Get a Toll Free Number Instantly

You’re starting a new business or breathing new life into an existing one. You’ve come to the conclusion that a toll free number will help you get more sales prospects and orders. It will also improve your reputation for fast and easy customer service. Now that you’ve made the decision you’d love to get started right away. But you have to wait at least a week to establish a toll free number, right?

Wrong! You can have your toll free number up and running in less time that it takes you to read this article. If you don’t want to wait even that long, order and activate your toll free number now. Yes, you can have an 800, 855, 866, 877 or 888 toll free number for your business or personal use as close to instantly as possible.

How does this work. It’s all thanks to the highly efficient online provisioning process from Kall8. They have gone to the trouble of setting up a large collection of toll free numbers, so all you have to do is select one you like the look or sound of and place your order. You pay for these with a credit card that is also billed monthly for your service, so there is no long approval process involved.

How much will a toll free number set you back? Hold on to your chair so you fall off. The cost is just $2 each for 888, 877, 866 or 855 prefixes. That’s what you pay to get your number assigned and set up for use. Then the cost is just $2 a month to maintain service plus the cost of incoming calls on a per minute basis.

Note that the older 800 toll free numbers are slightly more expensive. Those are $5 each and $5 per month plus the cost of calls.

There are even more expensive vanity numbers that spell out specific words on the telephone keyboard to make them easier to remember. Examples of numbers now on the vanity list are 1-877-9-Alimony (1-888-925-4666) and 1-877-5-BIGMONEY (1-877-524-4666). The prices on these vary from $15 to over $100 for setup and monthly fee. What’s an example of an expensive one? How about 1-877-5-MESOTHELIOMA (1-877-563-7684).

What do you get with your Kall8 toll free service? First, you get your number ready to use as soon as you complete the order process that takes only a few minutes. You specify which phone you want incoming calls to go to. These numbers don’t have their own phone line. Instead, you program them to ring to your office phone, home phone, cell phone or other phone that you’ll be near. You can change this ring-to number any time as your location changes so that you’ll never miss a call.

Do you get voice mail? Yes, it’s included. You can call in to get messages from the system or have them sent to you as attachments to your email. That way you can hear your messages on your computer without having to pick up a phone. You’ll also be able to get FAX messages sent to your email as attachments. No need for a separate fax machine to get messages. Just tell clients to send them to your toll free number.

Other features include call blocking, maximum call length setting, Caller ID, and even conference calling with up to 25 participants. These features are included as part of your monthly service fee, starting at just $2 per month.

How much will you pay for calls? The cost to the caller is free, of course. You pay 6.9 center per minute for calls from the 48 US states and Canada. There is a surcharge for calls that come in from Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Guam and Saipan. Payphone callers will cost you an extra 60 cents per call, per FCC tariff.

With toll free numbers as cheap as $2 each and $2 a month, plus 6.9 cents a minute for most incoming calls, it’s hard to go wrong getting a toll free number for your business. There are no contacts involved, so if you don’t want the service anymore, you can simply cancel and only pay for the usage to date.

Are you ready to pick out a number and get it working for you? If so, then choose your toll free number and order it now. It will be ready for use right away.

Cloud vs Premises Contact Center Costs

Many very small businesses need nothing more than a local or toll free number to take customer calls. Medium and larger companies have a sufficient prospect and customer base that they no longer ask whoever is behind the counter to take the calls. They’ve specialized that function, installed dedicated technology and moved it into its own office space known as a contact center. There’s a certain cost associated with contact centers and it’s hard to reduce... or is it?

Up until recently, the only other option was to outsource the function on or off shore. Offshore contact or “call” centers have developed a tarnished reputation from overly ambitious efforts to recruit agents with weak English language skills and/or inadequate technical or procedural understanding. Companies now promote their in-house expert customer service staff as a competitive advantage.

But what about the costs? Is there any way to make in-house contact centers more competitively priced with shipping the function offshore? Fortunately, the answer is yes.

The way you can attack the cost monster is with a combination of lower capital and operating expenses plus productivity improvements. The tools to do that are the latest technology located in the cloud.

