If your company uses personal phones when contacting clients, you may damage your business credibility. Using a personal number indicates that your business is not as professional as a potential client would like it to be.
Using your personal number also makes it difficult to separate life from work, especially when clients start calling you outside of work hours. This article digs into why your company needs a business phone number.
Imagine spending hundreds of dollars printing out flyers for your business using your personal phone number. It’s difficult to memorize, and you have no control over it. Immediately, you damage your business credibility because the reader can see that you’re using your phone number.
Now, imagine that you have to change that number.
Perhaps you’ve found a better cell phone plan, or your old phone was lost or stolen, meaning you need a new contract. Now, people who call the number on your flier don’t reach your phone. Moreover, the person who ends up with your old number won’t expect business calls, creating an inconsistent experience that damages customer relationships.
By using a business phone number, you maintain the consistency that clients expect from a professional enterprise.
You can also transfer the number if you change your phone carrier, ensuring your business credibility isn’t damaged because people can’t reach you on the number you’ve provided. This also means you never have to worry about which employee’s phone number is listed on which marketing piece, meaning branding issues become a thing of the past.
Allowing customers to contact you at all hours of the day may seem like an excellent way to build business credibility at first glance. Using a personal number as the main point of contact does allow you to deal with customers’ issues as they arise, after all. However, this could lead customers to believe you don’t have designated business hours, which is not a professional look.
Having designated business hours allows you to separate your work life from your personal life. Furthermore, it builds trust with customers because they see that you’re operating a business with professional standards.
This approach raises a question:
What happens if somebody calls your business number after hours?
With a business phone number, you can record a message telling the customer what your opening hours are and when they can expect to hear back from you. Any message the customer leaves in response goes into a business voicemail, allowing you to go through your messages when working.
Contrast this to taking messages on a personal number.
The customer is likely greeted with a personal message rather than a business one, which does little to foster trust. Additionally, business messages may get lost among your personal ones, resulting in you failing to call the customer back. Besides damaging business credibility, the customer is less likely to trust your company again due to its haphazard customer service.
Of course, this does not mean you can’t use a business number to offer 24-hour services. With it, you guarantee that the customer gets forwarded to somebody who can help them, rather than creating the distressing experience of waking you up in the middle of the night to deal with a business problem.
In addition to offering customers more professional after-hours messages, business phone numbers also allow you to create greetings for customers. These messages enhance business credibility by showing customers they’ve called the correct number.
However, they can do so much more.
With an automated greeting system, you can direct the customer to the department that can help them with their inquiry. The customer doesn’t have to get transferred from employee to employee until they find the right one. Instead, their call gets filtered directly to the department that can provide the answers they’re looking for. This feature is handy for companies with sales, marketing, customer service, and similar departments.
Contrast this with using personal numbers, where calls may begin with you answering the phone without knowing if you’re taking a business or recreational call. This approach sets an unprofessional tone for the call, which strengthens if you can’t answer the customer’s question and have to direct them to another personal number where they’ll get the same initial experience.
Leading by example is crucial for business credibility.
It would be best if you aimed to do that with all of your marketing materials. For example, your website may discuss your company’s professional approach to its work. Perhaps your flyers highlight the experience within the organization. If you’re bold, you may even compare your company to its competitors to show customers how you provide a better service.
Now, imagine that a customer calls the number you provide in these materials, and they arrive at your personal voicemail message.
Your business credibility goes out of the window as the customer questions the professionalism you were so keen to promote.
Using a personal number for business purposes fails to practice the professionalism you preach. Your customer expects to use a traditional business number to contact a company rather than a personal number. The customer’s expectations get subverted, setting the tone for a negative business relationship later.
This issue brings us back to trust.
If a customer doesn’t get the experience they expected after reading your marketing materials, they lose any trust they had in your business. As a result, they may also not trust you to deliver on the promises you made in your marketing.
You’ve likely called a business number before and received an automated message letting you know that the call is recorded for training purposes. It’s pretty standard for many companies to use their recorded calls for training and to provide sales professionals with more information about clients.
Having a business phone number allows you to leverage call recording services.
How does this improve business credibility?
Informing customers that you intend to use their call to train others shows that your company dedicates itself to consistent improvement. Your customer knows you have training programs in place because your automated message tells them. The customer can also assume that the person they speak to has completed this training, meaning they can expect a more professional experience.
Using call recordings as part of your sales process also ensures that sales professionals know more about the people they’re talking to. With a business number attached to a relevant system, you can upload these recordings to your customer relationship management system.
Salespeople can access these calls to learn more about the client, allowing them to approach conversations with enough knowledge to help the customer solve their problem faster.
If you’re using a personal number, you can’t offer your customers toll-free or local call benefits. In contrast, using business numbers means you can choose to use both.
Toll-free and local numbers build business credibility in several ways.
Having a local business number shows customers you’re where you say you are. For example, a customer looking for a local plumber feels much more confident if the business they call has the same state area code they have. It’s an instant indication that they’re dealing with a local professional.
Toll-free numbers demonstrate that your company cares about the customer experience. Rather than forcing them to pay money to get their questions answered, these business numbers allow customers to contact businesses at no charge.
Furthermore, they show the customer that your company makes enough money to afford a toll-free number. This is another credibility enhancer as it showcases your business’ success. Customers assume that companies that can afford these services have enough happy clients to achieve the profitability required.
Using your personal phone number for business purposes is easy.
You don’t have to pay extra fees because you already have the number. If you’re operating a very small business, you may even be able to separate your professional and personal calls well enough to make using a personal number a viable option.
However, using personal phone numbers also reflects poorly on your company.
You lose business credibility because you’re not meeting the expectations consumers have. Furthermore, you risk creating inconsistency in your branding, damaging the trust held between your business and its customers.
Acquiring a business number doesn’t have to break the bank. With Telephono, you gain access to toll-free and local business numbers and a dedicated system that enhances business credibility. To learn more, get in touch with our team to arrange a free trial.
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