virtual phone number Archives - GlobalVirtualNumbers Blog

Virtual Number Call Forwarding for College Students

Looking for a better way to manage a college student’s phone needs? Consider virtual number call forwarding.

You can use virtual number call forwarding in several ways to reduce your student’s long distance bills and ensure that you can be reached no matter where you may be located.

In order to understand how you and your college student can benefit from virtual number call forwarding, you’ll need to understand what virtual number call forwarding is. At its most basic, virtual number call forwarding is a phone number that is not attached to a physical phone. You can set your virtual number to ring to any phone.

Get Your Own Toll Free Virtual Number

As the parent of a college student, you don’t want to miss a single call. While cell phones are a great choice, they do have limits. For example, what happens if your cell phone’s battery is dead? What if you’re traveling in an area with spotty coverage? With virtual number call forwarding, you can receive calls on your cell phone if desired or you can set up your virtual number to ring to a different phone such as your home phone, office phone, or hotel room phone.

Parents who pay their students’ phone bills one way or the other should consider getting a toll free virtual number. Since the number is toll free, your student does not need to worry about costs or running out of minutes on a prepaid phone card. Meanwhile, toll free virtual number call forwarding plans are available with low per minute rates. You may even find that ordering a toll free number for your college student is one of the cheapest ways to receive long distance calls.

Once you have your number, give it to your college student and any other children, family members, or friends you want to be able to reach you no matter what. Use the online account management tool or voice menu to set up your default ring-to number and access other features. You may even want to enable simultaneous ringing (a feature that rings several designated ring-to numbers at the same time) or sequential routing (a feature that tries several designated numbers in a predefined sequence).

Get Your Child a Virtual Number

In addition to getting a virtual number call forwarding plan for receiving calls from your college student, it may make sense to get one for calling your student. When picking a number, keep in mind that even if your child is located in another city or state, it’s often smarter to choose a number that’s local to you because you’ll be dialing the number and paying for the calls you make. Consider either a toll free number or a number that’s inside your local calling area. Either way, you will incur a low per minute fee for the call forwarding service. Choose a toll free virtual number call forwarding number if you frequently travel outside of your local calling area to keep your costs as low as possible.

It’s up to you how you allow your child to use the virtual number. For example, some parents set up simultaneous ringing so that the virtual number call forwarding automatically rings the child’s dorm line and cell phone. Others teach their kids how to change the ring-to number at will. If your child is likely to forget to change the number, activating simultaneous or sequential ringing is recommended.

It’s also up to you whether or not you tell your child what the number is. For example, if your child shares the virtual number with casual friends and acquaintances, you’ll end up paying for their calls. If you’d prefer to contain your costs and limit them to only the calls you make, then order virtual number call forwarding, set it up, and keep the details to yourself.

Virtual Numbers and International Travel

Another benefit of virtual number call forwarding is that you can use your virtual number when traveling internationally. If your child will be spending a semester overseas, you can simply change the ring-to number to the overseas destination and dial your child as you normally do. Likewise, if you must leave the country, you can change your ring-to number to your international location and receive phone calls from your college student no matter where in the world you might be.

Using virtual number call forwarding to make and receive phone calls from a college student is a terrific choice for any parent. Order one for your college student to use to reach you and one for you to reach your college student. You’ll both be better able to find each other, and you can enjoy low per minute rates.

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Virtual Numbers Call Forwarding for Small Businesses

On days when you work from home, you can switch the ring to number to your home phone line.

Companies have long used international virtual numbers to appear local in markets where they lack a physical location.

They do this by establishing a local virtual phone number and then using call forwarding to route those calls to a call center located internationally.

For example, a caller in Savannah, Georgia might dial what appears to be a local number, yet the call will ring to a call center located in some other city, or country for that matter.

As a small business owner, you can use call forwarding in a similar fashion. For example, if your ideal clients are located in New York City but you’re in Los Angeles, you could order and publish a New York City virtual number and then instantly divert those calls to your LA office. Your clients and prospects do not necessarily need to know that you’re on the other coast.

Establishing a local phone presence with virtual numbers

In addition to establishing a local presence elsewhere, many business professionals use call forwarding to ensure that they never miss a call despite frequent travel. While you could use your cellphone to ensure this, you may not want your customers, prospects, and colleagues to have your cellphone number directly. By using call forwarding, you can control when and where you’ll receive calls.

For example, you could order an 800 or local phone number and set up call forwarding to your main office line. On days when you work from home, you can switch the ring to number to your home phone line. When traveling on business, you could forward your calls to your cellphone or hotel room.

By using call forwarding in this manner, you can be reached wherever you are without having to give out your private phone numbers. In addition, should you move your office, you will not need to change your business cards, stationary, and advertising materials. Simply change your ring to number.

Global call forwarding using Virtual Numbers is a flexible tool that allows for localization and portability. It’s an affordable option that works beautifully for international, domestic, big and small businesses alike that do business globally but need to be accessible locally.

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Virtual Phone Numbers as a business tool

Some companies use virtual numbers to expand their presence by adding additional local phone numbers in other cities or additional states. For example, a California company may have a main office location in San Jose but they have customers in Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento.

Whenever you browse the Web or watch a TV commercial, or listen to a radio, no doubt you will be asked to call a phone number by a sponser.