Traditional contact centers are what is known a premises-based. They’re either a department within your building or located in a facility by themselves. The technology is an in-house PBX phone system that manages all the agent phones and all the outside lines. Newer facilities may have an IP PBX phone system, which serves the same function but is easier to interface to computer systems so that agent’s screens can automatically display customer data in a “screen pop.”

PBX and IP PBX equipment is expensive to buy and costly to maintain. As these systems get older, technology passes them by and they don’t have all the latest features. It also gets harder to find replacement parts and even technicians who understand the nuances of that particular piece of equipment. Eventually, in frustration, capital is allocated to purchase a new system and the cycle starts all over.

The new alternative approach is outsourcing, but this time it’s the equipment not the agents. You keep the people you know and trust right where they are. What you unload is the infrastructure that doesn’t add value on its own. It’s just a tool, a means to an end. By using a cloud-based contact center solution all of the clap-trap moves “out there,” while you have the same or much better ability to serve your customers and sales prospects.

inContact is a trail-blazer in the new field of cloud-based contact centers. What they provide is infrastructure very much like cloud computing, except specialized for contact center operations. The core is a much more than a simple hosted PBX system. It performs that function, of course, to connect each agent telephone with a customer. That agent can be sitting at the desk they have now or pick up and move to another area, even be located at home where they join the operation on a part-time or full time basis. This alone gives you a flexibility to employ excellent prospects who can’t or won’t commute to your facility every day.

You probably realize that your current PBX system has a certain capacity. You have so many phones and so many phone lines. As soon as you get one too many callers, the system starts giving busy signals to the overflow. That means lost sales or irritated customers who are going to think twice about doing business with you again. The cloud system has an enormous capacity that you can tap on short notice. Do you have seasonal peaks in your business? No need to have extra capacity idling during the slow periods just so you can handle the rush. The cloud can scale up and down to meet your varying needs throughout the year.

Oh, but is the cloud as reliable as an in-house system? Probably more so. inContact offers a service level agreement of 99.99% availability through dual redundant data centers located in Dallas and Los Angeles. There are six layers of cloud security to ensure that your data stays private. Unlike other cloud service providers, inContact was a telecom carrier before they were a cloud company. That means they can also provide the highly reliable bandwidth you need to connect your agents to the system, with only one provider to deal with.

How much can you save? It varies, of course, but a recent study shows that total cost of ownership can be 30% less for a few as 50 seats and sliced by over 50% for a 500 seat contact center. Is that intriguing enough to get you interested in learning more and getting complete details on prices, cost savings and features? You may be shocked by what you are missing out on.

Flat Rate vs Per Minute Toll Free Service

Nearly all companies that sell to the public have or need toll free telephone numbers. People come to expect a toll free number for ordering or customer service. If they have to pay to call you, they may think twice and go elsewhere. It’s a bit like free WiFi. There are so many places that offer it that the ones that don’t seem less desirable. But, did you know that there are two types of toll free services to choose from?

The two fundamentally different approaches to toll free number service are pay per minute and flat rate. Flat rate means you pay a fixed amount each month regardless of how many or few calls come in.

Note that as the business owner you pay for all calls that come into your toll free number. The caller isn’t charged, and that’s the way they like it.

The way pay per minute services work is that the meter starts running as soon as you pick up a ringing toll free call. An excellent service that works on the pay per minute basis is Kall8. For each minute that you are on the phone with a customer or prospect that calls in on your toll free number, you pay 6.9 cents per minute. That rate applies to all calls coming in from the lower 48 US states. Calls from Alaska and Hawaii have a surcharge.

What happens if you don’t have any toll free calls during a particular month? In that case, you pay just the fee to maintain your number. It’s $2 for 866, 877 or 888 numbers and $5 for 800 numbers. All of those prefixes are toll free. Some companies prefer actual 800 numbers because people know what an “800 number” is. Others are fine with the newer 866, 877 or 888 numbers that are also toll free.

For your, say, $2 per month you have exclusive use of your toll free number. It will ring to any phone that you program it to. It’s not a separate line with a separate telephone hooked to it. For instance, you can program your toll free number to ring to your cell phone while you are out and about, change it to ring to your desk phone when you are in the office and even change it again to ring to your home phone so you don’t miss calls in the evening or overnight.

