Increases sales by having a US support phone number
Improving service and cutting costsHowdy. In the blog of October 27 I mentioned I was trying a VoIP (Voice Over IP) phone. It's basically a phone that uses the Internet for the connection.
What I've been able to do is get a US phone number (New York). Our web site visitors in the US have that number to call as our Support Desk.
The cost is a local call.
Through the wonders of technology that call is diverted via the Internet to our VoIP phone sitting on Mel's desk here in Australia. The US visitor has no idea they've called Australia (and like I said, the cost of the call is as per a local call).
What that has meant to us in real terms is quite a bit.
After 2 years of having our Australian phone number on our web site we'd never received a call from the US. This morning there were 26 message on the New York number's voicemail.
Most of those are people wanting to place orders (not everyone is comfortable placing orders over the Internet) - at a 25% conversion rate, that's an extra 6 or so sales.
That's better service for our customers and visitors and more sales for us.
One last bonus
One last bonus is this - our mobile and long distance call rates are also reduced by about 40% because we use the VoIP phone (at a much lower rate than our normal provider).
If you make a lot of long distance and mobile calls, VoIP might be worth taking a look at.
Cheers
Brendon
[ comments ]
Sometimes the reception is perfect. Occasionally the reception is a tiny bit delayed, but still fine.
I don't think the delayed calls are PC to PC (would be surprised if they were).
Cheers
Brendon
Excellent info on the USA phone number response. Of course, as you no doubt realize you havesomewhat opened your own can of worms ... those USA calls will mostly come in when there is no staff in your office. For the time being, returning voice messages is far superior to nothing, but if your site traffic continues to grow you may need to find other ways to deal with it.
Of course, there _is_ staff avialble in your office during non-business hours in New York, so you may be able to capitalize on the ordering from home crowd.
Would it be possible to refernce the company you obtained this service from?
Best regards
Dave
www.satviz.com
The company I'm using is Sipphone.com. Have been excellent.
Yes, the volume of calls from the US has been very strong even at this early stage. Because I tend to start work late (I hate the mornings) I've been here to answer quite a few calls, and the others come in at 7 am, which also takes a lot of calls.
The others are called back asap.
With the increasing volume and success of the line (I made 4 $200 sales last night as a direct result of having the line) I'll need to review. But it's a good problem to have.
Thanks for the input Dave.
Cheers
Brendon