It might seem unlikely to you now, but we’re professionals, we know what we’re talking about. 800 numbers and toll free numbers will end up being this year’s Tickle Me Elmo. Think about it, a vanity toll free number makes a great gift for any occassion.

At the time of writing this, there were countless toll free phone numbers available that ended in “funk”. Who wouldn’t want that? Unfortunately, a toll free 867-5309 was not available (I would have taken it).

Birthdays:

What does a loved one get the entrepreneur who seems to have it all figured out? The answer isn’t new slippers. Don’t be disappointed with your birthday present. Make sure when you blow out the candles, you’re getting ready to blow away your customers with a toll free number and professional auto attendant greeting.

Weddings and Anniversaries:

Time to party? An evermore popular way to accept RSVPs for your big day is to set up a lovely greeting on a toll free number (especially good if inviting guests from out of town) with two designated extensions for attending and not attending. You could get really fancy and set up extensions for dinner choices, but you probably don’t want to show off. Add voicemail transcription and you don’t even need to listen to the messages; have them sent to you as text on your mobile phone. Update your guest list without ever listening to a message!

Babies:

9 months have passed since the wedding (what a wedding!), and it’s time to welcome the newest member of the family. To go along with your baby book, create a virtual phone system for friends and family to call and leave messages welcoming your newborn to the world. All of your recordings are saved as audio files that can easily be saved to your computer and put on audio CDs to cherish forever.

Upgrade Your Business:

Does your home phone line double as your business line? Many small businesses and entrepreneurs work from home and don’t feel the need to invest a lot of money in another hard line just for their business, and why should they? A FreedomVoice virtual phone system will forward your new business line calls to any phone you desire, give you the option to take the call or send directly to voicemail, and even let you know what “department” the caller is looking for (e.g. sales, technical support, billing). All this while ensuring that you keep your professional and personal calls separate.

Sweepstakes Fanaticism:

Do you have a second email address just for entering contests online? Many people do, and they expect to get nothing but spam and junk mail and maybe an occasional prize. They don’t want their personal or business email assaulted with spam. A virtual phone system could serve the same purpose for contests that require a phone number. The problem with this is you can get just as much spam in the form of  telemarketing calls. Unfortunately, spam filters haven’t made it to voicemail yet, but a virtual phone system can effectively screen calls and keep your sweepstake obsession from overwhelming your personal and business lives.

(Legal) Pranks:

If you haven’t dialed 719-266-2837 yet, do it. Now. If you pull off something similar, please let us know!

Grab an 800 number while they’re hot, and check out our available toll free numbers, vanity numbers and local numbers while you’re there.

What are some other creative (family friendly) ways to use toll free numbers?

At FreedomVoice, we continuously reward our customers for referrals through our Refer-A-Friend program. Normally we reward our customers with a free month of service for each friend they refer. Recently, however, we upped the stakes by rewarding one lucky referrer with a free 5-day trip to Hawaii for two, including accommodations and airfare at the amazing Hilton Waikoloa Village.

Many happy customers were referred, and we’re pleased to announce the winner of our contest today:

Lauren Perreault of Fabulous South Bay!

About Fabulous South Bay

Specializing in California’s Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, Palos Verdes, and the Greater South Bay, Lauren and the Fabulous South Bay staff are dedicated to offering their clients the very best in real estate consulting services. In addition to helping clients sell or buy their dream home, they also offer:

- Free architectural consultations for buyers.
- Expert loan brokers who can find you a good loan, sometimes even with no money down.
- Referrals to reliable contractors for estimates and repairs.
- Contractor discounts on materials and appliances.
- Interior design advice, furniture and accessories to help your home show its value.
- Ongoing real estate and home advice long after you close escrow.

What Lauren Loves About FreedomVoice

Lauren is busy building up a team of realtors to share tasks with and chose a FreedomVoice virtual phone system to help grow and organize her business. In addition to our quick and dedicated customer service, Lauren loves FreedomVoice for several reasons:

Vanity Number: Lauren proudly displays her easy to remember vanity toll free number, 888-SBayLux, on her sign riders and promotional materials. She also likes the simplicity of having a single phone number that can route callers to the appropriate team member.

