number for your business is conducting thorough research to find reputable virtual phone number providers. You can make a selection by comparing features, pricing, customer reviews, and support facilities offered by different providers.
Based on your research and suitability, select a vendor and subscribe to their service. You need to create an account with them to get access to your web-based phone system. Depending upon the plan chosen by you, the vendor will usually offer one virtual number free of cost. For multiple numbers, you may need to make a nominal purchase.
Once you get the number, it is time to configure the call-forwarding flow. You can choose from various available options which usually are simultaneous ringing, time-based ringing, or location-based ringing. By customizing the flow of incoming calls, you can make sure that calls are directed to the right agents.
Another important step in setting up your virtual business phone number is to personalize IVR greetings and menu options. Based on the type of your business and target customers, you can set the tone of the greetings. Not sure how to do that? Well, here’s a simple example to give you an idea:
“Hello! Greetings for the day! Thanks for calling ABC company! Please select an option from the menu: … and so on!
Many virtual phone number systems offer text-to-speech service using which you can simply enter the text into the system and generate voice output to be used in the IVR.
KloudTalk’s SOLO plan starts only at $25 per month, however, even the most affordable plan offers the following:
Having a virtual phone number is one of the easiest and most effective ways to establish a local presence in your business without having any physical office setup. With this, you can register your business with a local phone number on third-party directories and websites such as Google. Now for all the inbound calls that your business makes, there’s a high probability of prospects picking up the calls as the caller id will reflect a local phone number.
Traditional telephone systems worked on the model of one phone number tied to one telephone system. However, with advanced cloud phone systems like KloudTalk and virtual phone numbers, you can enjoy the flexibility to make and receive calls on multiple devices including mobile phones, desk phones, and even from your laptop or computer system. So even if you want to go out for some personal work in the middle of the workday, you can take calls on your mobile phone without any hassle.
KloudTalk comes with a mobile app for different platforms which means that you can get your virtual phone number on your mobile device as well. So you don’t need to carry two phones to, one personal and one professional. As customers can reach out to you on your virtual phone number without having the need to know your personal phone number.
Have you ever considered the cost of physical telephone lines? It’s huge because there’s a lot of equipment, installation, and maintenance work involved. Even if you think about expansion, you need additional hardware which means more investment.
With KloudTalk, you don’t need to worry about all these expenses – you choose a suitable plan and that’s all that you need to pay for. Moreover, if you consider adding or removing users, you can do that from your virtual phone system web account. This tells us that you only pay for what you use.
The above image shows the countries along with states and cities for which you can get virtual phone numbers when you subscribe to KloudTalk.
It is apparent that a regular phone number is associated with a specific telephone device that requires the installation of telephone lines. A lot of investment and regular maintenance is necessary to run these telephone lines. On the other side, virtual phone numbers can be used on multiple devices and locations. The backup hardware and software required for the working of virtual phone numbers are usually maintained by the service provider, thus leaving very little maintenance from the business side.
KloudTalk is a feature-packed cloud business phone system that offers 50+ virtual phone numbers for your business. Besides this, you can take advantage of Intelligent Call Routing and IVR to ensure that your customers have a pleasant experience dealing with your business. Get in touch with us to know more!
Note- This post was updated on 13-06-23.
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