Since most of us are small businesses, how does everyone handle their business phone numbers? Extra cell phone, landline, voip. Thank you in advance
Started out with a crappy free phone from cricket with a local number.
Quickly realized that I hated a phone that was garbage and bought a used nicer model compatible with my carrier that I can use to take pictures with.
Get mad at myself because I take before/after pictures with my personal phone and then have to send them over to my other phone because I’m a dummy.
Rinse. Repeat.
Same as my personal phone. I don’t get personal calls much so works fine.
I use the grasshopper phone app. Its cheaper than getting a new phone with its own data plan and it works very well.
Thanks for the responses
Same. Lol. My iphone is my mobile office. The downside to that is it’s hard to stop thinking about work when there’s a mobile office in my pocket…
I run dual SIM’s on my Pixel 6 Pro. When a text or call comes in it tells me if it’s coming in to the business or personal line. Love it.
With the dual sim, can you set your phone to “do not disturb” for just one of the numbers?
I just finished signing up with ring central. I purchased a toll free vanity number from 1800marketer for $49 and then you can port it to any service you choose. I went with 866-USA-FLOH so it would be easy for people to remember or write down when they see it. I pick ring central because it had options for a greeting and to have the caller “press 1” to speak with…“press 2” for information…and so on. It is not live yet, and I am still working on the greetings but looking forward to it weeding out the robo calls. When a customer calls the # and chooses to speak with an “associate”, the call will route to my personal cell (but they will never see that #). If I do not pick up within so many rings, I have it routed to my husbands cell to see if he can get it. If not, it lets the caller know that they can “press 1” to leave a message or “press 2” for our website, email, etc info where they can reach out to us. I am not sure if they can text, I’ll have to look back through my notes. Either way, I think it gives the appearance of a larger, established business. The ring central software has numerous other options like automatic forwarding to our business VM when we are closed or on a holiday that we will not be taking calls. We have control over changing greetings, etc and the cost per month is only $55 on a month to month contract or if we go annually, the price drops down to about $580/year. It beat having to get a 2nd separate phone and if I end up not happy with RC, I own the vanity number and can port it to another service. After signing up, they literally transferred me to the set up tech who walked through setting up the system with prompts, etc. Took over an hour, but he went over every scenario of how I wanted calls to be handled. I was completely amazed at the cust serv which is typically lack luster these days. No I don’t work for RC, I am just giving my personal experience with them so far.
We are about a month or so from going “live” with the business as my hubby is getting the equipment laid out and designed. We just bought a 2015 Transit Med Roof and have decided to go with this set up as I will be the main washer and I did not want to have to drive a trailer, as that would just be a nightmare (yep, Im a girl) and I wanted to keep the equip out of the elements. We are following several washers that have gone this route and hope to have it working out great. Plus the van will be one huge billboard for us.
Probably too much info, but feel free to message me if you want to know anything more about RC. I took a lot of notes, and it will be a learning curve, but the flexibility to control the system I think will be a huge advantage.
I’m sure you can. I’ve never tried to but I know that I can completely disable one sim if needed.
I switched to RingCentral about 6 years ago. With 3 inbound lines and 2 outbound its about $150 a month.
Best part is that you can set up an IVR, where you have to press 1 for this, press 2 for that, and set up office hours. This pretty much eliminates the spammers and robocallers (their systems can’t understand and dial an extension)
Dude! Chris! How is life? Let’s catch up
Living the dream brother! I have a good crew this year so I can actually afford some time here on PWR
Grasshopper App. You can call, text and setup different mail boxes.
OpenPhone ~$150/yr great voip provider and I added an extra number for ~$55/yr (had to pay by the year up front) to put on bandit signs just incase some bozo things theyre doing their community a service by signing the number up for a bunch of spam mail plus it keeps city code enforcement on their toes if they want to find the owner of the signs, I don’t answer the phone with my business name from that number. I’m probably overthinking it but
I was able to get (local area code)-xxx-WASH so that worked out
I use Google Voice. My personal cell number isn’t a local number, so you can choose a Google Voice number that is local for your business area.
Google voice for free. Get a number from them and link it to your personal phone. You can change the ring tone, so you know if it’s a work call or personal coming in. FREE!
I have a personal and a business phone. When I’m
Off or holidays I will trow away as far as I can…
We are using Voip ms. They have servers that are spread all across the States. They sell numbers on a cheap. Occasionally you can find a fairly sweet vanity numbers in their pools of numbers. They are the cheapest as far as service goes ($0.85/mo) plus $0.01/min and their customer service is top notch. Kind of giving mom and pop vibe when you have to contact them. I like that.
https://voip.ms/en/invite/MjU4OTU2