The Secret to Increasing Sales
International Toll Free: The Secret to Increasing Sales
The world is a global marketplace with customers needing your products and services in countries far and wide. Traditionally, foreign market entry has required globalization expertise and localization strategies. While this remains true, businesses are finding that establishing local presences inside other countries can be as simple as setting up international toll free phone numbers and using call forwarding services to route those calls to a centralized call center.
While many new communications methods make doing business internationally much easier, one thing remains constant: Customers like to speak with real people. Whether a customer wants to place an order over the phone or ask questions before making a purchasing decision, offering international toll free numbers ensures that your international customers can reach you with ease.
Why choose an international toll free number rather than provide customers with your standard toll free number? Your standard toll free number isn't universally accessible from other countries. Callers within your country can dial it and reach you without incurring toll charges, but callers outside of your country won't be able to connect to you at all.
By owning an international toll free number for the country you are servicing, callers within that country will have a direct line to your company.
This involves international call forwarding which routes the dialed call to the phone number of your choice. If you'll be handling inquiries directly, you can set up phone call forwarding to your cell phone or office phone. If you have a team of international customer service representatives, you can set up the global call forwarding so that customer service representatives skilled in serving those countries receive the phone calls.
International toll free numbers allow you to have a local presence even if you are located on the other side of the globe. Since the phone number is a local toll free number, your customers will be able to call you without incurring long distance charges. Had you not invested in an international toll free number and listed your existing local phone number instead, fewer customers would be willing to risk incurring long distance charges by calling you. This results in lost selling opportunities and fewer sales.
Customers may have more confidence in your company based on your international phone number. Not only does the international toll free number enhance your localization efforts, it shows that your company is serious about doing business in the customer's country. Instead of looking like a company in a far-off country, your company's phone number looks just like the phone numbers of all of your local competitors.
By being accessible for answering questions or taking orders, by ensuring that customers do not have to pay to reach you, and by instilling confidence with a local virtual phone number, you will have removed several barriers that interfere with international sales. However, international call forwarding won't automatically guarantee your success. For example, how will you handle calls from Hong Kong in the middle of the night? How will you communicate with callers who don't speak your language?
Your call forwarding service will likely offer tools for overcoming some of these barriers such as real-time call forwarding number changes that allow you to change the phone number your calls ring to on the fly or the ability to designate specific ring to numbers for international toll free numbers. These tools coupled with smart staffing decisions could make a dramatic difference in your sales success. For example, if you establish a set of virtual phone numbers in South America, call forwarding the calls to your New York call center may be the best choice as far as time differences go. On the other hand, if your Los Angeles office is staffed with multilingual customer service representatives skilled in the languages of Latin America, it might be smarter to schedule an early morning shift in Los Angeles for calls originating in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and Chile.
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International call forwarding isn't the only strategy that you'll need in order to successfully enter a foreign market, but it is a good start. You will still need to create local marketing materials, hire multilingual customer service representatives to handle incoming international toll free calls, and perform other localization tasks like auto attendant. But, you will not need to find a local building and occupy it simply to be considered a local company.
International toll free numbers are phone numbers similar to the United States' 800 numbers except that they use country-specific toll free phone numbers and codes. Countries around the world use different country codes and prefixes. While an 800 number in the United States may be instantly recognizable to U.S. and Canadian residents, it would look odd to people living in Brazil, Sweden, or Japan. In fact, people in these countries would likely perceive the 800 number as belonging to a foreign company. Not only that, your U.S. 800 number will not work in countries outside of the United States and Canada.
While you could publish your direct phone number in your targeted countries, you'd run into similar difficulties. The U.S. country code and seven digit phone numbers look different to residents of other countries who are used to their own dialing conventions. This difference immediately draws attention to the fact that your business is located in a distant country.
Stop and consider that for a moment. If you are a customer in the United States and see a phone number for a company that is obviously not in the United States, what is your first impression? Do you wonder if the products will cost more because of international shipping? Are you concerned about the company's ability to service your needs because it is located halfway around the world? Do you worry about how much the phone call will cost you simply to ask a question or place an order?
Your international customers may have similar concerns when they see your phone number.By establishing an international toll free phone number that's local to your targeted country and using a call forwarding service to direct those phone calls to your office phone, your international customers will be less likely to question your business's ability to serve.
How does global call forwarding increase sales? It increases sales by eliminating the doubt that comes with non-local phone numbers. Cost-conscious customers tend to avoid calling long distance in favor of calling toll free phone numbers. With an international toll free number, you'll be better positioned to increase sales simply by eliminating the customer's first objection: long distance charges. Because the international toll free number is local to the customer's country, another crucial objection is overcome: doing business with an out-of-country business.
Put yourself in your customers' shoes one more time. If you're in the market for a new product offered by two different companies, one with a toll free number in your country and one with a long distance number for a country other than your own, which company would you be more likely to call? The one with the toll free number, right? This is what your international customers are thinking, too.
International call forwarding is a smart choice for any company doing business in countries outside their own. Set up a local international toll free number and use phone call forwarding to redirect those calls. You'll receive more phone calls as a result and have more chances to increase your sales. Get toll-free or local phone numbers. 6 Month Free Trial Now that's a secret worth sharing!
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International call forwarding is a useful telecommunications technique that allows you to be easily reached by your customers around the world.
While you could publish your existing U.S. phone number, or other country phone number, in the countries that you are targeting, doing so severely limits your success. International calling can be confusing - and expensive. Your local number will look foreign to people living in other countries, and few will be willing to pay long distance charges in order to reach a business number in another country. Your existing toll free number won't work internationally, either, so that's not an option.
So, how can you connect with worldwide customers? Global call forwarding. With a global call forward service, you can create an international toll free number that's local to callers within the country that you are targeting. These callers will dial a familiar-looking toll free number that's local to their country and the phone will ring on your phone, no matter where in the world you happen to be.
Consider your number a "virtual number" that you can program to ring to the phone of your choice. This could be a landline or a mobile phone; it could be a phone in your main office; it could be a phone in your call center, routed to a person who speaks the language. No matter how you set up your virtual numbers, the ability to speak with customers around the globe brings with it rewards and challenges.
However, once set up, your virtual phone number and call forwarding service may pose some challenges. For example, if you set up global call forwarding in Germany and Portugal, will you be able to speak to German and Portuguese customers? In addition to language barriers, another challenge involves time zone differences. Both of these challenges can be overcome by using phone call forwarding strategies such as routing all German calls to a customer service representative who speaks German or redirecting phone calls to specific phone numbers based on the time of the day the call is made.
Routing international calls based on the time of day requires careful thought. Consider time differences and what you're willing to accept. For example, if you're in New York, you may be willing to accept early morning phone calls at home before you head to your office. If you set up the call forwarding service to forward your calls from Portugal to your mobile phone from 6:00 AM to 9:00 AM your time, this would allow callers in Portugal to reach you from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM their time. For the next three hours, you could forward the virtual number to your office phone until 5:00 PM your time before forwarding it to voicemail for the night.
After all, a toll free number or 800 number boosts your perceived level of professionalism and represents you to be a credible prospect to potential markets. Things as small as assuming if the company wants to pay for the call, they must want to talk to their customers. People like that. When prospects see a toll free number, there is comfort that because they feel a safer connection with you. It has been said that putting your 800 number in your advertisements, you should increase your ad response by as much as 600%. And now your ads can appear worldwide via the web!
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