Inbound Telemarketing Numbers

Freephone Services:
0800, 0808, 0500 Numbering Services
Using an 0800 or an 0808 freephone number can help you increase response rates for advertising and marketing campaigns. Given that the call is free, prospects are more likely to contact you.

Research has shown a freephone number is a key factor for prospects in deciding which company to call. Ensure it's your company they are calling and not your competitors.

• 61% of UK consumers are more likely to call a company with a freephone number than a comparable competitor.
• Freephone numbers can generate up to three times greater campaign response levels.
• 85% of customers will use a freephone number in preference to paying for a call.
• Only 10% of UK businesses use a freephone number.

Source: NOP 2002

Benefits:

• Increase campaign response levels by giving prospects an incentive to call
• Enhance and build your corporate image by portraying a professional appearance
• Gain a competitive edge over companies not using a freephone number
• Reduce incoming call costs from your remote or mobile workforce

• Sales and marketing campaigns
• Donation and advice lines
• Dial-up access to the company network
• Landline calls into the office

Lo-Call Rate Services
0845 Numbering Services
Encourage customers to keep in touch by using a lo-call rate number to subsidise the call cost. The caller pays a low call rate, regardless of their location and you simply share the call costs by paying a low fixed pence per minute rate.

Benefits:

• Encourage interaction by giving your customers low call rates
• Create superior after-sales service that gives you an edge over competitors
• Reduce communication costs for your remote workforce
• Maintain customer loyalty by making communication easier

• Telephone ordering lines
• Customer support and helplines
• Emergency maintenance

National Rate Services:
0870 Numbering Services
National rate numbers can be a cost effective way of talking to customers and prospects when there is an assured demand. Your callers cover the cost of the call by paying a fixed national rate, regardless of their location. If you generate high call volumes, your national rate numbers may even provide additional revenue.

You can choose either an 0870 or 0871 number depending on what the line is used for and the call volumes generated. With an 0870 number the caller pays the price of a national call, whilst with an 0871 number the caller pays a higher fixed pence per minute charge, which may offer you greater revenue-share returns.

Benefits:

• Earn revenue on incoming calls
• Generate genuine incoming calls

• 24-hour help lines
• Ticket booking and information lines
• Guaranteed demand services
• Consistent employee telephone numbers

Geographic Numbering Translation Services:
Sometimes you may want to portray the image of a local business rather than a national company. Using one of our geographic number options allows you to do this whilst retaining the features and functionality of a Non-Geographic Number, so you can route calls to the response location of your choice.

Benefits:

• Local representation without a physical presence
• Offer regional customer support
• Undertake targeted marketing campaigns in specific regions or areas

• National expansion
• Local Marketing Numbers

International Freephone Numbering Services:
International number services can help you move into overseas markets and provide customer service to overseas clients. Expand into 44 countries worldwide, without the cost or complexity of establishing a local office, as all calls can be answered by employees in the UK.

Benefits:

• Maximise international sales opportunities
• Reduce costs by routing calls to existing UK sites
• Reduce costs and simplify expense claims

• Overseas expansion
• Route calls to local language speakers

Intelligent Network Call Routing:
Direct Response is a strong advocate and user of call routing plans over NGN services. So much so that we use intelligent network routing to ensure seamless transferring of calls for our customers and between our two UK call centres.

You can improve customer service by giving customers the response they need, ensuring they talk to the right person, at the right time.

Emergency Routing:
Pre-defined routing plans can be implemented in the event of an emergency to ensure calls are always answered and customer service is not affected. Please see our Disaster Recovery Service

An office fire alarm evacuation is completely unnoticed by customers as all calls are routed elsewhere until the problem is resolved.

Time, Day and Date Routing::
Calls are routed to a different location, depending on the time of day, day of week or date to allow you to maximise resources.

Calls are routed to another location, or an answering facility, outside normal business hours, at weekends and bank holidays.

Ratio routing:
Calls are routed according to staff resources at multiple locations.

One call centre has 85 staff and the other has 15 so a higher percentage of calls can be routed to the office where there are more staff.

Retail stores can use pre-recorded messages to tell customers about opening times, freeing up staff for other activities.

Area Routing:
Calls are routed according to staff resources at multiple locations.

One call centre has 85 staff and the other has 15 so a higher percentage of calls can be routed to the office where there are more staff.

No one can predict the exact response to a TV advertising campaign, so when agents are busy at the primary call centre, callers are directed to an outsourced centre ensuring all calls are answered to maximise sales opportunities.

Queue Routing:
When staff are busy, calls are held in a queue to ensure callers are not lost when the lines are busy.

A utilities company uses queuing to cope with increased demand at lunchtimes when more people make enquiries and look to pay their bills.

If a call centre becomes busy, calls can be queued, played a pre-recorded message advising them to call again later or routed to a voice form where the caller can leave a message.

Interactive Routing:
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) routes calls directly to the most appropriate agent. By selecting numbered options, the caller is transferred directly to the specialist best able to handle their enquiry.

A bank may use interactive routing to determine if customers are calling about current accounts, loans or credit cards so they can be routed through to the correct department.

Key clients calling a customer service line are routed directly to their account manager without needing to select IVR options.

Voice Forms:
A voice form automatically captures information so there is no need for handling staff to deal with the call.

• Keep your business competitive by ensuring efficient resource usage
• Measure the effect of corporate growth and change
• Seamlessly implement disaster recovery plans
• See the benefits of enhanced cost management

• Analyse the success of full or trial marketing campaigns
• Measure the impact of advertising, using call patterns and caller location data
• Cost-justify individual advertising media by using separate numbers to measure response
• Reliably measure media effectiveness without using advertising reference markers

• Monitor customer service levels
• Check efficiency of call centre performance
• Ensure staffing levels are capable of handling call volumes by monitoring call trends
• Identify staff training requirements
• Use information to provide a better customer experience
• Identify unanswered calls by volume and also by number of individual callers