There is a growing trend sweeping across the business community with organisations taking up the newly released non geographic 03 telephone numbering range in order to attract more calls from their customers.

There was a great deal of confusion and negative publicity surrounding the traditional non geographic 0845, 0870 and 0844 numbering ranges, which is understandable due to the varied and often costly charges associated with them. Customers have become wise to the fact that businesses were profiting from them paying excessive amounts to contact them on these numbers and they quite simply aren’t prepared to put up with it any longer and are voting with their feet.

Ofcom introduced the 03 range at the same time they put a stop to revenue sharing on the ubiquitous 0870 numbers in order to improve customer confidence in UK telephone numbers and offer an alternative that’s fair to both consumer and businesses. Part of the range of available 03 numbers have been set aside for charities and public sector organisations only.
Companies are even migrating to 03 from freephone 0800 numbers as they are a) expensive for customers to dial from their mobiles @ around 25p per minute and 50% of their calls tend to arrive from mobiles and b) also pricey for companies to operate as they subsidise all calls received by circa 5p per minute.

The new 03 ranges are proving so popular because they cost the same to dial as any 01 or 02 number which means, crucially, that they are included within consumers standard mobile and BT inclusive call packages. They cost businesses 75% less than 0800 numbers do to run, so a win win is finally achieved and this is why they are being hailed as the phone numbers of the future.

About time too seems to be the consensus.

The other benefit to organisations is that specialist inbound providers can offer them access to an online portal accessing information such as:

• which geographical areas their callers are ringing them from
  
• when the busy times of day are

The number of:

• calls answered
  
• missed calls
  
• engaged calls

Complete control over the routing of the calls is also available from these portals where businesses can easily play recorded messages to queuing callers and set-up voicemail messages which can be instantly emailed to the relevant departments and acted upon without relying on the capabilities of their telephone systems or expertise of their in house it teams. Prices start from £15 per number per month.