With a service number (0800 or 0900) or a company number (085 or 088) you increase your accessibility. You may already have such a number or you may be considering applying for one.

An advantage of such a business number is that it can cover all local numbers of your branches. This is possible thanks to an intelligent system called Interactive Voice Response (IVR).

You no longer have to manually forward callers to the most relevant office, the nearest store or the person in the right department. Such an IVR processes all incoming calls on your business number and distributes them over existing connections within your organization. This works with your existing infrastructure and equipment.

But how exactly does that work, configuring your service number or company number? That is a question we can answer in all sorts of ways, because there are different options for distributing your telephone traffic. In this article we will show you which these are, so that you can decide which way is most suitable for your organization.

Option 1: let your callers choose

Do you have an organization with departments that do not necessarily serve a specific geographical area? Or are your administration and your technical service, for example, located in different locations? Then give your callers the opportunity to connect themselves to the desired department. With the Choice menu, one key press connects your callers to the desired person or department. It is important here that a menu is short and clear – avoid choice stress!

Option 2: distribution based on area codes

This option is suitable for companies and organizations that are active throughout the country, but have branches that cover certain regions. With a traditional number, this means that a telephone operator greets callers personally and manually forwards them to the nearest branch.

With area code routing, our Interactive Voice Response system (IVR) distributes the callers over your branches based on their area codes. Together with you, we draw up a list of area codes and the corresponding branches. It is also possible to play a branch-specific message before forwarding to a branch and we take the opening hours into account.

You may be wondering what happens if the area code cannot be recognized, for example because someone is calling with a mobile phone. Then postal code routing is a smart solution.

Option 3: distribution based on postal code

This option is suitable for organizations that do not work at a regional but at a local level. In other words: organizations that have multiple branches in an area code region and that require a fine-meshed distribution of callers. With the so-called postal code routing, our IVR distributes your callers based on postal code. Callers are asked to enter the 4 digits of their postal code. You indicate in advance which postal codes belong to which branch. The caller is thus connected to your branch in the (adjacent) district. Here too, it is possible to play a message before the telephone rings at a certain store or specific department.

As already said, postal code routing can also be perfectly combined with area code routing.

Option 4: custom solution

It is also possible to build a custom solution for you. For example, a combination of postal code routing and area code routing. Or what about forwarding after number recognition? Here, it is not the area code that is looked at, but an entry in your database of the specific fixed or mobile number of the caller. This is the cream of the crop in telecom performance. We achieve the link between our IVR and your CRM system thanks to our API. If the number is not recognized, we play a selection menu or use an area code or postal code routing to connect callers as efficiently as possible with the right person in your organization.

Start today

Belfabriek makes it as easy as possible for you. You can enable options 1 to 3 yourself via your online dashboard, called My Belfabriek. Depending on the option, you will be ready in a few minutes, so why not arrange this today? For a custom solution, please contact us on our number 0800–BELFABRIEK (0800–235 3227).