Why use a non-geographic number?

Your opportunities to effectively promote your business to potential customers or clients emerge earlier than you might think. Even your choice of telephone number for the business can affect its ability to attract new custom. So, should you choose a geographic or non-geographic number?

It’s worth emphasising the difference between the two. A geographic number is associated with a specific location, as when 020 numbers are tied to London and 0161 numbers are linked with Manchester; hence, they are the most immediately sensible choice for local businesses.

However, if your business aims to attract custom from further afield or already attracts it, selecting a non-geographic number can make a lot of sense – for the following reasons.

You can tie various workplaces to just one number

These days, it isn’t unusual for a company to have various, geographically disparate workplaces – especially if that company is particularly large and has gone through a sustained period of expansion. Your own business might currently maintain and advertise a separate number for each of its offices.

However, this can pose problems when you invite prospective customers or clients to get in touch with your company. Listing several different phone numbers in publicity material can put off people who might give that material just a cursory look, leaving them with little time to digest the displayed contact details. However, all of those numbers can be replaced with one non-geographic number.

This would simplify the job of promoting your company’s contact details – and make things easier for people outside the company by giving them just that one number to remember.

It’s easy to have calls redirected

You might have plenty of frustrating experiences of being a customer phoning a company’s call centre only to find receiving help a rather convoluted experience. Perhaps you have got through to someone who has then told you to call a separate number to reach a department elsewhere.

Experiences like this would hardly help leave you with a positive impression of the business. Therefore, you have an interest in cutting out such hiccups in your own company’s interactions with customers. Fortunately, it’s possiblefor you to do so if you adopt a non-geographic number.

Let’s assume that your organisation runs multiple call centres. A call to one of these call centres could be easily redirected to another in the same network, providing a seamless experience for the customer. They could barely even feel a momentary speed bump, let alone an unexpected delay.

Your company can relocate without changing its number

If your company ever needs to relocate for practical reasons that might even be beyond its control, it could obviously be frustrating to have to replace the company’s main number as well. After all, that number might have become ingrained in the consciousness of long-term customers.

However, owing to the flexibility with a non-geographic number, a company that uses one wouldn’t need to change that number as a result of physically moving operations. Neither would such a change be necessary if the firm stayed in its current place while also expanding to somewhere new.

A non-geographic number is inexpensive to dial

You wouldn’t want people phoning your company to rack up extortionate charges in the process. Potential adverse effects of this could include you attracting unhelpfully negative publicity.

Consider this example of Conservative MP Sir Greg Knight, as mentioned by the Mirror. Earlier this year, it was reported that he had dropped a number to which a 55p-a-minute charge was attached. The Fair Telecoms Campaign branded Knights’ use of this number “foolish”.

However, your customers would be spared such a fee if they call non-geographic 03 numbers. Due to Ofcom regulations, 03 numbers must not bring higher call charges than 01 or 02 numbers. The news gets even better if you use one of our own 03 numbers…

That’s because we are the only company offering 0330, 0333 and 0345 numbers with no call charges when connecting to a UK landline. This can be a considerable boon to you and your customers – and, with one of these numbers, you would be able to advertise that it is entirely free to call should they have an inclusive calls package, as most do.