Flexibility: Lauren loves how easy and flexible her virtual phone system is, especially the ease of setting up and changing call forwarding numbers from the web.

Scheduling Calls: Lauren has to manage tasks among her staff, so she likes that she can schedule who will receive calls in advance.

Confidence: Lauren wants clients to have confidence in Fabulous South Bay from the moment dial her number. Her virtual phone system projects a professional and polished image, perfect for her business.

Call Capture: Lauren likes that this feature enables her to never miss a lead. Never. She has also added name and address capture to her service so that she can personalize every returned call.

How to Participate in Our Refer-A-Friend Program

Are you a FreedomVoice customer who knows someone who would benefit from FreedomVoice service? Then participate in our Refer-A-Friend Program now! For each person you refer, you will earn a free credit equal to their monthly rental on your account when they sign up and use the service for at least 30 days. Refer as often as you would like!

What About Hawaii?! I’m Jealous!

Stay tuned for more FreedomVoice promotions and contests coming soon. Stay in touch with us through Facebook, Twitter and by bookmarking our blog. You might be the next customer to win a big prize! In the mean time, we wish Lauren a wonderful and relaxing vacation.

A big mahalo to everyone who participated!

If you’d like to connect with Lauren and Fabulous South Bay, be sure to find her on Facebook and Twitter.

But time is running out to make the most out of this opportunity for your business. Why? Because the availability of high-quality 855 numbers is about to take a nose-dive…

When 855 numbers were released on October 9, 2010, they came out in a trickle. You see, SMS/800, the government agency that oversees the distribution of toll free numbers, is fairly smart. They know that whenever there’s opportunity, there are opportunists. In the case of 855 numbers, it’s in the form of hoarders and warehousers, companies that play Hungry Hungry Hippos for as many valuable toll free numbers as they can, then sit on them and resell them for ridiculous prices. Keep in mind, unlike domain names, brokering toll free numbers for anything beyond a reasonable setup fee is illegal. But that doesn’t stop those who don’t think they’ll get caught.

So SMS/800 put into place a 30-day rationing system that limited the amount of 855 numbers that could be reserved each day by a RespOrg (that’s Responsible Organization, or a company certified to handle toll free numbers). I say limited, past tense, because 855 number rationing is now over. 30 days is up, the flood gates have opened, and dozens of cherry-pickers are combing their way through heaps and heaps of numbers to find the ones they think will bring them the most money.

So this is our warning to you: don’t delay. If you’ve been thinking about getting a new 855 number for your business, or adding one to your existing FreedomVoice toll free service, act now before it’s too late. Check out our vanity search tool and hand-pick a vanity spelling you can use to boost your brand and advertising response rates for years to come.

Way back in the Year 2000, the FCC released the 866 toll free number prefix in order to ease the burden on 888, 877, and 800 numbers. Ten years later, with high quality vanity spellings a rare commodity, the FCC finally has stepped up and unleashed a whole new batch of numbers to champion your brand:  the 855 toll free prefix.

What does the release of 855 numbers mean for you and your business? In a word, opportunity.

For an entire decade, valuable vanity toll free number spellings have been locked up by those lucky enough to jump on them first. As much as a realtor might’ve want a number that ends in ‘HOMES’ or ‘HOUSE’ or a mortgage broker a number ending in ‘LOAN’, these numbers simply weren’t available.

But with the release of the 855 number prefix, thousands of matching vanity numbers are available for these terms all-at-once. Not only can you get these premium words in your number, you can even find matches that have attractive surrounding digits, like repeaters. (e.g. ’855-33-HOMES’ or ’855-885-LOAN’, both available at the time of writing)

So what are you waiting for? Set forth, brave soul, and carve out your own brand identity with your very own vanity 855 number!

So I thought I’d do my best to turn these tips on their head, and in the process leave you some practical tips about securing a great vanity toll free number for your business.

Bad Tip #1:  Avoid Number Hybrids

This tip points out that numbers like 888-444-BIKE aren’t as valuable as, say, 888-FIX-BIKE for a bicycle repair shop. And they have a point – the latter definitely is more valuable. The problem with this argument, though, is that there’s only one 888-FIX-BIKE. That vanity spelling translates directly to 888-349-2453, exactly one phone number out of millions of toll free numbers. Care to take a guess whether or not it’s reserved already or in use? You’re trying to find a needle in a haystack with a pair of tweezers.

