BT Makes Calls to 0845 Numbers Free
Thursday, March 26th, 2009 | Places
From January 16th 2009, BT made calls to 0870 / 0845 numbers without costs for 14 million residential customers who are on its Anytime/Evening & Weekend call plans. As the first United Kingdom phone company to do this, BT’s news was very heavily publicised in the national media and online - when it was first talked about at the start of the year.
The cost to BT associated with this change is said to be tens of millions of pounds, according to the company’s official press release and seemingly, in order to recoup some of this, BT is increasing the charges for some of its services from 1st April 2009.
These changes include:
- Standard BT line rental increasing from £11.50 to £12.50 per month.
- The cost of UK daytime calls rising by 0.59 pence per minute to 4.50 pence per minute.
- The call set-up fee is increasing by just over 1p.
- The monthly charge for each of its calling feature services increasing by 79p to £2.50 per month.
- Packs of 2-4 calling features (call waiting, call barring etc.) rising by £1.57 to £5 per month.
- Packs of 5 or more calling features increasing by £2.10 to £7 per month.
Price hikes aside, BT’s bold move with 0870/0845 numbers is fantastic news for businesses and organisations that use 0845 numbers, as many of their callers can now contact them for nothing – meaning they are likely to receive more enquiries and sales.
0845 numbers are the UK’s most popular non-geographic number range and as well as being highly memorable, enable organisations to smarten up the way they deal with calls without extra equipment or hardware.
Examples of such call management systems that work in tandem with 0845 numbers include:
- Online call re-routing which enables companies to instantly control where calls to their 0845 numbers are routed to (e.g. to another landline, mobile or even internationally). This helps them to recieve more calls.
- Welcome messages that create a professional impression for callers.
- Caller options menus (e.g. press 1 for customer services, 2 for sales etc.) that enable callers to reach the right department, first time.
- Call statistics which tell firms the number of calls to their 0845 number, missed calls, geographic location of callers etc.
Like all non-geographic numbers, 0845 numbers also enable companies to attract more sales and enquiries from outside of their physical area as callers won’t judge them on their location. Overall, BT’s news has been a positive step for businesses with 0845 numbers and the company’s residential customers who are on one of the associated call plans - although the cost of achieving this looks set to be balanced up by BT’s upcoming price increases in April.