When you’re still brainstorming ideas for your business, goals, objectives and company missions, the last thing on your mind is something as trivial as the company phone number. Why invest in a virtual phone number when you can just as easily use your personal mobile phone number. After all, it’s both affordable and convenient. All calls from clients will come directly to your number, making the entire process hassle free.
The only problem with this approach is that your personal number and business numbers are two entirely different components of your life, keeping them one and the same is never advisable in any line of work. Using personal phone numbers creates more opportunities for conflicts, undesirable results and inefficiency.
You do have several popular options such as;
- carrying two different phones with their own numbers
- using virtual phone numbers and direct this to your answering service or a VoIP phone in your office or home.
All Two options are convenient and safe approaches to connect with customers. There are several disadvantages to using a single phone number for both business and personal reasons. Below are some of the more important ones.
Vulnerable to Outside Threats
The outside world and internet in general are rife with threats such as hackers, pranksters and scammers. People looking to make a quick dime will waste no efforts to getting your personal information and using it to their advantage. When you advertise your business number to the outside world, you’re essentially leaking out your personal phone number.
For instance, did you know that skilled hackers can steal your credit card information by getting access to your phone number? From there it’s all about putting two and two together.
Answering your phone while driving is also dangerous as well as illegal.
Getting Unwanted Calls
When other businesses get access to your phone number, they will start to treat it as a potential lead. It’s not unusual for people to receive several automated calls peddling one pyramid scheme or another. Telemarketing fraud is a real threat that costs the consumer. Not to mention that automated calls block your line, making it briefly inaccessible to genuine customers.
You Are Bound to Your Number
Once your business starts attracting a growing number of clients, you’ll experience hundreds of calls in any given day. At this point you’ll want to switch over to a new number, but in your entrepreneurial journey, you registered several services with your personal phone number. Your older number is simply too important to discard and you’re stuck with it. Just imagine if your business grew so quickly that you have new offices but you are now tied to your mobile. It could take months and in some cases we years to get a new number established so all you clients and new leads use that new number. We moved to bigger offices several years ago and we still have all our original numbers. Leads come from those numbers years after we changed the number, and this is because some businesses have my old cards and some have our old marketing material which they have kept.
Unable to Keep Tabs on Business Activities
If your employees are also using their personal numbers to interact with customers, you’re essentially giving up control over the flow of information to them. It is never advisable to lose track of your business activities such as sales and customer service.
When customers interact with employees on their personal phone numbers, you can’t keep tabs on how often they speak to them and how their calls are handled.
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