Having a small business is one of the most stressful and most rewarding things. It’s stressful, well, because you are small and starting out and people don’t know who you are yet. It’s the most rewarding because you get to pick out everything. From your name to your logo, it’s all you.
What about your phone number? You need people to be able to get ahold of you. Not everyone wants to send an email or track you down on Facebook. You don’t want to give your personal number. Let’s look at some great phone options for your business.
Toll-free number
Toll free numbers a great for the customer. The business will get charged either monthly, or by call, depending on the service.
Grasshopper provides an amazing flat monthly fee for up to 5 numbers. You can even set it up to be able to text these numbers. That is perfect, especially in an age where everyone wants to text, and no one wants to talk to anyone on the phone. That would really help your business if the younger crowd knew they could text your order or question.
Grasshopper will even let you do a 7 day trial for free without having to enter any credit information.
If you are a small business that has multiple locations or has enough employees in different departments to need a few numbers, then a toll free package would be great for you.
Vanity number
This is the fun one. If you are a business that wants to have a bit more fun or has a catchy name that would be great to dial, then you should look into a vanity number.
Grasshopper has a fun search where you can type in the numbers you want to use or the name you want to have, and it will give you options for what’s available. Then you can pick what you want and are all set. Your business will have a catchy number that will be easier to remember.
You know you still remember those carpet and plumbing phone number jingles from when you were growing up. It works.
Other features to know
Grasshopper has a whole list of other features that would be beneficial to small business. There are of course the basics: call forwarding, voicemail, and custom greetings. Standard things you expect every business to have.
But you can also get some handy features like business texting, simultaneous call handling, and reporting.
We already talked about how handy business texting would be for today’s technology driven clientele.
Simultaneous call handling is a nice feature to have so your customers never have to hear that annoying busy tone and then forget to call back.
The reporting feature would be extremely helpful to keep track of where the calls are coming from, where they are going, and if the calls are hang-ups or voicemails. Any additional data is important to look at.
Local number
If you are a local, one and only small business, then having a local number will be important. They community feels better and more like they are helping one of their own if they are calling a local number and not some 1-800 one.
Plus, if it’s not a catchy or vanity number, then they’ll still be able to find it if the area code matches where you are.
The whole phone system
Grasshopper really has something for every type of small business.
Whether starting out and not needing all of the features, but still needing something fancier than your own cell phone, to growing faster than you thought and now you need 4 lines with different extensions, they thought of it all.
Give Grasshopper a ring for your small business needs.
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