Organisations in UK are increasingly recognising the flexibility offered by hosted telephony services. Some of the main benefits that make it a preferred telephony solution are described below.

Using overlay numbers allow organisations to expand to different geographic locations without major disruption to their services. Often, a change in location demands change in phone numbers as well. This can be quite disrupting for businesses because the new number would need to be publicised extensively. Still there is a possibility that some customers may be lost merely because of a number change. An overlay number such as 0800, 0845, 0844 or a premium rate number effectively eliminates this problem by providing continuity of services no matter where the physical location of the business is.

In the event of disasters, the calls can be routed temporarily to a new site where business goes on as usual. The customers need not even know what goes on in the background.

Intelligent call management features such as Call Hunt Groups, IVR menus, Time of Day Routing plans, Voice to Email, Fax to Email and Location Based Routing provide a host of benefits for businesses.

The telephony service will also have an option to extract inbound call statistics. This can be used to arrive at the efficiency of performance. Measures such as Average Call Duration, number of missed calls and Average Time to Answer can provide great insight into operational efficiencies and customer satisfaction levels.

Overlay numbers can be used to route business calls to personal mobile numbers. This allows employees to be accessible at all times even when they are on the road. They also need not give out their personal mobile numbers to customers.

Easy recall is one of the critical factors that influence a customer to dial a business number. A memorable number that frequently appears on TV, Radio and print advertising makes for a great promotional tool.

It is possible to route calls to any destination. From the customer’s point of view, he calls only one number, but in the background the call may be routed to a fixed local number, mobile number or international landline and mobile numbers. Customers call a local number and pay local tariff to reach you wherever you are.

The numbers are also portable. They can be transferred from one service provider to another. Hosted telephony solutions make expensive PBX equipment redundant and obsolete.

For more information on hosted telephony and 0845 numbers, 0800 numbers, 0844 numbers, premium rate numbers, freephone numbers and 03 Numbers, visit Numbertalk.