Widen your net with local phone numbers

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Having a series of different virtual local phone numbers pointed to the same phone number is a far cheaper option if you want to expand your business into different areas but cannot afford to buy or rent new premises there, says DBS Telecoms.

The great recession meant huge financial difficulties for a lot of companies across the UK, and indeed the world. Although the recession is now officially over, the after effects are still being felt, and for some companies the real pain is only now beginning to filter through.

Perhaps because of this, virtual local numbers have seen a huge rise in popularity. David Clarke, Director of DBS Telecoms in Lincolnshire, a leading supplier of local numbers as well as freephone 0800 numbers, has a theory as to why this is.

“When money is in tight supply, you need to make as many cut backs on non essentials as you can in order to stay afloat”, says Clarke. “There is no bigger cost than premises. Companies like to have offices everywhere they are operating in order to have a connection with that area, because people like to know that the company they are dealing with is local, and because that is what you expect a business to do. For example, if you were supplying a service such as rat catching in Lincoln, you would be expected to have an office in Lincoln that people could phone you on and that you staff would work out of. But why? Who comes into the office? The answer is most probably the staff who answer the phone, the postman and the window cleaner! Generally if you’re providing a service, customers either phone you or contact you via the internet, but are seldom going to pop into the office. In a world where everyone has a mobile phone, to have an office purely as a place where people can answer the phone is a very expensive way of doing business”.

What Clarke is effectively saying is that if you don’t need an office, don’t bother having one. Don’t have an office just for the sake of having an office, it’s a waste of money and there are better ways of doing business. “For example, if you have lots of different offices in multiple locations purely because you want to operate in those locations, but all you ever do is employ staff to answer the phone in each of those offices, then you could save money by just having one office, with a series of different virtual local phone numbers with area codes for the offices you would have had. All of these can be routed through to the same phone line, with a different call whisper on each one to let you know when you receive the call which branch the caller thinks they are calling.”

So, if you operate and wish to carry out work in Lincoln, Boston, Sleaford, Louth, Grantham, etc. and want to appear local to each of those locations, you do not need to have an office in each of those locations. DBS have 479 different area codes for virtual local numbers, so will have all of the different area codes needed for you to create as many different phone numbers as you wish. Therefore, in Sleaford you can advertise your company with a Sleaford number, in Boston with a Boston number, etc. but they would all go through to the same phone.

Of course, if you are happy with the premises you have, but would like to branch out into other areas but cannot afford more offices, then these ghost local numbers are a great way to widen your net without much additional extra cost. You can easily get some local numbers for other areas you would like to operate in to appear more local to those areas, without having to move offices or get any new ones. Local phone numbers are therefore a great way of growing and expanding your business without risking your financial stability.