WhiteMonkey
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Do less, better.
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UK
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This site sees a lot of complaining that companies are doing things the wrong way with these numbers, but I was wondering if I could tap some of the wealth of knowledge of the site members as to the right way to do the following:
With a few friends I'm starting up a company. As is relatively common these days, the business is going to be run over the web, with no physical offices. We are all based in different parts of the UK, but the nature of the business means that we will require fairly frequent phone communication with clients, not least during the Sales stage.
We use VoIP systems, and are going to use an automated switch board system (with direct extensions, don't worry!) to allow people to talk to the most relevant person. Some of the options (e.g. Sales) will ring half a dozen people simultaneously, connecting with whoever answers first (again, where ever they may be). Obviously, if you do know who to talk to you can just call them directly... but if you don't know who to talk to (or don't care, e.g. just call "accounts") then these systems are useful.
Now... the question is: what number to use for the switchboard?
We are based all over the UK, and our services are not location specific. We expect our clients to be based all over the UK, again not in any particular place.
I initially thought 0870 would be a good way to go as I thought it was "non-regional national", but your site has made it quite clear that for some reason the phone companies don't see fit to offer it in inclusive minutes as such, and so it cannot be used for this purpose.
We're not interested in making money on the calls, but also would rather not be charged for client calls (as with 0800 etc.) - it would seem that most companies in our situation opt for a central London number, but to me this seems spurious, especially as London is one of the few places where we don't actually have someone based! (damn those rents...)
If charging for calls is dishonest, so is pretending to be a central London company - some people do think it makes a difference, and we would be "tricking" those people.
Is there a genuine "geographic" number range that doesn't specify location? What would be perfect, it seems from reading the forums here and elsewhere, would be an "030 for the People"!
I hope this topic hasn't been covered before - I tried searching but couldn't find anything. I'm sure someone will link me up if this is old ground.
Cheers,
WhiteMonkey
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