5 Reasons Why Using Your Mobile Number For Business Is a Big No-No! – Updated 2024

For small businesses, start-ups or solopreneurs, using your mobile number for business might feel like a no-brainer. You don’t have to spend more money and it’s convenient. But the truth is that you’ll be doing yourself and your business a huge disservice managing your calls this way.

According to a 2021 survey by Statista, 50% of business owners and the self-employed are using their personal mobile numbers for work. More worryingly, one in ten calls goes unanswered, despite ringing more than eleven times before hanging up! It’s estimated that amongst the 5.6 million businesses in the UK, £30 billion a year is lost to missed calls.

But is this any surprise that missed calls are this high, when you consider what can happen when your mobile rings? Your first thought, is where is it? You check your back pocket or look deep into your bag. If it’s a faint ring, you may even consider if you’ve left it on your van’s dashboard again.

We’ve all felt that panic when you can hear your phone ring but you just can’t find it. It’s probably not a big deal to miss a personal call. But in an age where we want everything instantly, patience seems to be in short supply because 20% of people who don’t get an answer from a business the first time will go elsewhere.

Finding your phone and attempting to answer it before you miss the call is not the only problem that comes with using your personal mobile phone for business.

Answered: Should I use my personal number for business?

No! Never! And here’s why…

1. Using your mobile number makes your business look unprofessional

For any business, first impressions are the decision between a sale for you or a sale for your competitor. With only a small window of seven seconds to gain your customer’s favour, the last thing you want them to face is an unprofessional voicemail greeting and a full inbox.

In amongst impressions, perception plays a major role in a consumer’s decision-making. They draw conclusions from the information they instantly see irrespective of what the unobvious facts may be.

When seeing a mobile contact number, consumers perceive that your company may be, 

• New & inexperienced
• Unestablished so unstable
• (At worst) unprofessional, unreliable or even a scam 

Surveys have also highlighted that consumers believe calls to mobiles will be charged at a premium rate. In fact, only 6% of those asked said they would call a mobile number. And when given a choice, 50% of potential customers would happily call a landline number instead of sending an email.

For any business looking to be successful and build on its reputation, these figures could be crushing. So it might be a good idea to provide your customers with a landline number so they don’t have the chance to think anything negative about your business.

2. The lines between business & pleasure become blurred

From the outside, it looks like a great idea to have your business and personal number as one of the same. It would be super convenient as you always have your phone on you so will always be available to answer a call.

But therein lies the problem.

You will ALWAYS BE AVAILABLE to answer a call.

Of course, you want all the business you can get and want to appear flexible but there are better ways to do that than being essentially on call 24/7. That there lies the road to burnout. When running your own business it’s essential that you set up some clear boundaries and ensure a healthy work-life balance so you have some time for yourself outside of your business. 

By using your mobile number for both business and personal use you,

• May not be able to distinguish between a work or personal call causing confusion on how to or if to answer it.
• May inadvertently answer a business call in an inappropriate environment giving the impression that you’re unprofessional or unorganised.
• Can’t switch one element of your life off without switching off the other.
• Are unable to give telephone answering responsibility to anyone else, affecting your downtime, family time & holiday time – which you should definitely take!
• Will feel compelled to answer it in any situation which could lead to dangerous predicaments if you’re a manual worker.
• Find your phone becomes your life. Your evenings will be spent answering customer calls & making callbacks. You may even feel anxiety if you don’t answer it when it rings.

Running your own business is hard, so you must take some time to rest. It’s true that you don’t have the employee perks of paid holidays and regular breaks, but there are ways you can ensure downtime. And that’s keeping your mobile phone number to yourself!

3. One mobile number = one hundred call management issues

Ok, one hundred issues may be an exaggeration, but using your mobile number for business has its limitations! The fact that mobile phones are not designed to manage calls is a huge stumbling block.

Having a system of management for your incoming calls means that you are less likely to miss calls and sales opportunities. And with a 2022 report discovering that 92% of phone calls represent growth opportunities, ensuring you capture every call is essential.