They all utilize virtual phone numbers. Of course not all virtual numbers are used for advertizing products and services.

The numbers you see and hear in the media are typically diverted to landlines or a mobile phone number. Many possible uses of a virtual phone number include a virtual office in a remote location, IT support, and international virtual numbers are used by businesses located in any country to create easy access by their customers or potential customers.

Where do you want a Virtual Phone Number

Most of the time a virtual number is acquired in an city or country other than where the office is physically located. This is one of the high value aspects of virtual phone numbers for businesses, the ability to provide a phone number in a locale where the enterprise wants to do business by offering a ‘local’ number even though the real office can be on the other side of the planet.

Adding additional virtual numbers creates a phone presence in remote areas of interest without adding a physical office or staff.

Learn more about virtual numbers….

The Virtual Number Solution

Companies of any size can benefit from a virtual number. In fact, a toll free number can help a business compete by taking long distance charges out of the equation and adding credibility.

A web site needs more than a local contact phone number. It does not help the customer that wants to talk to a representative before they order a service or sign up online if they are located overseas.

The solution is to remove the international calling obstacle that your customers need to overcome to simply gain a comfort level with your company and know that you are sincerely interested in assisting them.

Companies of any size can benefit from a virtual number. In fact, a toll free number can help a business compete by taking long distance charges out of the equation and adding credibility.

With economical per minute rates, you may want to get a virtual number for your web site so visitors can call from the country where you do the most business.

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Expand your Brand Internationally

Many companies already market products or services internationally and have established a customer base overseas.

How do new customers discover your company? No doubt by doing a search on the Web.

When they get to your website, is it easy for them to make contact by phone? As much as we all seem to like chat and email, many customers want to actually speak to a human before they order a new service or product.

Many companies already market products or services internationally and have
established a customer base overseas. While some enterprises wish to target specific new
markets.

The easiest approach and also the most cost effective, is to enable a
virtual phone number in your target country. A virtual number will divert calls from a country to your office location in any other country.

For example, you may be a software company located in the UK, however your company
may desire to offer your products in Brazil. If you created a Brazil virtual
number, the Brazil customer can dial a familiar phone number in Brazil and
connect immediately to your UK office.

What you have effectively done is created a local Brazil phone presence quickly and easily without the expense of staffing and building a brick and mortar office in Brazil.

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Customer Account Management

Virtual Number customers can easily manage their account including changing account settings, adding additional services, start up or modify advanced features, change the ring-to number, modify call forwarding preferences, view invoices and call details– including caller ID, date, time and call duration.

Customers can access account anytime from any web enabled computer.

Customized Greeting for your Virtual Number

For example, if you record ‘Welcome to Innovative Solutions, please wait while we connect your call’, then this message will be played right after a caller dials your local or toll free number. It will also play if you have your virtual number on ‘do not disturb’.

Create a Custom Greeting for your Virtual Number

The customer can use their own phone to record a personalized gtreeting that a caller will hear.

You have the option to replace the default greeting with your own a custom greeting. Some customer simply use their own phone and record a message to be heard by callers. Other users opt to upload a studio produced custom message to their account.

Whenever someone dials your local or toll free number they will listen to your custom greeting message while the system connects the call. For example, if you record ‘Welcome to Innovative Solutions, please wait while we connect your call’, then this message will be played right after a caller dials your local or toll free number. It will also play if you have your virtual number on ‘do not disturb’.

The benefits are many when you provide a personal greeting versus a generic greeting that sounds like everyone elses.

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Selective Country Call Divert

Your call centers are in different time zones and also have certain language capabilities.

A useful feature, selective call divert. For example, let assume you have multiple call centers in an assorment of countries. Your call centers are in different time zones and also have certain language capabilities.

You could use this feature to automatically divert the calls based on their country origination and route those calls to a specific call center or on-duty call center that speaks the same language as the country of call origination.

Learn more about features…

Virtual Number Local Ring Tones

Customizing your virtual number can enhance it’s usefulness greatly.

For example, if your want a virtual number in the UK, when your caller dials the UK virtual number you want the caller to hear a familiar UK ring tone, not a US ring tone.

Every country uses a different ring tone. We give you the ability to change the ring tone on your virtual number to ‘any’ of 40 different country choices.

This option can help if you are creating a local phone presence in a country and will have the calls diverted to your home country. The caller will hear whatever ring tone you select to make the caller feel the most at ease. You will probably want the same ring tone that exists in his/her country.

Learn more about virtual phone number feature….

Voicemail to Email

Alternatively, if you need to retreive your messages by phone instead of by email, simply dial your Virtual Number, enter (*) key and go to your voice mail menu and listen to your messages by phone.

Simply enable the Voicemail to Email feature through your account dashboard preferences.

Your ‘Voicemail’ will answer with your personal greeting. If you prefer not to answer any calls, you can optionally enable the ‘Do Not Disturb’ feature. This automatically directs all calls to your voicemail.

You can easily set-up your voice mails to be forwarded to your email address. When a voicemail is received, the email notification will be automatically sent along with the audio file of the voice message. You can simply click on the audio icon and listen to your voicemail message.

Alternatively, if you need to retreive your messages by phone instead of by email, simply dial your Virtual Number, enter (*) key and go to your voice mail menu and listen to your messages by phone.

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