Why Every Employee Should Have a Company Phone Number 

We’ve all seen it—local businesses trying to save money and simplify by having their employees use their personal mobile numbers for work, attempting to juggle business contacts with personal communications. 

But did you know that doing so actually leads to higher hidden costs, lower efficiency, and even security breaches? 

Read on to learn why every one of your employees should have a business phone number and how you can get started with world-class voice technology that will allow you to deliver the best service you’ve ever given. 

Why You Shouldn’t Use a Personal Phone Number for Work

Using a personal phone number for work is a shortcut with serious adverse side effects and risks. Of course, the primary risk of this practice centers around data. When you allow employees to use their personal phone numbers, privacy and security become major problems. 

A serious security breach can threaten your customers, damage your business reputation, and call for legal action and civil penalties. Personal data loss is also a risk for your employees.

And of course, we can’t overstate the adverse effects of a bad work-life balance—the sneaky culprit that fuels the quiet quitting trend. Making it difficult for your employees to separate their business communications from their personal ones can lead to distraction, fatigue, and critical mistakes when focus is vital. Because these communications are often difficult to differentiate on paper, this practice leads to a potentially higher (even significantly higher) phone bill cost for you.

7 Reasons Every Employee Should Have a Business Phone Number

With the right phone system and phone provider, local businesses can field incoming calls with higher accuracy and care, vastly improving the service they offer their customers.  

There are countless reasons your employees should each have a local business phone number locked into a secure business phone system, but we’ll keep the list to seven. 

1. Their Personal Numbers Remain Private

One of the main advantages of giving each employee a business phone number is that their personal phone number will remain private. Not only does this protect your business from security risks and data loss, but it also protects your employees from risks to their personal security. 

Crossover between personal and business life can increase personal stress levels, inefficiency, tension in personal relationships, disengagement, and ultimately burnout. 

Keeping personal calls and business calls separate is the best practice to ensure that there isn’t any crossover between communications. When your employees are at work, they are fully present and know that each call they receive to their local phone number is work-related and should be handled accordingly. Local phone numbers offer real relief from multitasking and divided focus. 

2. They Can Designate Business Hours

Unlike the use of personal phone numbers, using business phone numbers allows your employees to designate business hours, which is critical to establishing routines and expectations for your business operations and customers. 

With the right phone system, your employees can automate responses for when they are out of office and lay out next steps to ensure customers receive the best service possible. Here’s an example: 

You’ve reached Jordan at Corvin Auto! Thanks for calling. I’m out of the office now but will be back tomorrow morning at 8:30 MST. Please feel free to leave me a voicemail or text and I’ll get back to you ASAP. If this is an emergency, please contact: [ number ]. Thanks for your business. 

3. Better Call Notifications and Screening 

A local business phone system offers better call notifications and call screening, especially if you’re using a virtual phone service, voice, or softphone technology through a VoIP provider. This feature gives your employees more transparency into the nature of the call, allowing them to offer more personalized and specific assistance and allocate their time to calls that are already vetted for them. 

4. They Can Set Up a Professional Voicemail

Some calls come after hours and sometimes there are just too many to answer at once during business hours. Using personal phone numbers often means that callers get sent to a personal voicemail, or no voicemail feature at all—giving your customers the impression that you are unprofessional and unreliable. 

With a business phone number, each of your employees can set up a professional voicemail to greet callers when they cannot get to their phone. This voicemail acts as a key opportunity to inform and help by including the employee’s name, business name, office hours, further contact information, etc. 

Having a professional voicemail helps your staff keep customer conversations separate, allowing them to keep better records and get back to them faster. A bonus is that professional voicemails often encourage callers to act professionally, too. 

5. They Can Take Advantage of Custom Greetings

Additionally, business phone systems allow your employees to take advantage of customizing their greetings. They can change these based on the season, current promotions, inventory and business hour updates, and more, allowing them to quickly establish personal relationships with callers and add a personal touch to your business. 

Alongside offering more information, custom greetings help your business feel more human and accessible, helping put customers at ease and making doing business with you more appealing. 

6. You Can Forward Calls to Different Phones and Answer More Customers

One of the major advantages of having a business phone system and separate numbers is the power of call forwarding. With the right phone system, you can easily forward calls to different phones, allowing you to effectively route callers to the individuals who can best help them and avoid call burnout. 

With this feature, you can evenly distribute your phone service so you won’t have to worry about one of your employees having to do the lion’s share of the work or be bogged down by calls.

7. It Builds Credibility for Your Business 

Of course, one of the most important effects of having individual company phone numbers is that it builds credibility for your business. Keeping personal phones separate from your business phone system, with professional greetings and voicemails, shows the community that you are professional and capable in your field. Most importantly, it shows customers that when they call, they have your full attention. 

Join the Waitlist for Podium Voice

Are you ready to streamline your processes and deliver the best customer service you’ve ever given? Look no further.

Podium Voice empowers local businesses and small business owners to better serve their callers and customers by centralizing the data from every message and call they have with them. By giving customers the option to text as well as call your number, it frees up your team from being tied to the phone, giving them more time to spend wow-ing your customers. And more tools to delight while they’re on the phone via unmatched views into customers’ history with you from Voice technology. 

Join the Podium Voice waitlist here.