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Overview
Best2Call's Toll Free Solution will help you boost your business productivity and enable you to strengthen relations with your customers. Switching over is easy! You can either transfer your existing number or get a new personal number. Best2Call offers great rates, exceptional service, simple billing and quality connection.
Features and Benefits
Small Business and Home Offices. Enjoy one simple number that you can setup with multiple ring-to numbers. Create a virtual office with features like enhanced voice mail and much more.
International Business. Businesses all over the world can gain a strong presence in North America with toll free numbers that ring anywhere in the world.
Call Centers. Our intelligent routing technology enables call centers to manage all incoming calls with real time data.
Personal Use. Allow family and friends to contact you any time any where with one toll free number. Excellent as a back up in case of emergencies.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Toll Free Number?
How do toll-free numbers work?
Why are Toll Free Numbers so popular?
Benefits of toll free numbers for small
businesses
Brief History of Toll Free Numbers
Some facts about toll free numbers
Why have we run out of "800" Numbers?
What is a Toll Free Number?
This probably seems a little basic, but a toll free number is a telephone
number that can be called at no cost to the caller, because the recipient
pays for the cost of the call. Also referred to as ‘800’ numbers
after the original area code, although toll free numbers today can start
with the area codes, 800, 888, 877, and 866. The area codes 855, 844,
833, and 822 have also been reserved for toll free activation in the future
if and when necessary.
How do toll-free numbers work?
A toll free number just forwards to or or redirects to a regular local
number. No special equipment or additional line or installation is required.
When a call is placed to a toll free number, the Local Exchange Company
(LEC) queries the SMS800 Database to determine the inter-exchange carrier
(long distance company) responsible for carrying the call. The inter-exchange
carrier then picks up the call, applies the appropriate features or routing,
creates a call record for billing, and routes the call to the terminating
number, trunk ID or circuit ID to which the toll free number is programmed
to ring to. This entire process takes milliseconds and is virtually transparent
to the caller.
Why are Toll Free Numbers so popular?
Consumers like them because they're free to call. Advertisers like
them because customers are more likely to call. Companies also like them
because they are portable and they create a more national presence and
they have additional capabilities in terms of reporting and routing that
local numbers don't have. Another major reason for their popularity is
that they have dropped so dramatically in price and ease of use. When
they were first introduced they were expensive and hard to get. But now
they are so cheap and simple to set up that even the smallest part time
business or residential user, almost can't afford not to use one.
Benefits of toll free numbers for small businesses
Portability - One of the most important benefits of toll free numbers
for small businesses is the ability to change the ring to number, called
portability. If you move your business or your needs change, it's easy
to change the ring to number, usually by just calling your carrier at
no cost. Too bad you can't move your whole business around that easy...
Larger company image - Toll free numbers create a larger more significant corporate image, even for the smallest home based business.
Expanded marketing reach - A local number is ok if you only market locally. But if you want to market outside your local area, a toll free number is practically a necessity for business in the US.
Scalability - Another benefit for smaller start up businesses is that you basically just pay for the usage or calls to your toll free number. This means that a new or small business with little usage will pay very little for their service and their bills will only increase as their usage and business increases. Too bad all of your business expenses don't work like that!
Brief History of Toll Free Numbers
1-800 numbers were developed in the late 60s by AT&T as a convenient
way for businesses to pay the tolls for their customers who contacted
them. (Remember when everyone thought long distance was so expensive?)
As the service became more popular, toll free subscribers began finding
new and innovative uses for the service. As usages and popularity began
to grow companies began to realize that consumers preferred to do business
with companies with 800 numbers.
By 1984, when the Bell System was dismantled by the Justice Department,
there were over 3 million 800 numbers in service by AT&T, and new
long distance carriers were clamoring to provide 800 service. These carriers
were assigned blocks of 800 numbers with common NXX (prefixes), so the
phone numbers available depended on the carrier you spoke to and if you
left your carrier, you would have to change your 800 number. The numbers
weren't portable.
One of the steps in creating a more competitive toll free market, was to implement the current SMS/800 system which allowed true portability of 800 numbers so you could change phone companies without having to change your number. This gave toll free number subscribers much more ownership rights and made the popularity and value of good 800 numbers sky rocket, so much so that within 18 months of the introduction of number portability, very few of the 7 million 800 numbers were left for new subscribers.
Then after rationing 800 numbers, the telecommunications industry chose 888 as the next toll free area code, introducing another 8 million new numbers to the toll free pool (less a couple hundred 888 numbers that were held out of the pool at the request of the 800 owner). 888 numbers have been in use now for several years and are fairly well accepted and understood by a large part of the country as equivalent to 800 numbers. But as 888 numbers began to dwindle, 877 and later 866 area codes were introduced as well. 855, 844, 833 and 822 are also reserved for toll free use as they are required.
Some facts about toll free numbers:
90% of Americans say they use toll free numbers.
More than one-third of Americans estimate that they make 60 or more toll
free calls per year.
Demand for new toll free 888 numbers for business and personal uses averaged above 238,000 requests per month, since introduction of the 888 code on March 1, 1996. That's in excess of 2,800,000 new 888 numbers per year. This led to the creation of 877 numbers.
Toll free calling generates an estimated $157 billion in annual sales of goods and services in 1997.\
In addition, experts say that 84% of current Internet users rely on electronic media to search for product or service information in order to make a purchase. Being able to locate the 800 number on the Internet greatly improves the success rate of any Internet ad or Web site.
The average phone order from a catalog can be 30% to 70% higher than the average mail order.
As telephone buyers generally use credit cards, they will order more merchandise and higher ticket items 95% of the time.
A productive ad featuring an 800 number can generate approximately 30% more orders.
In a study, paper ads that were almost identical were displayed and monitored. One group had an 800 toll-free number and the others didn't. The toll-free number ads received six times the number of calls as did the regular long-distance listings. It also seems that this will hold true regardless of the socioeconomic level of the caller.
If you want to decrease returns by as much as 50%, use an 800/888 number on product literature. This encourages customers to call in and resolve difficulties with a trained expert.
Fund-raising organizations have increased their response approximately 25% by adding that 800/888 number in commercials, print ads or direct mail pieces which previously used only addresses.
888 numbers were introduced in 1996 after several months of rationing. 877 was introduced in 1998, and 866 numbers were later added in 1999.
If you're a small start up and you're not spending a lot of money in your advertising, you have to be realistic and may have to make do. It would be silly to insist that someone in Florida or Georgia needs a powerful snow blower if they hardly ever get much snow. But if you lived in Buffalo or Vermont, and you were getting a lot of snow (meaning you're doing a lot of advertising) it would be stupid not to get a good snow blower. If you're doing serious advertising, you need a serious "800" number that will help increase the response rates to all your advertising.
Why have we run out of "800" Numbers?
Their popularity and value are obvious and have made 800 numbers an
absolute necessity in business. That combined with the limited availability
caused a run on them in 1995 when they were rationed until 888 numbers
were released. Additional toll free area codes 877 and 866 have also been
released since then because of the continued demand for toll free numbers.
So the "800" area code has essentially been used up a couple
times over. Add to that the fact that some adult phone services have become
proficient at sucking up every 800 number the instant they are returned
to the pool in order to make money from the wrong numbers.
These businesses have literally hundreds of thousands of 800 numbers, and in order to avoid being accused of hoarding and brokering, they basically never sell or release any numbers for anyone at any price. Finally, many phone companies don't follow the guidelines and quietly tuck any real "800" numbers and keep them for themselves or their biggest customers. All of these things make it virtually impossible to get real "800" numbers from any phone company any more.
