One of the firm’s biggest growth areas over the past twelve months has been in the provision of local numbers to companies who want to trade outside of their existing geographical location.
It has long been held that businesses will, on the whole, do the majority of their business within a ten mile radius of their location and historically the only way to overcome the natural barriers that geography imposes has been to open a new premises in another location. Many customers whilst not unwilling to contact firms a great distance away from them do have a preference for dealing with local companies. The reasons for this can range from the wishing to help the local economy to simply feeling safer dealing with ‘someone they know’ and new research carried out by Smart Numbers, based on conversations with local businesses over the past 12 months, has shown that in many cases customers have a preference for ringing a ‘local’ number, particularly if they are looking for a tradesman.
The ability to provide a local phone number for business has been available for many years but it is surprising that many companies still don’t take advantage of this.
In a recent case study Smart Numbers found that with the provision of a dedicated local number a Guildford company was able to double their business in Basingstoke. The local firm who provide a tradesman service in the Berkshire, Surrey and Hampshire areas were having problems convincing Basingstoke residents that they could offer a local service, as their phone number was a Guildford number. Despite having local Basingstoke based tradesmen working for them who did all the work in that area, and were well known locally, getting new enquiries was proving to be a problem. Smart Numbers provided this firm with a new Basingstoke number to advertise both online and offline and in addition put a ‘whisper’ on the line so that when a call came in from Basingstoke to head office in Guildford via this new number the operator would be told in a ‘whisper’ that the call was from Basingstoke. This allowed them to tailor the greeting meaning that callers felt that they had called a local business. Following the success of this initiative the firm have now extended their operation to another five centres in the local areas, all with unique local phone numbers and the business is continuing to grow.
In a recession the only way to grow is to differentiate your business from the competition and by utilising telephony to its fullest this local firm have found new avenues to generate business that were previously unavailable.
If you would like to find out how the provision of local numbers to your business could help to transform your fortunes, then please contact Smart Numbers (http://www.smart-
