Using your personal phone for work in the digital age is tempting. You’re already carrying it around everywhere, so it may seem like a good idea to keep it for business communication purposes instead of overcomplicating your existence with two separate phones.
However, this approach poses numerous issues and limitations that you may not realize yet: never knowing if a call is personal or business-related, receiving calls outside working hours, and even major privacy concerns.
In today’s article, we are going to dive into the main reasons why you should stop using your personal phone number for business communications:
It affects your life-work balance
When you use your personal phone number for your business, it’s not surprising that your personal life starts to look like an office extension.
You can’t leave work at work and have no way to delineate between business and home.
With no clear separation between work and life, it can be hard to stay focused on both because they become blurred together.
For example, let’s say that you’d like to take time off and focus on family activities. Suppose you haven’t established clear boundaries in a world that expects everyone to be available 24/7. In that case, your free time may be disrupted by a customer call, especially if you prefer to remain contactable by close friends and family in case of emergencies and don’t want to set up all your calls to go straight to voicemail.
It makes you unable to differentiate between work and personal calls
If you use your personal phone number for business, a call from a client whose number you haven’t saved in your agenda looks the same as a call from your child’s teacher.
You are never truly prepared to respond, which can lead to various mishaps.
It puts your personal information at risk
You may think having a separate phone number for work and personal calls is overkill.
But if you’re like most people, your cell phone is now an extension of your identity. You use it for everything, from scheduling appointments to sending text messages and emails.
If someone has access to that number, they could easily use it to target you with scams or phishing schemes. No doubt using your personal phone number for business purposes risks your privacy, especially if you published it on the internet (including your website’s contact information).
If someone gets hold of that information, they could use it for nefarious purposes, including sending spam texts/calls or fraudulent telemarketer calls that could end up in scams with serious implications.
Malicious agents may try to hack into your social media accounts or emails that are linked to your personal phone number, increasing the odds of stealing your data. Furthermore, business owners who use their personal numbers for work open themselves up to potential identity theft.
It does not build a sense of professionalism
Using your personal phone number for business may seem like a no-brainer at first, but it actually does more harm than good. It gives the impression that you’re not serious about your business and shows a lack of professionalism.
Even if you have a strong rapport with the people you call on behalf of your business, the fact that you’re using your personal cell number instead of a dedicated work number makes it seem like you don’t care about your security, the quality of your work or the impression that you make.
The bottom line
While using your personal phone for business may be tempting, the drawbacks are more numerous than you’d assume.
The great news is that you do not have to purchase a separate cell phone and carry it around all the time.
You can use a VoIP solution like Qara App. Use Qara’s 20+ features, including access to a dedicated work number, by signing up for early access for a 30-day trial.
