A Home Business Telephone - an Expense to Consider
Your home business telephone service for your home business is another consideration and thought process. Generally you would want to know the type of business you will be conducting before you make these decisions, but it would be good to cover them now for budgetary considerations.
Will Your Home Business Telephone Service Require a Separate Phone Number from a Local Telephone Service Provider?
A separate business phone line will give you a listing in the business section of your local phone book or books. This may or may not be important depending on the type of business you will start.
A separate home business telephone will add additional cost burden to your home business Don't forget the federal and local charges that will be added to your telephone bill. Long distance access fees and charges will also be added to your bill, should you opt for long distance use on the business line.
Do you have children at home that would answer your business telephone calls?
Children or even teenagers may answer your telephone with a business caller on the other end. Do you want them answering your home business calls?
The reason I ask is it has been said that people working from their homes are thought of less professional than persons working at a regular business or office, according to some recent studies I have read.
With that said, children or teenagers answering a telephone with a business caller on the other end may seem unprofessional to some callers.
Just the other day I heard the phone ring and one of my daughters answered it - "What?"! I was shocked that she would answer the phone in that way, and we had a discussion about proper phone answering techniques. She had argued that she knew who was going to call, but that doesn't really matter does it? It could have been anyone calling!
In this age of portable phones, answering a business call can be increasingly difficult in the home environment. I have found that once you find the phone and answer it, there is a scramble to find a pen and paper to take notes or a message without tipping off the business caller that you are unprepared for the call.
Just a tip you might try to avoid.
A Cellular Phone as Your Main Home Business Telephone Service?
With rates that are becoming more and more competitive, a cell phone could be a consideration for your home business communications verses a land based line.
A cell phone would hopefully eliminate any children answering your home business calls as you could carry it with you almost anywhere you go.
Some cell phone plans have unlimited inbound calling. This is a really nice feature especially if your on the go a lot of the time. It also reduces the cost of additional air time minutes.
The Best Home Business Telephone Service for my Business
I opted to contact our local phone company and purchased a home telephone package that has worked pretty well for me. The package I purchased had the following features:
- Caller ID to know who was calling and how we might answer the phone. If it was a number and name we recognized, we would answer the phone in our normal way. Our family quickly learned their friends numbers and names on the caller ID. Any unknown ID was assumed a business call.
- Unlimited long distance calling within the continental United States. I did not mention that some of its use would be for home business purposes. This was also benefit for calling long distance relatives.
- Call waiting that had the option of sending the caller to the local phone company answering machine to be retrieved afterwards if a message was left.
- Call forwarding feature that allows me to forward all calls to any number I choose.
- Internet dial-up service of which I later got rid of due to the very slow connection speed and the Internet access tied up the phone line way too much. DSL high speed internet is not an option because of the remote area where my home business is located.
All of this was about $70.00 per month, but I felt that it was well worth the additional expense, and I was able to do without an additional business line added to my home. A business line would have cost about $30.00 per month without any long distance service, plus installation costs.
My normal phone bill was about $35.00 to $45.00 per month.
I have found that a lot of customers and some business partners do not like to leave messages and would rather hang up their phone than leave one. A tip that you may want to consider.
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