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Online store owner Melanie Edman-Osmer knows the value of an Web-based toll free number.
Brick and mortar store front owner Melanie saw the benefits of the internet and opened an online store in 1999. "I had two small children and it just made sense to me to take the business home," she explains. She closed the brick and mortar doors at the end of February 2001 and devoted her time to her online store, http://www.thetreasurebox.net/. The Treasure Box on the Net offers many gift items designed to motivate, comfort, or inspire. She also sells her own hand-painted jewelry on another site, www.monioriginals.com.
Melanie quickly realized that online stores need a toll free number. "Letting customers call you for free is a competitive advantage," she says. "People are more comfortable calling, knowing that it won’t cost them anything. It also gives an online business more credibility: people take you more seriously when you have a toll free number."
The advantages of RingCentral as a toll free provider were immediately apparent to her. "I was using another email fax service," she continues, "So when I realized I could get faxes by email as well as the 800-number through RingCentral for not much more than what I had been paying for just the fax service, I was hooked!"
Melanie is especially happy with RingCentral because of her experience with the other fax provider. "They were down a lot," she says, "but RingCentral is very different. I have never had any trouble with RingCentral. It has never gone down," she says.
In addition to listing the RingCentral number on the sites, she also has a RingMe click to call icon on the online stores and in her emails to make it even easier for customer to call. “I find that it is a very valuable tool for my business.”
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Industry
 Online retail
Favorite features
Toll free number
Call Forwarding
Results
Professional image
Reliability
Breadth of features |
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Melanie has the toll free number ring through to her office in her home. If she doesn’t answer, it then rings the family line, then her cell phone. "So if it doesn’t get me at one, it gets me at another," she says. "I also have it set up so people can skip the forwarding and leave a message right away. And if I don’t answer, it goes to voicemail. So I never miss a call." She adds, "I recently was on a bike ride and the cellphone rang. It was a call from a customer through RingCentral."
A sole-proprietor who runs the entire show by herself, Melanie feels that the ease of operation and flexibility of RingCentral are key ingredients in making her business run smoothly. And, she explains, "I am able to present a very professional image through RingCentral. That is important to me. Ring Central can be used by any business, big or small, and can be customized to fit each business's needs. If I had the ability to create a telephone system to fit my business needs, I would have created just such a service as RingCentral! And they just keep adding services and getting better!"
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