Some other features you get with your Kall8 toll free number are voice mail that you can use the conventional way or have your messages sent to you as audio files attached to email messages. You can block calls from people or areas you don’t want to deal with, conduct conference calls with up to 25 participants and receive FAX messages to your toll free number. The messages can be read online or sent to you as email attachments. That’s a lot of capability for a mere $2 a month.

The competing service is flat rate toll free. A good example is iTeleCenter toll free service that costs $49 a month. For that you get to pick your number from a list of available toll free numbers that are ready to use. You also enjoy 30 features that include online faxing, follow-me call forwarding, and voicemails sent to email or text messages at no additional charge. What’s more, there’s a 14 day free trial so you can see if you like this service before you commit to it.

It should be noted that “unlimited” calling is actually limited to a fair usage amount of 1,000 minutes per month. If business booms and you talk more than this, you’ll pay an overage charge of 4.9 cents per minute. That compares to 6.9 cents per minute for each minute on Kall8.

So, how do you choose between the two toll free services? The pay per minute plan works well for companies with widely varying phone traffic each month or for startups that don’t expect many calls for a long while. Your expenses expand at the same rate that your business grows. However, if you get lucky and your phones ring off the hook you’ll be paying more than you would with the flat rate plan.

Flat rate toll free service is great if you don’t like surprises and want to know what to budget for incoming calls each month. If you are a very small operation and it takes forever to get business going, you will pay more during the slow times than you would with pay per minute toll free service. However, if all of a sudden business takes off, you have the protection of the flat rate. Even overages will cost less than on the pay per minute plan.

Is it time for you get toll free service for your company? If so, learn more and order Kall8 pay per minute or iTelecenter flat rate toll free number service now.

Customer Service Using Clouds and Social Networks

Customer service can make or break a company. You’ve heard how it is so much cheaper to keep an existing customer than get a new one. You’ve no doubt also heard how good customer experiences amount to free positive advertising for your company. On the other hand, one frustrated customer can do a lot of damage, especially these days when social networks make it easy to spread the venom.

Here’s the carrot and stick. Create an excellent customer service system for your company and you’ll be rewarded. Do a crummy job and you’ll be punished royally in the marketplace. Fortunately, it’s easier than ever to take the high road in customer service. What you are seeking is a ready-to-go, easy-to-use customer support system that integrates the new social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, along with traditional contact methods like email and toll free numbers. Here it is, take a look...



Does this sound like the type of system you’ve been wishing you had someone to develop? Forget paying the big bucks for a proprietary in-house system. Assistly has already done the heavy development lifting and is ready to go to work in your organization. Not so sure? No problem. Take the Assistly free trial offer and see if works for you. There’s no commitment. You don’t even need a credit card. Give it a go for 30 days and then see if you can bear the thought of giving up the best customer service tool you’ve ever used.

Assistly is fond of saying that they aren’t just about satisfying customers, but wowing them. That’s the new paradigm is an economy stuck in the doldrums. When business is booming, there’s more than enough for everyone and customers come to accept so-so service. These days customers know that their dollars are valuable and vendors are plentiful for just about anything they want to buy. If you want to stand out and be sought out by prospects and repeat customers, you need some special magic. Where better to sprinkle the magic dust than in the one part of your company that interacts the most with potential and current customers?

Assistly has a fair number of well known and respected businesses on-board with their cloud-based customer service system. Can you really afford to blow off the potential for something that can really goose your sales when they’ll let you try it a month for free? If you sell anything to the public and aren’t already thrilled with your customer service results, take a closer look at what Assistly has to offer your business.

866 Toll Free Numbers

We’re all familiar with 800 numbers. They were the first numbers we recognized as toll free. But did you know that there are other toll free numbers, too? What about 866? Is that really a toll free prefix?

Indeed it is. But is there a difference between 800 and 866 as far as toll free operation is considered? No, they work exactly the same. Just as 202 and 302 are toll number prefixes assigned to different locations, 800 and 866 are toll free numbers used nationwide.

That’s one difference between toll prefixes and toll free prefixes. Toll prefixes are used to designed numbers in a particular area. That’s why they are called area codes. Area code 202 is assigned to Washington, DC. Area code 302 is assigned to the entire state of Delaware.

