To help enterprises expand their market and increase engagement with customers, leading telecommunications and multimedia company PLDT has come up with the #MyNumber service.
The PLDT #MyNumber solution simplifies a company’s hotline system to a single number combination of four to eight digits beginning with the hash sign (#), said Marc Frederick Roxas, category head of PLDT SME Data Solutions.
With PLDT #MyNumber, businesses can replace their roster of contact numbers and area codes for all branches nationwide with one national hotline. The hotline is reachable through PLDT landlines as well as Smart, Talk ‘N Text, and Sun Cellular mobile phones.
Roxas added during the launch of the service in Cebu yesterday, March 26, that the vanity number allows customers to easily reach companies and addresses the challenges of marketing materials that must carry different contact numbers for different stores.
PLDT #MyNumber launch
PLDT, which is targeting hotels, resorts, and big retail in Cebu for signups to the #MyNumber service, invited 60 companies to last night’s launch at Radisson Blu in Cebu City.
John Thomas Anthony Nanquil, PLDT SME Nation area sales head, said that since Cebu is known as a destination area, the service will help hotels and resorts here get known nationwide.
Roxas said their biggest test case for the service is Jollibee, which picked #87000. By dialing this number, customers, wherever they may be in the country, can get in touch with any of the fast food chain’s branch.
Other brands in Manila that signed up for the PLDT solution picked vanity numbers like #AVIS, #CONDO, #BURGER, #MONEY, #SALES, and #TOBYS. To dial, a customer has only to press according to the placement of the letters in the landline.
More customer calls
The #MyNumber service allows companies to receive more calls from clients as PLDT landline calls to the hotline are free of charge, said Roxas. Call costs, covered by the company operating the hotline, include a recurring charge of P10,000 monthly plus P1.00 per minute toll for landline calls and P4.55 per minute for mobile calls. Smart, Talk ‘N Text, and Sun mobile subscribers who call the hotline incur lower per-minute cost for calls compared to the conventional mobile to landline charges.
According to Roxas, a lot of customers still prefer to reach companies through the phone even with the increase in social media usage.
He said that although micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) also use digital means of communication, a landline is still very important in increasing the legitimacy of a business. Aside from giving businesses a competitive edge, the PLDT #MyNumber solution also enables brands to create and maintain their own identities, he added.
