News and Announcements

Custom Toll Free recently announced the appointment of Rick DeCamp as vice president of business development. In his new position, DeCamp will lead product marketing and business development for a new line of business centered on e-commerce technology solutions."We’re excited to have a marketing and business development executive of Rick’s caliber join our management team," said Michael Evans, president and chief operating officer of Custom Toll Free. "Given his deep and highly successful experience, we know Rick will make a significant impact on our business and product strategy, and help us continue the company’s rapid growth trajectory."

Did you think Google Voice was simply a tool for professionals who had entirely too many ways for people to get a hold of them? Well, it is that, but it’s also an opportunity for you to get the word out about your business. With a little ingenuity, you can create your own “Google Voice 800 number” that will go a long way toward helping your prospects find you.

If you haven’t heard of Google Voice, it’s a service from Google currently being tested that gives you a single point of contact and has a number of neat features as well. One of these, and perhaps the most important one for a small business, is call routing. This will allow you to answer only those calls that come in on your forwarded toll free number and route other calls to different locations. For example, if you’re in your home office, and someone calls your cell number, which rings through to your Google Voice number, you can route the call to any of the numbers in your Google Voice profile, such as your main home number, where someone else can answer the call. If you’ve got a bigger operation, you can even have calls from your 800 number forwarded to other parts of your business or to the phones of individual employees. The possibilities are endless.
Of course, there are some down sides as well. You’ll just have to decide whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks in your particular situation. One thing’s for sure, a Google Voice toll free combination could be a life saver for a small business.

To get things up and running, you’ll first need a toll-free number that you can forward to Google Voice. After that, you’ll need an invitation to join the service, at least until Google launches the full version later this year. I’m working on getting an invitation for myself, so I hope to have a first-hand review of Google Voice in the near future. I’ll also be highlighting other features that small business owners will find particularly useful.

We're pleased to report that as of Friday, customer record updates (required for service changes for toll-free numbers) are once again being processed through SMS/800, the central administration system for the toll-free number industry.

SMS/800 had announced Nov. 30 that requests from Resp Orgs would not be handled until after Dec. 8. However, on Dec. 1 SMS/800 sent out an second announcement saying that it would resume handling customer record updates on Dec. 4.

Both the original long delay, and the later short one, are of great concern to us. Customer record updates are required before service changes, such as the re-assignment of a toll free number to a new customer, or to a different account, can “go live.” As a rule, these updates happen so quickly that our customers think of them as almost automatic.

According to the original announcement from SMS/800, the processing of service changes was being delayed so that four service control points in the AT&T system could be decommissioned and replaced by new service control points. The means, essentially, that AT&T was replacing older, less reliable systems with new systems.

“We’re deeply concerned about any halts or slowdowns in the industry infrastructure that could affect our customers and the quality of the service we provide to them,” said Chris Rugh, CEO of Custom Toll Free. “This is a particular problem if the halts are not announced in advance.”

“I’m glad to say that service is now restored and customer record updates are being processed speedily,” Rugh said.

He added that Custom Toll Free is looking at the steps it can take so that it, and other Resp Orgs handling toll free numbers, will be notified well in advance of any activities that might cause future delays.