The ability to run a business from your cell phone affords you a great deal of freedom and flexibility, but at the same time, it can add a lot of frustration.
The problem with doing this is that your business calls are not being managed by any system, but it’s just you and your cell phone.
Professional phone systems are set up a certain way that caters to serving customers with features like hold queues and call menus, but if you don’t have a system like Talkroute, your cell phone may not be up to the task.
Here are some of the problems you may run into:
The whole world knows your private number.
Once you start taking business calls on your cell and giving out your number to customers, things can get out of hand pretty fast.
There are not very many people who are okay with their private number floating around out there, not to mention the fact that each of your customers knows it!
It’s actually a positive thing that your customers are able to get straight through to you, from a customer service standpoint, but the drawback is that they will expect to reach you every time. That’s difficult to maintain.
You may be ready, but your voicemail is not.
Alright, so let’s say that even with your large volume of calls and a business owner’s schedule—you’re somehow still able to serve all of your customers.
What about the times you can’t get to the phone, and customers are forced to leave a voice message? Hopefully, you’ve at least prepared yourself by recording a professional greeting for your personal voicemail.
Even if so, the personal voice mailbox included with a mobile plan was never intended to manage and organize voicemail on a professional level.
Here’s a great post to help you decide if you need to take your voicemail up a notch:
https://talkroute.com/6-ways-your-voicemail-can-make-or-break-your-business/
You can bet that you’ll run into noise pollution.
When you decide to take your business on the road, the elements can definitely become an issue. If you’re taking calls from customers in a noisy restaurant, it doesn’t send the best message when they can hear everything in the background.
Or what if you’ve got one hand on the wheel of your car, and the other on a sandwich—and you just don’t feel quite prepared for this scenario?
That’s why Talkroute provides Hold Queues with your service, allowing you to stack customers on hold while you finish your sandwich.
Callers on hold can even enjoy music of your choosing, or a customized promotional message until you can get to a quiet environment to answer the call.
If you don’t have a call menu, you can’t screen your calls.
So, as mentioned earlier, you are the only thing between a business call and yourself, which is a precarious position to be in.
This is exactly why call menus, or auto attendants exist because the call menu basically takes the place of a secretary who is intercepting and filtering your calls.
Your call menu acts as your own personal receptionist, going between you and the customer and directing each caller to the appropriate place. This is one of the elements of a virtual phone system that you need the most, to effectively serve customers from your cell phone.
The calls keep coming, and coming…
Though it may not seem like a big deal at first, it can easily become exhausting when you are getting business calls at all hours of the day and night. With your phone system from Talkroute, you can set hours for when your business is open, and for when it is closed.
You can finally relax and shut it down for the day, while resting assured that your late-night callers are being managed by the call menu on your virtual phone system.
Stephanie
Stephanie is the Marketing Director at Talkroute and has been featured in Forbes, Inc, and Entrepreneur as a leading authority on business and telecommunications.
Stephanie is also the chief editor and contributing author for the Talkroute blog helping more than 100k entrepreneurs to start, run, and grow their businesses.