The toll free number prefixes 800 and 866 do not have a geographical assignment. You can call an 800 or 866 number from anywhere in the country and you’ll reach your destination. You just may not know where, geographically, the number is being answered.

It should be noted that the idea of associating area codes with the physical location of the assigned telephone is going away with landlines being replaced by cell phones and VoIP or broadband phone. Neither wireless or broadband users are tethered to a particular location by a copper wire. In fact, some VoIP providers let you pick your desired area code regardless of where you happen to reside. That’s especially valuable when most of your calls come from a particular regional area. Calls from an area code to the same area code don’t pay interstate long distance charges. If your phone has a New York City area code, it will work like any other NYC local phone, even if you pick up the calls in San Francisco.

Toll free numbers take this concept to the next level. When someone dials a toll free number, they don’t pay for the toll charges regardless of where they are calling from or where the call is picked up. Please note that most toll free numbers are US only. You have make special arrangements to get an International toll free number.

Now let’s look at what happens on the receiving end of the call. If you are the owner of the toll free number, you’ll pay the cost of any calls you receive. Fortunately, with an inexpensive toll free service that cost will be minimal. What you get in return is a caller who is much more likely to dial your number than if they knew they had to pay long distance charges. This is a powerful incentive for call-in orders and customer service. In fact, customers have come to expect a toll free number and may balk at dealing with companies that don’t offer one.

Are toll free numbers really affordable by smaller businesses? Absolutely. You can get an 866 number assigned to you for just $2 and pay just $2 a month to maintain service. That service includes your exclusive use of the number, forwarding to any working phone including a cell phone, voice mail, plus FAX reception that forwards to your email. The cost of the calls is just 6.9 cents per minute for the continuous 48 US states. Calls from Alaska and Hawaii cost a bit extra.

For the same price as an 866 toll free number, you can also get one with the prefix 877 or 888. They work just the same as 866. You can also get an 800 number for the slightly higher fee of $5 plus $5 per month service fee and the same 6.9 cents per minute rate.

Is your business losing business because you don’t have a toll free number yet? Perhaps you should give toll free service a try. There are no contracts involved. You pay via credit card from month to month. Learn more about low cost toll free numbers and get yours ready to use right now.

Note: Photo of telephone keypad courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

Try Toll Free Service FREE For 14 Days

Most toll free number services are structured as pay-as-you-go. In other words, you pay for each incoming call by the minute. Often there is also a small monthly fee to maintain the service. An alternate approach enjoyed by many users of i800 Toll Free Service is to simply pay one fixed monthly fee regardless of how many toll free calls come in.

The advantage of unlimited toll free number service is that you can budget for this telephone service and know what your costs will be each month. It’s $49. For that you get to select your number from a collection of 800,866, 877 and 888 toll free numbers that are already set up and ready to use. You publish this number where it makes sense. Customers and prospective clients will call at no charge to them, which makes it more likely that they’ll pick up the phone. This is especially valuable for catalog sales, customer service and recruiting efforts.

Here’s some even better news. You can try the i800 Toll Free Service from iTeleCenter for 14 days without charge. How many telephone services will let you do that? Just attempt it with a cell phone company and listen to them scream with laughter until they point at the contract and demand signature before your phone will even work. There’s no contract to sign with i800, even after the 14 day trial period. You keep the number and the service as long as you care to pay the $49 monthly fee.

That $49 is all-inclusive. There are no surcharges, hidden fees, activation fees or per minute charges. No extra fees for features, either. You’ll get an auto attendant or main greeting, voicemail to email or text, multiple extension mailboxes, online faxing, follow me call forwarding and over 30 additional features. This is a full-featured toll free service that has everything you need to make toll free service work for your small business.

I should mention that the unlimited plan does have a fair usage provision. If you exceed 1,000 minutes per month over a 30 day period, those extra minutes will be billed at 4.9 cents per minute. This shouldn’t be a problem unless you are trying to run a large call center. This service is designed for small businesses and expects to meet their inbound toll free needs well within the rules of fair usage. If you do happen to have success beyond your wildest dreams, that 4.9 cents per minute overage is still the cheapest toll free cost you’re likely to find.

Does this sound like the kind of service that would help your business be more successful right now? Would you like to give it a try for free? If so, learn more and start your i800 unlimited toll free number service free trial .