When you’re starting a small business, you might assume one phone number is plenty.
If a customer needs something, they’ll call the main number, and someone will handle it. Having a dedicated customer support number sounds like something you’ll maybe implement waaaaaay down the road, right? Many small business owners are surprised to learn that this isn’t necessarily a great approach — and it could be setting your business up for problems in the future.
A dedicated customer support number from PhoneHub is easy to set up and inexpensive to maintain, so here are a few reasons why you should consider getting one right off the bat …
Dedicated customer support numbers help you look more legit
We all know optics are important. How customers perceive your business can make a big difference in whether you close a sale … or watch them walk away.
While a lean start-up may run even more efficiently than a much larger company, sometimes old-school clients don’t see things that way. Without even realizing why, they might feel a bigger company — with a slew of phone numbers to various “departments” — seems like a bigger deal (and a safer choice) than your small business.
By having a dedicated customer support number, you’re presenting yourself as having a larger team or more “official” business.
Of course, once your clients know how great you are, they won’t care that it is the same person (or the same handful of people) who answer your general number, sales, or customer support line. Plus, as your company grows, you already have those numbers in place — which means you’ll seamlessly be able to assign new employees to staff those departments.
Dedicated customer support numbers help prioritize your time
Knowing the difference between a general call, a sales lead, or a customer support number call will help you decide whether you need to pick up the phone or not — which is especially vital if you’re a small team or a one-person operation.
If you pride yourself on always being available for tech support for your product or service, you know that call needs to be attended to immediately. (Whereas if someone is calling your general or sales line, you might be fine letting it go to voicemail.)
You can also use this line to prioritize which clients you pick up for. Not all clients are great clients and some really do love to chat, and if you know it’s a particularly needy client calling — yet again — to ask about some basic feature, you can defer that call and respond to their voicemail with an email that details how to fix the issue.
Dedicated customer support numbers help you manage your remote team
Having PhoneHub numbers means that they can be easily shared and forwarded to anyone on a team, which is especially helpful for teams who are working remotely and don’t have a physical office or teams who are spaced out in different locations.
If one person is away, the phone number can easily be forwarded to a teammate. Or if you’re working across multiple time zones, you can have the phone number accessed by different team members who work in each time zone (or in accordance with it).
Set up voicemail or text responses for incoming calls to your dedicated customer support number
Having technical difficulties or a widespread outage? Set up a voicemail on your customer support line that says you know what the problem is, you’re very sorry for the inconvenience, and you’re on the case. You can also leave the client an option as to what to do next.
Or you can take it one step further and offer key clients their own specialized customer support hotline, where they’re guaranteed a fast response. What amazing personal service! You know that only those top-tier customers are calling on that dedicated phone line, and can have those calls directed straight to your top employee working at the time.
Because setting up a dedicated customer support number with PhoneHub is so inexpensive and easy to do, having one for your small business could be one of the easiest growth strategies you implement this year. Give it a try!
