A Home Business Telephone Service - 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 Business Require a Separate Phone
Number to be Provided by Your 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 business telephone will add additional
cost burden to your home business with the federal and local charges
added to your telephone bill. Don't forget long distance access
fees and charges 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 there homes are pictured less professional than
persons working at a regular business or office.
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?
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.
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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.
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.
There are other options for consideration, also.
When starting a home business, for most, money and spending money on
communication equipment is an issue. There are online companies
such as
RingCentral.Com that can provide local numbers, toll free
numbers, use your existing business number, on hold music, answering machine options, and virtual online fax machines,
just to name a few.
The money you could save using
RingCentral.Com
versus spending money on a fax machine, answering machine, separate
telephone line for your fax, etcetera, could make checking into this
worth while for you.
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