Many new businesses no longer take the time to have a landline connection because most communication takes place online nowadays. However, there are many benefits to having a telephone number that you just can’t get from simply having a business mobile or social media profiles that potential customers and business partners could contact.
If you’re looking to start a new business, you might also be tempted to skip the extra cost and hassle of having a landline installed for your office.
To change your mind, here are six reasons a landline phone could be beneficial for your startup:
1. Reliable Communication Line and Audio Quality
A landline connection is, by all means, crisper and more reliable than cellular data. Taking calls on your mobile data is fine when you’re off-hours and when you’re out and about, but you must really try to maintain a better connection line during business hours, and the way to do that is by taking calls via landline.
Cellular data is usually spotty and arbitrary depending on your location and signal availability, but the wired connectivity of landline phones present a more stable alternative. To date, no cellphone has been manufactured well enough to top or at least match the audio quality offered by landlines.
2. Better for Formal Transactions
When you put a mobile phone number out there for your business, expect that people will start texting you out of the blue. If it’s just inquiries from actual people who are interested in your business, then there’s no harm done. Unfortunately, there are a lot of unscrupulous individuals out there who would get a kick out of wasting your time by hiding in anonymity and sending senseless text messages.
On the other hand, when you strictly transact via landline, you can at least limit bogus transactions because there is less anonymity in prank calls. Additionally, it would be weird to use mobile phones in B2B transactions. Most established businesses would have a landline phone and would expect your business to have the same so you can communicate through that channel.
3. Great Use for Emergencies
As mentioned earlier, cellular data is usually at the mercy of cell sites and their signals. So imagine what happens if you run into an office emergency and your phone is not getting enough reception for you to successfully call out. Worse, you are left without any other recourse if your phone battery dies in the middle of an emergency.
A landline phone is more reliable for office emergencies. If you call authorities via your landline, it would also be easier for them to track your location to send a response team without you having to tell them your address.
4. Virtual Phone Numbers are Customizable
A great middle-ground to having a landline while enjoying the portability of your mobile phone is by getting a virtual phone number for your business. A virtual phone number will allow you to get a California number, for instance, no matter where you are in the country. But that’s not the only benefit you can derive from getting a virtual phone number. Another perk is the ability to get a custom business phone number, which would be a lot easier to commit to memory than any other randomly-generated and assigned number.
5. May Still Be Used Even When Working From Home
You might think a landline has no use now that everyone is virtually working remotely or working from home, but that’s not the case with a virtual phone number. What you can do is program your virtual landline to divert calls to your mobile phone, so you can pick up the phone wherever you are in the world (so long as you have reception!)
You can also hook it up with multiple different numbers so that at any time of the day, when someone calls your business landline number, all employees will be notified and whoever is free at the time can take the call. This ensures that you won’t be missing any important calls even when no one is at the office.
6. Increases Trust for Your Business
Whether we like it or not, there is still some stigma attached to mobile phones. Even though cellphones have been around for quite some time, some people still think it’s an informal means of communication, so others might think your business is not legitimate or does not run substantial operations if you don’t have a landline number. Thus, interested clients or business partners might hesitate to push through with doing business with you if they google your startup and find out that you don’t have a telephone number.
Times are changing, but these are very good reasons to hold on to your landline, even just for the sake of business.