Surely, you must be pissed!

It’s 7pm and you’re about to tear into your well deserved dinner after a long day at work. Music is playing in the background and you can feel the stress from the day’s exertions lifting away, slowly but surely.

Then your phone rings. It’s a client who has a problem that needs to be solved yesterday. I can imagine how you must be feeling.

One thing is for sure now. Your plans to keep your evening workfree is ruined. Even if you said no to the request, you wouldn’t be able to get it out of your mind.

A perfect evening ruined because you couldn’t control what time you received a business related call.

So how do you control what time you receive a business related call? You can’t possibly send a newsletter out to all your current and future customers telling them to not call you by 7pm because you’ll be having dinner at that time. That’ll be a little unprofessional, don’t you think?

The answer to that problem is as simple as owning a dedicated business number. This number is different from your personal number. While you can use your personal number to schedule a movie night with your friends, your business number should strictly be for business purposes. Your business line is one of the ways through which your business can be contacted (alongside social media, emails etc..), and like other channels of communication, you should use it to make a good first impression on your customers.

However, most small businesses in Nigeria rarely bother setting up a business number. When you’re just starting out, using your personal number is the most appealing choice. It is easy and affordable. But when has cheap and easy ever served us well in the long run?

Below are a few reasons why you should keep a separate business number now.

Identify your callers.

Have you ever been in a situation where you waited for your caller to talk first in order for you to decide who he/she was? Countless times, right?

Well, you should know that your hesitation can cast you in an unprofessional light in the eyes of your customers. And that’s bad for business.

With a business number, however, you’ll always know if it is a customer that’s at the other end of a call. This gives you the opportunity to pick up your calls with confidence and close your business deals like a pro.

Your personal number remains private.

Listing your personal phone number on the internet can be frustrating. Strangers who stumble upon your number on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or even LinkedIn immediately have access to your personal number, and time.

But you can decide not to give them this access by posting your business number instead of your personal number. This helps you keep your personal number away from strangers and also reduces the number of random and unsolicited calls you receive on it.

All customer interactions in one place.

Keeping track of all existing interactions between you and your customers will be very simple if you have a dedicated business number. Since your customers can only reach you through a single number, you should have an easy time organizing your phone calls and texts; and making them easier to access.

WhatsApp Business is one example that exemplifies this benefit. With WhatsApp Business, you can organize your contacts or chats with labels, so you can easily find them again. Valuable customer information can be easily accessed and used during future conversations, thus helping to improve the strength of relationship between your business and its customers.

Improve your work-life balance.

I get that most people’s perception of entrepreneurs is that they are super human. And that’s cool. But never forget that you’re human too. You’re entitled to have a healthy work-life balance.

Your privacy is important and shouldn’t be compromised. It is one thing to be able to answer and reply calls promptly during work hours. But being too accessible by customers, even outside of work hours, can eventually feel like your work life is suffocating your personal life.

A business phone system comes with features that helps prevent interruption of your personal time. You can have access to options such as customized business hours, call blocking, call forwarding and so on.

Make haste. Get a dedicated business number now.

I’m sure that you hate being interrupted at dinner as much as I do. So, it’s a good thing that we can prevent that from happening by owning a business number. And luckily for us, there are more than one benefit of owning a dedicated business number — as if mealtime security is not enough.

Above all, having a business number changes the perception your customers have of you. It tells them that “okay, I’m dealing with a professional “.

So why don’t you get one and be that professional.