Shared-use Toll-free Service; The Real Deal

Often there is confusion around what shared-use toll-free services are exactly, how it all works, and how it benefits businesses.  Here are some points of clarification:

1. Shared use and bundled toll-free services are innovative telecommunications technologies for advanced call processing.  The shared use concept was developed to facilitate the provision of complex routing arrangements. These features enable service providers to optimize the use of scarce toll-free numbers, and provide their customers with creative methods of meeting their specialized telecommunications requirements.

So, for example, a group of auto dealers under common ownership (i.e. Jeanne's Ford, Jeanne's Honda, Jeanne's Toyota) may all advertise a single toll-free number like 800-NEW-CARS.  Callers to this vanity 800 number then choose from a voice menu to reach any one of the affiliated store locations.  As a result, a single toll-free 800 number may simultaneously serve as the primary advertising response tool, customer service, or technical support contact for hundreds of individual businesses or business locations nationwide. 

3. Toll-free service providers, like

800response, provide small and medium size businesses with toll-free long distance services bundled with advanced communications and reporting features, in conjunction with easily recallable vanity 800 numbers.  Using the shared use concept, these service providers are able to make scarce toll-free vanity 800 numbers available to multiple businesses throughout North America.  When businesses use these shared use toll-free 800 numbers in their advertising, they typically see 30-50% higher advertising response rates - meaning more calls coming into their business which translates into more sales opportunities.

Visit these links for more information on shared use toll-free services, call routing, and vanity 800 numbers.  Or, email any questions to Laura Noonan!