We are always looking at new products and services that can benefit our customers by reducing costs and improving communications. One such product allows you to control your inbound calls on any number, anywhere, from any device.

It works for both geographic and non-geographic telephone numbers and provides online access to a full range of call routing, monitoring and management tools, helping your business improve its customer service.

The benefits of this service include:

• Use with any number, anywhere, from any device
• Easy to use, designed to be intuitive
• Immediate to set up
• No capital outlay

There are three plans available on this service, designed for all sizes of business from sole traders and single site businesses, through multi site/multi department organisations, up to large call centres.

The features provided include:

• Tailored call plans - build plans according to your business operating hours, schedule call routing, handling and divert options to maximise your call handling potential.
• Call statistics - easily interpreted graphs of your inbound call statistics, results of call handling.
• Call queuing - Queue incoming calls during busy periods. Live queue statistics and queue management.
• Auto attendant - interactive voice response can be uploaded for announcements to callers
• Optional call recording - record inbound calls for compliance, customer service and audit purposes.

The easy to use online interface gives you full control of the handling of all of your inbound call traffic. If this feature is something you think could aid your business please contact us to discuss your requirements.

Increasingly the biggest differential between companies is the standard of customer service. Those that provide a quick follow up to enquiries and problems will find it much easier to retain customers and prompt replies to new leads will also put them at the front of the queue for gaining new customers.

When thinking about contact with your customers you need to be aware of all of the different devices and means of communication that are available. Not everyone wants to deal with things on the phone, many now prefer to email. The more channels of communication you offer the more people will be able to interact with your business.

When offering multiple communication avenues you also need to make sure that they work together to give the customer the optimum service. For instance if an email is left sitting in an inbox without being read or dealt with for several hours you are immediately risking the ire of an impatient customer.

Much better for a copy of that email to be forwarded to the recipients mobile phone when they are away from the office so that it can be read instantly. If it's urgent it can be dealt with straight away and if not it can be actioned at a later date.

Making it easier for people to contact you will result in gaining more business. Yes it will also mean that people with problems and gripes can get hold of you but it is better to sort these out in a timely manner so as to avoid losing customers or getting a bad reputation.

Small businesses need this more than they think. If someone is looking to get a product or service quickly they will almost certainly go with the first provider they can get hold of (providing the cost is not extortionate). So being unable to contact you could result in losing business. Having an answerphone does not always help if you cannot return the call until several hours later. By then the opportunity has often disappeared.

It is possible to have a single non-geographic number that tries all of your devices in turn until it can get hold of you. In the event you are uncontactable it can send a message straight to your mobile phone alerting you that your attention is required.

For larger businesses with dedicated staff answering the phones during office hours the need might be for out-of-hours services, forwarding calls to on-call staff, or home working options for people with families or in the case of bad weather.

All of these scenarios can be catered for by integrating your landlines, business mobiles and IT to provide seamless connections between departments and between your business and its customers.

When thinking about your business telecoms, and in particular your sales telephone number, it has long been the conventional wisdom that a freephone number (0800, 0808) increases enquiries by up to 40% compared to a regular number.

However, this was in the days when the majority of calls were made from landlines, meaning that your customers were not charged for their call to your business.

Those days are long gone, and the rise of the mobile phone means that many of your customers will actively avoid freephone numbers as they could be charged up to 20p per minute to call them.

It is forecast that 2010 will see the majority of UK phone calls made via mobile phones rather than landlines. Even now mobile phone calls account for around 45% of all calls made.

So what is the answer?

It could be an 03 number. This is a non-geographic landline number which can be called free of charge from a mobile phone's inclusive minutes. An 03 number can also be cheaper for your business than a freephone number.

With an 03 number you also have portability and flexibility. You can redirect incoming calls to any landline or mobile that you specify and benefit from a range of call management features.

Business Mobile World can offer you an 03 telephone number, or you can choose from a range of other telephone numbers which we provide. Just get in touch for a free quote.