Has your business ever had a crisis? Has the server gone down and had calls of angry customers flooding down the phone line? Did you have a 0800 number when this happened?

If your company has an unexpected problem where your customers have to call your company and complain, the worst thing you can do to them is make them pay for hanging on the line.

If your business uses a 0871 number your customers will be charged up to 10p per minute, which will just make your customers even angrier at the service that you are providing.

If your business were to have an 0800 number for your support line then your customers would be more likely to call you because it looks like you actually want their business, plus, if your business has a unexpected problem, they will be less aggravated because they are not paying for waiting in a call line.

For example, if you wish to call Royal Mail about postcode enquiries during the weekday, you have to call a 0906 number; they will charge you 50p per minute to a maximum of £5, if you were waiting in a queue you would have to pay an extraordinarily high amount just for that call.

Also another example of high charging calls is, if you want to call Vodafone, they want you to call an 0870 number which will charge you up to 10p per min from a land line and up to 40p per min from a payphone/mobile phone. This number from Vodafone is for existing customers, it comes as no surprise that they don’t charge anything for new customers to call them.

Most of these business that have a phone number where the customer has to pay more than an average phone call charge, the customer will generally be put on hold which will make the call last longer, charging the consumer more money and building up they’re aggravation.

These high charged numbers that companies use, mainly for their support/help lines, are not popular, especially when a customer is already aggravated if there is a problem with their service, in 2003 alone, calls to 08 numbers cost UK consumers £850m.

So, an 0800 number for your business can increase your customers because it’s free, and when in crisis, it can save your business too by not getting customers more aggravated than they already are so the customers are more likely to forgive you as a company as you are willing to listen to them at no costs to them.