Looking more closely at your humble mobile phone with its solitary (and possibly shared amongst your staff) 07 number it’s clear that you won’t have the capability to,

• Organise voicemails & callbacks
• Record calls for recalling vital information, training & accountability
• Set up call redirects for your out-of-office service
• Engage in conference calling
• Transfer calls from one extension to another
• Use a reliable caller ID to screen calls
• Take advantage of call waiting to answer multiple calls
• Maintain the quality of calls in poor signal areas

Having only one phone and one number often leads to frustrated customers who experience long wait times. This can be more costly in the long term than investing in a new number. Your disgruntled customers will leave bad reviews and take their money and spend it with your competitor. 

4. Your business growth will be limited

With EVERYTHING online these days, you’d be forgiven for thinking that your customers will prefer to contact you online. With this in mind, using your mobile number for business could be the simpler solution to pick up the slack of the few who still want to call you.

The reality according to Zendesk customers confessed to picking up the phone for general issues 16% of the time and for more complex questions 29% of the time. These may seem like small numbers but both these figures match or supersede any other contact channel.

If you’re not prepared for the majority of your customers to call you rather than email (for example) then you will find you and your business are limited. Using your one number attached to one phone will, 

• Restrict the flexibility for you to scale up your business by taking more calls & more scales than one number could ever offer.
• Make it harder to keep on top of ever-increasing missed calls & messages.
• Limit your time to answering calls only, rather than running & growing your business.

Even if your business is not looking to grow right now, using your mobile for business purposes places an unnecessary ceiling on your company that later you may want to be removed, at a greater cost.

5. Your security could be compromised

Displaying your mobile number on your website, social media and emails exposes you to an array of unscrupulous people and activities. If you are using your mobile number for business and personal activities, you’ll be twice as susceptible to data and identity theft. Keeping your numbers separate will give you an extra layer of protection for both you and your business. 

Using your personal number for business doesn’t save time or money

As you can see, using your mobile number for business on the surface looks like a great idea. It doesn’t cost anything extra and is super convenient…until it costs you more than money and takes over your life.

Are we being dramatic? Maybe, but do you want to risk being the CEO who answers all the calls, and has no time for themselves? Working for yourself is supposed to give you the flexibility and freedoms that you crave in life, not tie you down more than employment did.

Once you’ve made the decision to use your mobile number and phone for business, it becomes hard to move away from it. Because your mobile number is EVERYWHERE! It’s on your website, social media channels, invoices, quotes, presentations, business cards…the list goes on!

You have affordable business-number options!

Whether you’re new to business or a known pro, you do have options that offer affordability and flexibility. The ideal option is a VoIP call management system. Yes, it might sound expensive but because it uses existing networks, it’s actually cheap too and often gives you savings against standard business mobile charges. 

With VoIP, can I get a business number to my mobile?

100%! If you like the flexibility of using your mobile, then VoIP’s ability to forward calls to any number, means that your customers can call your business number and you can pick it up on any device.

But, should I have a separate phone for my business?

This entirely depends on your business needs. Because you can divert your business number to any device with a Wi-Fi or data connection, it means you don’t need a new VoIP-enabled phone. However, you could equally invest in a new piece of hardware if you work out of an office and prefer to keep your mobile strictly personal to maintain some boundaries.

The big benefits of business VoIP

Most people who happen across VoIP call management didn’t even know they had a problem until the solution was presented to them. Here is what you might be missing out on in your business…

• Get scalability during peak or off-peak seasons. You can increase or decrease phone lines at the touch of a button.
• A choice of telephone numbers that will give you a local or national presence making you look established, credible & professional.
• A complete system to streamline your customer experience & efficiently utilise staff; to build on your reputation & save money.
• The flexibility for you or your staff to work from anywhere in the world using a softphone.
• Privacy, a work-life balance & peace of mind.

Here at SwitchboardFREE, we make it quick and easy for you to move from your mobile number to a number of your choosing. We give you more than 45 call management features FREE of charge and, you can give us a try for just £5 per month inclusive of a new number!