How much help can we give

I always try to be helpful to visitors to our business or website, especially when people call with difficult issues for a toll free number. However that doesn’t mean that I can necessarily solve your problem or even tell you how to do it.

If it’s a number that we got you, I certainly feel we have more of an obligation. But callers need to realize that as much as I do want to help I really don’t get paid for solving most problems. And offering to pay me for my time is nice but there’s ultimately no mechanism for that, nor should there be. We really try to help customers because I believe what goes around comes around.

We’re always happy to help callers but some callers really need to understand that there’s a difference between being helpful and expecting me to guide you the whole way through their situation. I often find that after I give someone some advice I wind up with call after call, where they tell me everything that they did and were told so I can tell them what to do next, every step of the way. Like I said I want to help everyone as much as possible, and I like to hear the outcome of a difficult situation too. But you also have to respect our time at times too.

Some people seem to operate entirely under the assumption that what they are trying to do absolutely has to be possible. Unfortunately everything is clearly NOT possible and as difficult as that may be to face, it is ultimately easier to face that than to pursue something endlessly. Sometimes persistence means backing off on it right now and trying it again in three months. That often allows you to gain some perspective and proves to other people that you are persistent without being obnoxious or belligerent.

You might also get a way to follow up with an agent by just sending a thank you card and then a Christmas Card. You’d be surprised how few customer service representatives ever get Christmas Cards and how much more that will make them want to help you. You don’t have to send anything expensive but sending a birthday card will help you cross the line from customer to friend.
There’s another type of question too that we see and we are happy to get these. These are the questions that people call up with just to find out if we’re real. We have to answer their questions but the purpose is really just to make sure we are competent and willing to help them if they need it in the future. It takes a little getting used to, to recognize them but once you do they are very easy to work with. They are easily recognized because they are always the most obvious questions that are clearly answered on the website. It’s often a little frustrating when people ask questions that are clearly answered on our website, but this is a clear exception.

Phone Companies make mistakes

If you automatically believe the things a phone company representative that you don’t know tells you about a toll free number you’re definitely going to wind up operating under the wrong assumptions and heading in the wrong direction. It’s strange how people will believe things a someone they don’t even know the name of or what their background or experience is, who doesn’t really know very much about toll free numbers, and is just repeating something she thinks she heard someone else say, over me. They will even believe things you don’t even make any common sense at all and come back and essentially ask why I told them the wrong thing, or even worse why is my lookup tool wrong. I just don’t get it.

Several times per day I have to say no, they were just wrong. It may be that they misunderstood what you were asking for and therefore gave you the wrong answer. It may be that you asked the question wrong or for the wrong thing. They could just be repeating something they heard someone else say. They could even be saying something just to get you off the phone or to pass you on to someone else.

You also have to realize that most phone company representatives wind up with Cubiclitis. (Cubice-itis) It’s a mental disease that comes from sitting in front of a computer in cubicle too long. It appears most in customer service representatives of large companies. The three most recognizable signs are a person’s belief that the computer is never wrong, that if they don’t know how to do something it is impossible to do, and that if something is against their policy that nobody in their entire organization can do it. It can be passed on by word of mouth, even over the phone, but only to very gullible callers.

So the bottom line is that you should never believe anything a phone company representative says (especially if it doesn’t make sense) without verifying it with one or more additional calls.

Fax detection problems

If you use an enhanced voicemail service or any system for all your calls that also detects fax tones, but you don't need the fax detection you should consider turning that feature off, if possible. Background noise or things can sometimes make the fax dection system think a regular voice call is a fax call. It is pain to the caller the first time, but if they hang up and call bck again, and the same background voice triggers the fax tones again, they're probably going to give up and may never call you.

If you need the fax detection, that's fine. But many people have seperate fax lines so they really don't need the detection system which could malfunction. This is just a very small tip, but it might be helpful!

Misdials mean free sales!

Wrong numbers are usually considered a nuisance and in large numbers can be a royal pain in the neck. But what if you could get wrong numbers that were looking to purchase something from your competitor? I think that might change your attitude toward wrong numbers a little.

I’m going to show you a really cool hidden feature of our Keyword Lookup system that will help you find phone numbers that can send you a continuous stream of leads. All you need to do is enter your competitor’s phone numbers and we’ll show you all of the numbers that are one digit away from their number.

Write down one of their numbers and reverse the last two digits and dial it. If anyone answers it ask if this is the competitor who’s number it’s similar to and when they say no, ask if they get many calls for them. If they say yes, you know the other misdials will probably get wrong numbers too. If you can make a friend with them you can probably even give them your number and stay in touch with them. A Christmas card and birthday card each year might even guarantee that they give those callers YOUR number instead.

Go to our Advanced Keyword Lookup at http://www.TollFreeNumbers.com/more_info.shtml and in the keyword section enter the 7 digits of your competitor’s advertised toll free number followed by a space and then “(Z?)” where the ? is the third digit of the area code (ie 0, 8, 7 or 6). So if your competitor advertises 800-123-4567, in the Keyword box you enter 123-456 (Z0). You can put as much as you want in, one per line. You’ll get a list in about three minutes of all of the numbers available or that are going to be available. We’ll even redo the research for you every month.

Warning: Once you try this even once, it’s very easy to get addicted. You’ll start to notice the competition’s phone numbers everywhere and you may wind up with more leads than you know what to do with. Don’t go too crazy though, stick to your direct competitors and try to make the numbers go to different lines so that you can measure their effectiveness, because some numbers will wk much better than others.

This works best for gorilla marketers who compete with large advertisers in industries that have a high value per sale or lead. The more they advertise their number, the more leads you’re going to get. And the best part about it is that they will probably never even know you’re doing it. I’ve even talked to sales representatives who do this with the main company number. And if they do find out, there’s nothing they can really do even if they wanted to. You didn’t mislead anyone or make them use and advertise their number. And it’s probably not worth the expense to change all of their advertising.

A friend has a number one digit away from a large mortgage company and he gets about 100 leads per month from it. All he does is take down the customer information and gets paid $20 per lead. That’s not a bad little side line business, with no advertising or expense at all except answering a few calls. Oh, and you might want to put in your own advertised numbers too. You’d hate to find that your competition is doing this to you!

Important 800 Lessons

Some people think it's helpful to put the local number in your advertsing as well as the toll free number. One down side of this is that you may not realize if your toll free number isn't working. And that can cause an even bigger problem. Whatever you do, do NOT let your toll free number be disconnected for months.

A customer recently called because they just realized that their number was disconnected. Unfortunately they didn't realize that it was disconnected for four months and one week. And like clockwork, the number came out of the disconnect aging process after four months and 7 minutes later it was taken by a phone sex company.

This is a HARD lesson to learn. But it's important to repeat and try to help others to avoid this, so here are the lessons we need to learn from this.

1. Always dial your toll free number BEFORE you put it into new advertising.
2. Dial your toll free number periodically just to make sure your toll free number is NOT disconnected for an extended period of time.
3. Use our free monitoring service to make sure your own number is never disconnected and it'll also show you if any of the other area code versions are disconnected too.
4. If you have any problems with your toll free number, call me right away. Don't wait months because if someone else takes it after it goes through the aging process there's very little anyone can do.