Meanwhile, a vanity search for 888-***-BIKE has hundreds of numbers that will match any 3 digits into those wildcard *’s. So you might end up with 888-444-BIKE or 888-345-BIKE, which isn’t exactly the same but is still wildly effective. To minimize any drawback of using matched numbers and letters, try to find repeating or sequential digits like in these two examples (444 & 345).

Bad Tip #2: Don’t Limit Yourself to 7 Digits

This proposed tip is really just an extension of the previous, but going beyond 7 letter vanity spellings with the addition of overdial. Overdial is the practice of using a vanity spelling that extends beyond the end of the actual phone number in order to complete the spelling. Like 888-MATTRESS. Really this number is 888-628-8737, and the extra ‘S’ is just a disposable digit.

Overdial itself isn’t really the problem. Going over a digit or two (preferably just 1, though) isn’t the worst thing in the world, such as locking in a number like 888-***-HOUS(E). It really goes back to the fact that finding an 8 digit vanity number is effectively finding a 7 digit vanity number, which again has you looking for exactly one number on every search. There’s only one 888-MATTRES(S). But hey, maybe you’ll get lucky?

Bad Tip #3: 800 vs. 866, 877, and 888

In this misleading tip, the author says you should aim for 800 over 888, 877, or 866. It’s true that 800 is a more easily recognized prefix, but 888 isn’t far behind. 888 numbers, after all, have been around for over fourteen years. By now, most people get it.

Also, this tip fails to mention the fact that SMS/800, the governing body over toll free numbers, has largely disabled the ability for vanity search tools to query the national database for available vanity numbers with an 800 prefix. Why? Because 800 numbers are so increasingly scarce that 99.99% of vanity searches would return no results and simply waste resources. Stick with 888, only going to 877 and 866 if you can get better vanity spelling availability out of those prefixes.

Bad Tip #4: Vanity Name Choice

Here we have some advice to be selective in what you say with your vanity spelling. Pick words that relate to your business, avoiding ambiguity where possible. Sounds great, with the exception that they again focus on whole number and overdial spellings like 888-LAWNCARE. No chance.

Vanity toll free numbers have been around long enough for a large percentage of the more popular spellings to be taken. To find a vanity number that fits your business, you’ll need to get a little creative and shorten up your vanity spelling to 4 or 5 letters at the most to give yourself a better chance to find some results. You still want to draw some kind of mental connection between your number and your business, like my 888-444-BIKE example above, but not at the cost of setting unreasonable expectations and not finding any numbers with which you’re happy.

Bad Tip #5: Avoid Q & Z

This one may be my favorite. Three years ago next month, the patent for an international standard for phone key pads went on the books. This is what you’ve likely come to think of as common on desk phones, home phones, and cell phones, with the 7 key representing “PQRS” instead of just “PRS” and the 9 key representing “WXYZ” instead of just “WXY”. Despite this change being over three years old, and the fact that it has become a widely-accepted international standard for new phones with English characters, you still see people advising to avoid vanity spellings with these digits.

The simple truth is, you shouldn’t go out of your way to avoid these letters if you feel they’re necessary to get the vanity toll free number spelling that you want. And just to be on the extra-safe side, if you feel so inclined, get in the habit of spelling out the digits of your vanity number anywhere that you display it. This is a good general practice already, something like “888-444-QUAD  (888-444-7823)”.

Bad Tip #6 Good Tip #1: Put Your Vanity Number Everywhere!

Finally, a tip that has some meat on it. Once you’ve actually found a vanity toll free number, it’s time to plaster it everywhere you can. Get it on your business cards, your website, your company vehicles, your letterhead, your tv spots, your radio commercials, your billboards, your office door, etc. Anywhere that you would reasonably place your company logo or slogan, pop your vanity toll free number there also. The value of your vanity spelling only gets better with repetition.

Looking to get vanity toll free number service for your business? Check out our free vanity search tool.

