In Australia, 1300 and 1800 numbers are two of the primary inbound lines for businesses. Having these numbers helps businesses manage and reroute callers, ensuring that customers in the line get the right assistance for their queries. In this article, we look at the ways your customer service experience can be enhanced with 1300 numbers. 

Many small businesses overlook the importance of having these sorts of numbers. A lot of new entrepreneurs stick with personal phone numbers—and while they do work, they’re still inferior in many respects.

1300 and 1800 numbers are relatively similar at a glance. However, the major difference is that 1300 numbers charge callers, whereas 1800 numbers are toll-free.

While 1800 numbers are advantageous to customers since they don’t need to get charged, there are still many benefits of having a 1300 number as opposed to a personal line. 

 This is especially true for businesses wishing to capture and fully understand customer behaviour.

Without further ado, here are eight ways you can improve your business’s customer service with the help of 1300 numbers.

Promotes Trustworthiness of Brand Image

A 1300 number signals prospects and customers that your business is reliable and legitimate. This number helps it stand out against the phone numbers featuring local area number codes.

Even if you’re a small business, you likely have competitors offering similar services around the community. A 1300 number helps “professionalise” your service, making it look bigger and more reliable than competitors that may be sticking with personal phone numbers.

Furthermore, if you want to be top of mind in prospecting customers’ recall, then owning a 1300 number can be a good way to get them to consider your business first. This is primarily due to the weight these digits carry as far as reputation goes.

Memorising Phone Numbers Become a Lot Easier

Customers don’t usually know how to contact the company they purchased from off the top of their heads.

And if they encounter problems with their purchase, they may find it troublesome trying to get in touch with your company—especially if you’re using a hard-to-remember personal number with only one line.

This degree of trouble can cause them to just avoid the interaction altogether and develop a negative perception of your company.

Conversely, by using a 1300 number, customers are more likely to remember your number and become more willing to engage with you.

This can increase the odds of them getting their needs met or becoming repeat customers, which can reflect positively on the longevity of your business.

Moreover, incorporating 1300 numbers into marketing materials such as billboards is more eye-catching and can enhance your company’s impression nationwide.

While 1300 numbers of any sequence can be enough, using a vanity number (i.g. 1300 CALL US) can be especially useful in improving response rates and prompting more customers to phone in.

This can make it easier for customers to engage with your company and potentially end the call on a good note.

Reduces Busy Lines and Overall Downtime

One of the most frustrating things a customer can experience is a busy and unresponsive customer service line. No one likes waiting on a phone call for minutes, especially impatient customers.

With a 1300 number from companies like Telcoworks, multiple customers can call the line simultaneously due to the internal virtual business phone number system. This makes it easy to reroute calls to multiple landlines.

If you have a customer service team of, say, five people, your company has a caller capacity of five. This means that you can handle enquiries of five people—which can be the difference maker in retaining four-lifetime customers or leaving a sour taste in their mouths and losing them for good.

Of course, it’s crucial to have several CS staff proportionate to the anticipated volume of peak callers. This way, you won’t be bottlenecked and be able to help your customers readily.

Reducing downtime helps promote better internal productivity. This can make your business operations flow more smoothly thanks to improved communication.

Helps Gather Call Report Insights

It’s a business’s best interest to know their customer’s behaviour to ensure that they’re offering the best product or service to them.

Companies using personal phone numbers have no internal system for tracking or gathering insights from call history. However, with 1300 numbers, there are ways to gain these insights.

Many 1300 number providers offer their plans with a dedicated CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. This system shows key customer information accessible through a dashboard that can help in identifying patterns, behaviours, and trends they can capitalise on.

For instance, these CRM systems can track how many calls are received, how long the average length of a call is, the location of the callers, a recorded copy of the call, and so on.

These insights help fuel more informed decision-making for the business, such as ways to improve customer service processes.

Portable and Reachable Across Territories

A good way to improve the customer experience is by keeping every other miscellaneous costs low. One way to do that is by switching to 1300 numbers.

With 1300 numbers, customers and prospects can call you from anywhere in Australia with local call rates. This makes it easy for them to reach you and know how much they’re spending on the call beforehand.

Furthermore, a nationwide line helps you retain customers if they decide to move, granted that your operations can handle that strain.

The opposite is also true—if you decide to move out of your base territory, you don’t have to set up a new phone number and start from scratch; you can simply stick to your 1300 number and continue with your business.

Allows You to Scale and Improve Your Customer Support Team

With a 1300 number, you can bring in as many or as little support staff as you want in your business. You can also switch plans whenever you want, making scaling your business fairly seamless.

Furthermore, a 1300 number also makes it significantly easier to create a system for your customer service team to follow. This is because of the increased unity and the access to analytics that a 1300 number offers.

These features allow you to make standard operating procedures that can help keep customer service at a high standard regardless of who’s taking the call.

For instance, you can set up KPIs for your team to achieve during their job. Factors like average handling time and customer satisfaction scores from surveys are captured through the special system that comes with the 1300 number.

This can help you gather intel on staff performance and tweak your approaches based on that. In turn, this can help your customer support team continuously improve and deliver service up to your ideal standards.

Automated Rerouting for Faster Connection

When dealing with customers, it’s essential to answer their queries quickly and efficiently as this can influence their satisfaction. Unlike physical numbers that are limited to one line, the 1300 number uses technology that allows customers to connect to the right line immediately.

For instance, customers from NSW are likely to be handled by agents from NSW. Furthermore, if an additional redirection is needed, then customer service representatives can easily redirect the caller to their intended recipient.

This streamlined rerouting helps improve the customer experience overall, which can consequently improve the efficiency of your business.

Customisable Message Creation With Interactive Voice Response Systems

If you want to reduce the back-and-forths even further, 1300 numbers allow you to set up an IVR system to help customers directly connect themselves with the right channel.

An IVR system offers a tailored list of menu options. Callers can self-select to be put in the appropriate channel. For example, when you hear “Press 0 for Sales, Press 1 for Service…”. This is the IVR system working in a nutshell.

The voice can be customisable depending on your business’s needs and tone. In either case, having this system helps streamline the customer service experience.