Change your Business Perception with a Vanity Toll Free 800 Number

Monday, February 11th, 2013 at 2:59 PM EST

Perception is everything in business, but have you ever stopped to think how your phone number may be impacting your quality of service? A good example of what I mean is our friend Chris.

Chris is a photographer…

He has gigs across the U.S. but his local telephone number tells another story…It says, “I’m limited.”

“I may not be able to serve your event, because I’m all the way over here….and you’re way over there.”

When the economy is strong and you have no choice but to turn local customers away, it’s not something you worry about. But when markets shrink, and you need to capture every lead – you need greater reach within the market.

Chris noticed that his call volume began to drop, and all but fell silent the further potential customers were from his immediate area code. Even though he was willing to travel, was his local telephone number giving the wrong perception? Was he sending the wrong message to customers before he ever met them? Being a savvy entrepreneur that he is, Chris called his friend Jeb at Phone.com and asked how a toll free number may impact his business.

Toll free numbers are not limited to geographical locations. They represent a well-established business, and they allow a greater reach. Now when Chris hands someone his business card, he knows he is not immediately dismissed based on location, and in today’s competitive world this may give him an advantage. Just as a customer has freedom to reach companies outside their local community via the web, so too companies should have the freedom to reach beyond their geographical location and appeal to out-of-the-area customers. And in today’s have-it-your-way world, Phone.com offers Vanity Toll Free numbers that can spell out your business name within the number.

Try it Yourself with a Coupon Code

Try our vanity search option below to customize your toll free number today, and use either coupon code when you check out: “FreeVanity” or “Free800″.

Getting Ready For NEMO Just Another North East Blizzard

Friday, February 8th, 2013 at 5:16 PM EST

I guess we need to get used to these blizzards now.

In late October we were getting ready for Superstorm Sandy. Luckily Nemo is nothing like it. We at Phone.com just wanted to let all our customers that we are ready and to remind you that if your local phone service is disrupted you can always use your Phone.com account to forward calls to other phones. Here is a link to what we posted back in October regarding call forwarding settings

Stay safe!

America Calling

Friday, February 8th, 2013 at 4:48 PM EST

By Stuart Zipper

Most Americans have, by now, gotten pretty used to unlimited domestic long distance. Most cellular users have likewise seen the dreaded “roaming” charges disappear, as long as you don’t leave the borders of the U.S.A. But there are some of us who have family, particularly kids or parents, who do live overseas, for any of lots of reasons. Calling them from a traditional landline can be costly, calling from a cell phone prohibitive. If you don’t do it right, that is.

By now, most Phone.com users know that they can call the landlines in a host of countries at no extra charge, and can call cell phones for a fraction of what it once cost – less, indeed, than it used to cost to call just a few hundred miles away in some parts of the U.S.

What some Phone.com users – particularly those who are taking advantage of home phone service which at Phone.com closely parallels what’s available to small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) – may not know is they have at their disposal a simple method of calling loved ones overseas from their cell phones … at Phone.com rates. Indeed they can call overseas family members from any phone at all in the U.S., say from a friend’s house, and their friend won’t have to pay a penny.

The trick is simply to set up a menu with choices for callers to choose which member of the family they want to reach. For example, press one to ring your phone at home, two to ring your cell phone, three to ring the missus’ cell, and four to reach your son or daughter overseas. Essentially you’re turning the cell phones into virtual extensions of your home phone, exactly the way a business would do it (an awful lot of residential VoIP providers simply don’t offer menus to their customers). Then you can call home from your cell, press four, and speak to your child either for no extra long distance charge if he’s on a landline, or for nickels and dimes instead of dollars if the call is going to his cell. (You will also be using minutes on your cell phone plan, but those are really cheap these days.)

Of course there is a little risk involved. That’s because the call to overseas cell phones isn’t free (hey, Phone.com has to make a little money!). And your kid’s friends can call your home and ring his or cell cell phone just as you can – but you’ll be paying for the call. By the minute.

Then again, if you’re a really nice Sugar Daddy, you might even get the kids overseas a separate U.S. Phone.com number. That’s what I did.