But beyond your napping “sleeping” habits and your personal preference to shower/shave/get dressed, the technology you deploy also plays a big role in whether your operation gets off the ground. Here are five of the top reasons you should consider using an 800 number virtual phone system for your home-based business, instead of just relying on your personal home or cell phone numbers…

1. Look & Sound Professional

Giving potential clients and customers your home or cell phone number is the easiest way to betray the size of your home-based business. Even if you’re borderline superhero when it comes to your entrepreneurial powers, you’re still going to lose opportunities if companies are afraid you don’t have the resources to take care of their needs.

An 800 number gets your foot in the door. With a professional-sounding auto attendant, voicemail service, and call forwarding to your home or cell phone, you get a professional image that reduces customer anxiety while still fitting your lifestyle. It’s not about tricking your customers — it’s about making a good first impression to earn the opportunity to show off what you can really do.

2. Nationwide Reach

Many entrepreneurs that work from home reach a nationwide audience via the Internet. To get anywhere with this kind of online business, you need to appear accessible. If you are advertising your contact phone number as a local number in Florida, you might have a tough time convincing customers in California that you’re the right business to take care of their needs. The problem is more than the customer having to dial long distance. If you seem far away, your potential customers might not feel secure giving you their business. Since 800 numbers are non-geographic, they immediately alleviate this problem and give you the appeal of a nationwide, fully-accessible business.

3. Maintain Your Privacy, Sanity

Just because you work out of your home, doesn’t mean you need to turn your personal life inside out and give up your private information to everyone with whom you do business. Having an 800 number that forwards to your other phone lines lets you keep your business life separate by maintaining the privacy of your home phone and cell phone numbers. Best of all, you can avoid 24/7 burnout by setting your 800 number call forwarding hours and days to draw a line as to when you’re “in the office” to take calls and when you need to be done for the day.

4. Prevent Missed Opportunities

As I mentioned before, one of the challenges of working from home is managing your professional and personal lives. On a micro scale, this can mean little interruptions in the middle of the day, like needing to leave home to pick up children from school or running time-sensitive errands. If you can’t avoid these tasks, you need to at least mitigate their impact on running your business.

With an 800 number, you get two quick benefits that keep you connected on the go. The first is Follow-Me-Live call forwarding that can track you down at multiple phone numbers to make a connection, such as your home office, cell phone, or personal home phone numbers. And if a missed call does reach your voicemail, it’s not the end of the world. With voicemail-to-email, your messages are delivered as audio file attachments to your email address, and you can even be alerted of these messages via text message. This gives you the ability to quickly return missed calls before they turn into missed opportunities.

5. Online Management Tools

Virtual phone systems are all about efficiency, getting more done with fewer resources and in less time. To keep you ahead of the curve, FreedomVoice 800 numbers are kept easy-to-manage with the WebLink Internet Control Panel. This secure, online back-office gives you total access to check your messages, change your settings, update your account information, run reports, and much more — from anywhere you have Internet access! With intuitive controls, you’re in control of your virtual phone system 24/7.

What are you waiting for? Get an 800 number for your home business today!

One of the more popular and creative areas that our customers like to change is their system’s hold music. Today I’m going to cover two available hold music options and how each can help your business.

Random Hold Music

The Random Hold Music feature is exactly what it may sound like – a random shuffle of several professional, studio-recorded hold music songs falling into one of four genres of your choice: Jazz, Easy Listening, Rock, or House. Each new caller will hear a different song in the same genre you’ve set, and callers on hold for an extended period will rotate through multiple songs instead of listening to the same song on repeat.

Random Hold Music can be targeted to your audience, setting the tone for the rest of the call. For example, rock music can get your callers excited about buying your product or some smooth jazz can soothe the nerves of frustrated callers on hold with your customer support line. Here, listen to some samples.

Personalized Hold Music

Personalized Hold Music gives you total control over this recording. With this feature, you are free to upload your own recorded music at any time as the hold music on your virtual phone system. This is a great way to make sure your hold music always stays current, changing with the season or otherwise swapping out new music regularly.

Many FreedomVoice customers also use Personalized Hold Music to upload a pre-recorded message in place of actual music. This lets you use this recording as a promotional space, telling your customers about your latest deals or other important information of which they may not be aware – like how to follow you on Twitter or fan you on Facebook!

To add either of the above hold music options to your FreedomVoice service for just $5 / mo., please contact your friendly Technical Support team at 1-800-477-1477 ext. 2 or by email at support@freedomvoice.com.

