Having been in business for several decades, VirtualPBX offers its Business Phone Plans to reach a range of markets.
Its core features can help any type of business extend its marketing PPC and grow its physical presence through core features like Automated Attendant, Ring Groups, and call segmentation through Phone Number Prepend.
GRIN tech’s own expansion to several major U.S. cities offers an excellent backdrop for what your own business can expect in its own transformation.
GRIN tech’s requirements
GRIN tech recently decided to open local branches in major US cities, including Austin, Miami, and San Diego.
Although these cities have unique attributes, the acquisition channels for new customers across the spectrum can be grouped into three categories:
- Google Ads (PPC)
- Organic traffic from Google
- Referral traffic from Clutch.co agency’s profile
What follows from such outreach to the public is, for many businesses, an influx of calls. Handling those calls can be made much easier with the proper tools, which is where VirtualPBX comes into play.
VirtualPBX Automated Attendant
The automated attendant is a business’s front line in call handling.
Also known as a phone tree or interactive voice response (IVR) system, it offers inbound callers a custom greeting and the options to reach individuals and departments within an agency.
GRIN tech could, for example, use its Auto Attendant to provide callers with a basic breakdown of its departments, such as: “Press 1 for Sales, Press 2 for Marketing….”
It might want also want to segment callers based on location — “Press 1 if you’re calling from New York, Press 2 if you’re calling from Miami… Press 6 for all other cities” — and then use sub-menus to further help callers reach an appropriate staff member.
What’s important here is customization. GRIN tech and all other businesses have the opportunity to customize their menus to make their interactions with customers quick and informative. This is what makes a great initial experience for callers.
VirtualPBX Ring Groups
Ring Groups add to the Auto Attendant’s customization by letting businesses collect their departments into logical groups.
Take GRIN tech’s multiple cities as a further example. A Ring Group could sort phone system users’ by their physical locations. What you’d then have could be a Group dedicated to East Coast cities, one for the West Coast, and one for the Central and Mountain time zones.
Ring groups can accept as many members as the company wants to add. And there’s no limit to the number of groups a business can create.
VirtualPBX Phone Number Prepend
Now let’s say that GRIN tech is receiving calls from all across the U.S. and the number of inbound calls is becoming difficult to handle. This is where audience segmentation becomes extremely important.
Are calls coming from phone numbers in PPC campaigns or from other sources? With multiple phone numbers spread across multiple ads, which campaigns led the caller to reach out?
VirtualPBX offers a simple answer to these types of questions: Audience segmentation through Phone Number Prepend.
Phone Number Prepends work by attaching a custom phrase to the beginning of a logged phone number. For instance, if GRIN tech was called at phone number 1-888-555-1234, a prepended text of “Online Ad:” would make it look like “Online Ad: 1-888-555-1234” when viewed inside a call log.
Segmentation begins when multiple Prepends are used to differentiate phone numbers.
Consider the following phone numbers at a glance. They’re fairly difficult to tell apart.
- 1-888-555-1234
- 1-888-555-1243
- 1-888-555-1324
But with a few prepends, it’s much easier to find one among the rest.
- Online Ad: 1-888-555-1234
- Video Ad: 1-888-555-1243
- Print Ad: 1-888-555-1324
Of course, businesses can get much more specific with their prepends – possibly including the platform and date to mark where and when a number was used (like “Google Ads October 2019 “).
Businesses in a position like GRIN tech might also want to differentiate their PPC campaigns by city. In this case, a prepend like “Google Ads Oct 2019 Miami” could be appropriate.
What businesses would ultimately see is a breakdown of which phone numbers receive many calls and which don’t. This broad measure of success will point to associated campaigns so marketing teams can make efforts toward further improvements.
Making These Tools Your Own
VirtualPBX offers all the tools shown above in all its phone plans. This isn’t the case with many of its competitors where certain features are priced into higher tiers of service or may not be included at all.
Whether you focus primarily on traffic from your own website or on PPC campaigns through Google, you will need a powerful phone system to handle inbound calls in a measured way.
The ability to customize your phone system is paramount, and that’s exactly what VirtualPBX offers. The Automated Attendant accepts personalized greetings and phone tree structures. Ring Groups let you segment your business departments into recognizable groups. And Phone Number Prepend becomes as strong as the unique phrases your business creates.
The result of this combination of availability and multiple customization options makes VirtualPBX a service worth looking into for phone service at your own company.