When you start building a national phone network based on one toll free phone number or multiple numbers, you may get surprised at the staggering number of options available to you. From customer service to nationwide (or even worldwide) sales, you might be impressed with how the various options regarding call routing may improve both the efficiency of your business and your customer experience. If you need a “Follow the Sun” system or other time-based routing system, specialized local routing, options for an overflow amount of calls or even special routing options in case of emergencies, you may find exactly what you need as you create your guidelines for the 1800 vanity numbers you use on a national level. It should be noted that David Ashley does not build the phone network in question; we just want to educate you on some of the phenomenal logistics behind America’s sometimes complex phone number networks used for business.

Follow the Sun

So you’re a national company offering customer service through 1800 vanity numbers that serves all fifty of these United States. Your company has grown large enough that you need two call centers. You crunch the numbers and find that it would be most sound to operate one call center in Portland, and another in Baltimore.

The problem is call management. Naturally, you’d like to get as many of your east coast operators home at five o’clock as possible. However, you know that east coast customers will still be calling in. Using Follow the Sun routing, or Time-of-Day, you can control where the majority of calls to a particular phone number are routed depending on the time of day—or the position of the sun, to follow the metaphor.

Further Time-Based Routing

Additional routing options may be implemented based on days off, what day of the week it is, what time of the year it is, etc. Let’s say your Baltimore office achieved some special landmark like a tenth anniversary, winning a corporate contest, reaching a sales goal, etc. Let’s further say that you are so impressed with the Baltimore office that you decide to throw a team building event, during work hours, offsite. You need every call to your phone number to route to Portland. Utilizing special routing, you may ensure that all calls are routed to the Portland office, guaranteeing that those 1800 vanity numbers you purchased continue to put a good face on your business.

Local Routing

This is David Ashley’s specialty when it comes to 1800 vanity numbers, and this is what enables us to offer you toll free phone number options at rates you may never have imagined possible. Toll free numbers may be purchased that use only local phone call routing. Let’s drop the national call center metaphor for a bit. Let’s say your business runs out of Baltimore, area code (410). You decide to purchase a local custom phoneword from David Ashley, say 1-800-BASE-BALL. That number can be set up to only take calls from within the (410) area code, thus growing local businesses on a level that appears national.

What If Everybody’s Busy?

Now let’s get back to our national 1800 vanity numbers fantasy. What if all the trunk facilities are busy? Call overflow may be routed if there is some kind of emergency and your company simply can’t handle all those inbound calls. If there’s some crisis, or if you win American Idol, and the circuit board blow up with calls of congratulations to your business 800 phone number, emergency can be set up to handle them.

Whether you need that national number to follow the sun, require special time-based routing options, utilize local routing services for your vanity number, or need emergency services, a national 800 network is option packed. If you need a local 800 phone number, however, David Ashley is the company to call: it may be that next step toward living out your national call center fantasy.