A key feature of the Phone.com service is Call Forwarding.
Given that lots of our customers are small business owners or sole proprietors, this feature gives you the power of control – to direct inbound calls to single or multiple phone numbers, including your home, office, cell phones, etc., anywhere in the world.
With your brand new Phone.com number, you officially don’t have to use your personal number anymore!
This instantly gives your business the big-brand look and feel. If you need any help with the forwarding feature, take a look at our support page. And if you get really stuck, give our award-winning customer support a call!
Phone.com’s Follow Me Calling sub-feature of Call Forwarding makes it possible for you to have important incoming calls forwarded to another phone number, or a series of alternative phone numbers programmed in order of importance.
You determine the order, which phone number the caller bounces from and to, until the caller reaches you directly.
This improves the inbound phone call experience of your sales prospects, customers, colleagues and partners by saving them the time and effort of hanging up, searching for another phone number.
Sales & Customer Support
Anyone out of the office often or on the road can see the advantages of these features. However, many service-oriented businesses find Follow Me Calling particularly effective – namely professionals who spend a good deal of time on appointments in the field, or who travel frequently. Take real estate sales as an example. Real estate sales people must travel, often great distances, in order to show homes to potential buyers.
Small companies whose owners operate from the field to service customers, often program in 2 or 3 different numbers to enable customers to reach them after ringing one contact number after the other. Plumbers, electricians, AC repairmen, remote computer systems or office computer repair professionals often use the Call Forwarding/Follow Me Calling feature to remain accessible when on the road or in the field on a job.
For sales calls, most small business owners and sales reps prefer to take a call than have it go into voicemail. They know that every time you allow a call to get away they run the risk of losing contact with the prospect, of possibly losing the “flow of the close.”
As for existing customer support, every business understands the danger of losing customers to “attrition”; to competitors. Difficulty getting through to live support person at a company leads to increased returns or cancellations.
Every time a customer requires live support and finds themselves waiting for hours or even days for a returned call, the business run the serious risk of a cancelation, or of a returned product — all out of frustration or annoyance at what the customer perceives as “poor” or “slow” service.
All because they couldn’t get through to a person.
With Follow Me Calling in play, the odds are much better that troubled customers will get through to a live Help Desk, Tech or Support rep, rather than a voicemail.
Brand Image
Many small business owners are especially concerned with the image of their business, and prefer that customers or sales prospects call their main office number as a central hub location, to the avoidance of a scattered series of cell phones or home offices, when attempting to reach them or their employees. Having one central number, even a vanity toll-free or local number, creates a more professional image.
Providing one simple primary number for your business is a far more organized and professional way of presenting yourself to existing and potential customers.
No matter the size of your company or number of employees, the one central number that Call Forwards to a series of unlimited alternative numbers, as with Follow Me calling, projects a much better impression all the way around with the same voice messages, the same professional menus, and even the same polished on-hold music. A surefire way to impress first-time callers.
Too many scattered un-connected phone numbers can easily create a disconnected, disorganized impression, as if there were no main office, or no one working full time in that office. Even with companies whose employees are all or largely remote, it’s just as easy to set up a defined call forwarding system so that each and every customer or potential customer gets to where they need to be every time they call in.