41w w w . h o m e b u s i n e s s j o u r n a l . n e t40 J a n u a r y / F e b r u a r y 2004 z HBJ

In tough economic times businesses rush to decrease costs to weather

the storm. All too often the cost-cutting leads to a direct decrease in

productivity. The savviest managers find ways to reassess many core

operational expenses, leading to the

selection of new technologies and

services to reduce expenditures and

gain productivity.

One way to do this, surprisingly to

many business owners, is by taking

advantage of innovative and produc-

tivity-enhancing toll-free services now

on the market. Toll-free services are

nothing new. For decades companies

have offered 800, and its 866, 877

and 888 derivatives, allowing cus-

tomers, partners and employees to

call without incurring long-distance

charges. What makes toll free servic-

es more cost effective and productive

now is the ability for non-technical

employees to route, track and manage

options in real-time via the Web.

Instant routing without expensive

equipmentIt became apparent in the marketplace

that there was a real need for a cost-effective service that allows companies toinstantly change where an incoming toll-free call is routed. For example, if callsare coming to an office that is notmanned at a particular time, routingthem to an off site line, cell phone oranother employee can help a businessincrease sales and provide better servicewithout missing a beat. But the realityof today’s business climate is that com-panies no longer have the time to waitfor a telephone company to make a cen-tral change or the funds to buy andmaintain large amounts of equipmentthat brings routing in-house.

At the heart of a small number ofthese innovative toll-free services is asimple set of Web pages allowingauthorized users to manage all of theirtoll-free numbers. Routing rules can beestablished based on time, state, areacode and even individual number. Therules can be changed at a moment’snotice to meet emerging needs. Sincethe system allows for different levels ofaccess, employees can be granted accessto change and view only the elementspertinent to their job functions.

These features have already provenimmensely beneficial to companies of allsizes.

In the case of a service’s large corporateclients, enhanced toll-free service hasenabled sales, customer service andalliance management teams to publish asingle toll-free number, yet route calls toappropriate employees based upon thecaller’s telephone number or region. Mostimportantly, the routing is done withoutthe cost of a receptionist or the always-annoying endless automated phone-treesystem. When a specific employee is outof the office, a simple visit to the Webpage can have the incoming toll-free callsrouted to another location.

Assessing program success

Many toll-free services now featurean advanced call tracking system. Acall detail database with predefinedreporting by toll-free number, sourcegeography and time period allows cor-porate leadership to make importantbusiness decisions based upon call vol-ume, such as expansion, reduction orchanging business hours to meetdemand.

Marketing departments in large cor-porations utilizing these services havealready found the service irreplaceablein terms of managing advertising andpromotional campaigns and assessingcampaign success.

Marketing people used to have tojump through hoops to gain the statis-tics necessary to assess the success ofpromotions. Instead of paying for mul-tiple numbers and engaging consultingcompanies to mine data from special-ized telephone systems, enhanced toll-free service enables non-technical mar-keting personnel to access call detail.Since this detail is stored to a database,it can be linked to CRM andeCommerce data sources for purposesof campaign return-on-investment andsales-lead time analysis.

Many corporations fear needing tochange routing parameters to handleunexpected results during a campaign,as it would require costly equipmentprogramming or weeks of time for atelecommunications service provider tocomplete necessary changes. This is nolonger the case, as they may simplymeet challenges by altering routing on-line in real time.

Cost-effective for any size business

Large corporations are not the onlybusinesses currently utilizing thesenewer toll-free services to increase pro-ductivity and sales leads. Since you canget such a service for as little as $2 forsetup and $2 per month plus usage fora single toll-free number from a compa-ny such as Kall8, it is affordable for

companies as small as one-person oper-ations. Kall8 offers one of the mostflexible toll-free services available,allowing businesses to receive, route,track and manage incoming calls.While benefiting sales, marketing andcustomer service departments, it doesso without any costly equipment or spe-cially trained technical support person-nel.

Toll-free services allow small compa-nies/home businesses to operate liketheir larger corporate counterparts.Without the expenditures of a recep-tionist or costly in-house equipment, abusiness can always take important callsand send others to voice mail or toanother employee. Business people whoused to hand out office, cell and homephone numbers, or risk missing impor-tant calls can use one toll-free phonenumber that follows them throughoutthe day.

Among the most popular benefits ofsuch services is the ability to choosewho is allowed to use the toll-freenumbers. As is the case for call rout-ing, calls can be immediately and auto-matically accepted or rejected based onstate, area code or full phone number,an essential tool for keeping costsdown.

Toll-free numbers can be programmedso that they can be accessed only by thepartners, sales leads, customers andemployees the numbers are designed tosupport. By significantly reducing toll-free number use by unwanted callers,companies find they have more moneyto use toward improving the position-ing of core business operations.

When businesses are looking for bet-ter ways to increase revenues and man-age costs, while at the same time stimu-lating sales, it makes a lot of sense toevaluate these affordable and results-oriented toll-free services.

Barbara Silverman-Hauke is VicePresident, Marketing for Kall8(www.kall8.com), a Seattle-based compa-ny that is quickly gaining popularity as alow-cost, high-productivity telecommuni-cations service provider.

Inroads in Toll-free Phone Service Cut Costs While

Improving Business Efficiencyby Barbara Silverman-Hauke

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