Getting an 800 number isn’t like setting up traditional phone service through your local phone company. Here are a few differences that make it easy to get started with a virtual toll free number…

1. No Equipment to Buy

That’s right – virtual toll free numbers are an equipment-free business phone solution. There’s no expensive call switching equipment that will swallow your budget, since all of the features and functionality are hosted from remote by your toll free number service provider. You get a professional auto attendant, multiple voicemail extensions, and can forward calls to your existing phones without any on-site installation or maintenance.

2. No Software to Install

With FreedomVoice, not only is there no equipment to buy, there’s no confusing software to download and install. Your toll free number service is controlled 100% from remote, and you can change your settings and check your messages at any time online through your secure WebLink interface.

3. Instant Number Activation

The best part of getting a toll free number from FreedomVoice? It’s activated instantly! Choose your own 800 toll free number and it will be ready for you to configure and use as soon as you place your order. We’ll help you walk through setting up your service and in a few quick steps you’ll be good to go!

So what are you waiting for? Choose your own 800 number today!

Note: As an exception to the above, vanity toll free number reservations require 1-3 business days to activate from the SMS/800 National Database.

For decades, leaders in the telecommunications industry have pushed for greener solutions, encouraging and empowering business owners to create telework programs with technologies like virtual phone systems and the hosted VoIP PBX.

These technologies increase remote productivity and allow efficient management of remote employees. But even so, the adoption of telework programs is not progressing as rapidly as it should be. Perhaps part of the problem is a failure to realize the full environmental benefit of a nation working from home.

Our good friends at the Telework Research Network released some startling statistics about the impact of telecommuting yesterday, citing, “If every person in the U.S. with a telecommuting-compatible job worked at home on Earth Day, collectively it would:

– Save 900 million vehicle miles
– Save 45 million gallons of gas, $188 million in consumer savings
– Save 2.3 million barrels of oil, valued at $185 million
– Eliminate 423,000 tons of greenhouse gasses, equivalent to taking 77,000 cars off the road for a year
– Save 28 million kWh in net electricity, enough to power 2,600 homes for a year
– Save 775 people from traffic injury and deaths

And that’s just one day! Multiply those figures across an entire year, and you have an amazing potential to reduce commuter consumption and pollution and preserve the planet. The Telework Research Network also states that only 2% of the U.S. workforce telecommutes a majority of the time, though 40% could. So it’s time to start asking: what’s the hold up? Why are people that can telecommute not doing so?

I don’t think it’s because people like rushing out the door, thoroughly enjoy being stuck in traffic, and can’t live without their morning talk radio shows on the drive to work. I believe it’s a matter of culture – we’ve always left home to go to work, so it’s stamped on our brains and in our society that this is how it should be. On top of that, there’s a great deal of management anxiety and technophobia. An employee working out of their home has to be able to be held to the same standard as one in the office, and it is a tough sell to get some business owners to understand that there are tools out there to make that happen.

The decision comes down to business owners and managers. They have to be willing and able to responsibly create a telework program with technologies that allow for efficient management from remote. But getting to that stage is going to take a stronger movement from the office worker. If you could be telecommuting more, why not bring that up with your boss? Explain the benefits, how it can help the company, how you’ll be just as productive, if not moreso, from the comfort of your own home. They may say no, but at least you’ve planted the seed and can nurture it from there.

Let’s make the next decade about finding the answers that will get more people out of the office, of the roads, and working from home to help save the planet. Personal efforts toward conservation start by examining what you do every day, and if you can cross a long commute off your list, you’ll be doing the Earth a great big favor.

Happy Earth Day 2010!

But recently, some counties in Alabama have begun reporting their residents aren’t receiving their census forms and are worried about losing out on funding. So what does the Census Bureau turn to in their time of need to reach out to residents and collect their information? Why, a toll free number, of course.

To help preserve the accuracy of the census and facilitate easier response, the Census Bureau has released a toll free number that Alabama residents can call to request a census form or even compete the 10-response questionnaire with a representative over the phone.

The toll free number is 1-866-872-6868.

For additional contact toll free numbers, including those for other languages, visit the Census Bureau’s contact page here:

http://2010.census.gov/2010census/contact

Roll Tide!