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A virtual number from Gold Local Numbers allows a company to appear local to a client whilst remaining a national company.
More and more people prefer to use local companies these days. Maybe it is because of the recession, and people like to feel that they are “doing their bit” to help the local economy by choosing local businesses. Maybe it is because they like to know that the firm they have chosen is nearby to call on if something goes wrong. Maybe it is because of environmental reasons, with people not wanting the service they have requested to have come from the other side of the country, thus reducing their carbon footprint. Maybe they feel that a local company will charge less because they don’t have to travel so far, and so are not passing on high fuel prices! Whatever the reasons, local businesses are certainly becoming more fashionable.
However, for many businesses although they might be a national company, it is not in any way feasible to have business premises all over the country. The sheer cost of renting or owning buildings, the overheads for those buildings and the cost of employing staff mean unless you are a large company it does not make good business sense to do it. So, what is the alternative?
The alternative is to have a virtual local phone number. “Gold UK local ghost numbers have become incredibly popular with our customers recently” says Richie Williams, the Business Development Manager at Gold Numbers. “You no longer have to give your address in Yellow Pages directory listings, just a phone number, so if you’re a national company you can have a range of local numbers and then submit the relevant one to the relevant area directory. Thus when people are looking through their directories, your company will come up with a local area code”.
Gold Numbers have STD codes for 500 towns and cities across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, from Aberdeen to York, Mansfield to Oswestry, Lancaster to Guildford, Winchester to Tiverton, Porthmadog to Milton Keynes and Belfast to Ipswich. A full list of these can be found on their website, and you can view them in either alphabetical order according to town, or numerical order according to area code. For a local number which is routed to a landline or a mobile, Gold Numbers charge a one off payment of £15 + VAT to set up your virtual local number / ghost number, and then £5 + VAT per month rental. There is no long term contract – you only have to give 30 days’ written notice to cancel the service. For a local number that is routed to a landline you are charged 3p + VAT per minute to receive calls, 16p + VAT per minute for a local number routed to a mobile, and 27p per minute + VAT if you are on the 3 Mobile Network, although Gold uses per second rather than per minute billing so that you only pay for what you use. Gold offer a discount on multiple local numbers.
Gold Local Numbers also offer their Fax to Email Service, so that you can get a local fax number to match your local phone number, allowing customers to send you a fax which goes straight into your email inbox, saving the need for a fax machine to be on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, as well as saving on paper, ink, toner, electricity and time.
There are also a wide range of additional features which can be added to your local phone number, a full list of which is available on Gold’s website, where further information about Gold’s local numbers can be found.