With today’s modern world of online shopping and online chat, many businesses think that having a business phone number just isn’t as important as it once was. Well, they couldn’t be more wrong!
In fact, more than 60% of people say that they call a business over the phone followed by email at 16%. The difference between these numbers is staggering, thus cementing phone calls as the primary way that people get a hold of businesses.
This means that if you don’t have a dedicated business phone number, you are missing out on critical communication that your business needs to survive. While getting calls can be the lifeblood of your business, here are some other reasons why having a dedicated phone number for your business is important.
Keep Your Private Numbers Private
Many people just use their cell phone numbers when starting a business as their dedicated business number. While this can work at first, it’s not very sustainable as your business grows.
The main reason this can get annoying is due to robocalls and other businesses wanting to pitch your business. Instead of filtering these calls through a dedicated line, you end up receiving all sorts of random calls on your cell phone. This can make separating business from your personal life incredibly difficult and frustrating.
If you get a dedicated phone number, you will reduce the number of these random calls to your personal device by quite a bit.
Designated Business Hours
By having a ninja number for your business, you can make sure that you handle phone calls during business hours. This means that once you go home for the day, you won’t receive any calls that come into your personal device, but instead, the calls will be routed through an automated voice messaging system.
Not only can this save you from some serious after-hour stress, but it can help to train your customers on when they can get a hold of you, which is good for them and for you.
Call Screening
By having a dedicated business number, you can help to screen calls as you can set up an automated greeting for every caller. This greeting can prompt callers to request a certain department, thus helping to filter calls to the right people.
Call screening is also a potential feature that allows you to accept or ignore the call by sending it to voicemail. This can help you in a pinch when you hit those extremely busy times of day when you can’t pause to take a phone call.
Professional Voicemail
Nothing makes your business feel smaller than having to use your personal cell phone greeting message as the main way to get your customers to leave a message. With a dedicated number, you can send up a custom greeting that represents your business in a professional way. This helps to set the tone with your customers to help them know that they reached the right place, and to put forth a professional image.
Having a professional voicemail also helps when it comes to branding and messaging to your customers. This familiarity with your brand can be exemplified on the phone to help customers feel a certain way about your business to help them build trust and loyalty.
Call Forwarding
Getting a business phone number doesn’t mean that you can’t use your cell phone to take calls. In fact, most business phone numbers can forward to your mobile device during business hours. This makes it very easy for business owners who are on the go to use their existing cell phone device without having to buy additional equipment to make a dedicated phone number work for their business. This capability also helps businesses who’s workers are constantly on the go by allowing them to take calls without having to be tethered to the office with a handset and telephone cable.
Conclusion
As you can see, having a dedicated business phone number is good for many reasons. By projecting a more professional image via having a line that handles calls during business hours can help you to better manage your work-life balance and ultimately help your business to grow. So what are you waiting for? Get a dedicated business phone line and make your business run more efficiently today!
