Here cautionary tale about a startup business mistake I made about 5 or 6 years ago that continues to haunt me to this day. During the early days of a previous startup, ActiveRain we had very limited resources, thus no permanent office space or phone land lines. I routinely used my personal cell phone number as a business contact number, which at the time worked just fine. If they wanted to get a hold of the company they wanted to talk to me.
This phone number got used in a wide variety of places for example the contact number on domain name registrations, a credit card processing application, bank forms and various tax forms. As the company grew and we had more resources we switched this contact number over to an actual business number answered by an actual office assistant instead of my personal cell phone. That would have been fine except for one problem, through the magic of the Internet and networked computer systems, contact information tends to get syndicated to dozens of places when it is first entered. Often it does not get updated when the original source does.
It's now been about a year and a half since leaving that company and to this day, I receive an average of two or three phone calls a day of people trying to contact ActiveRain. There's nothing like being woken up at 6:00 am by an irate real estate agent complaining on how someone slandered them in a blog post wanting it removed.
They primarily found my phone number through a random Google search or on a credit card statement. It's been a constant battle of trying to track down the places the number is now listed and get them changed. In many instances even though we can determine where the number was found, but we can't figure out the way to actually change it. The worst has been the credit card processing company, who syndicated the number all over the place to various credit card companies yet seemingly has no process in place to update that number in all those places.
So unless you want to potentially answers with calls from frustrated customers looking for technical support, or answers to billing questions for the next five years, I would suggest not using a personal number for business purposes..
By the way, if you somehow find this post on a Google search for "ActiveRain Phone Number" it's (206) 470-2901
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That sucks! If you need a free dedicated number for your business but like the call to be forwarded to your cell, check out Google Voice and Ribbit. Both offer free US phone numbers with rich voice mail features and answer-first forwarding to many lines and VOIP. Both are in "closed" beta but it shouldn't be that hard to get a beta invite if you ask/search around. Google Voice is also fully integrated into Android phones (helo Nexus One) and is rumored to become more widely available this year. | |
Posted by stefan birrer on Jan, 06 at 2:56 PM
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We at Home View, LLC ended up landing a HUGE account right away in 2007 and we were using a personal home number for our fax line. Well, we need subcontractors FAST to take care of all our orders. Part of our qualification process required photographers and videographers to fax all their information and agreements and such right away. For much of 2008, there was NO getting any sleep because the fax would ring at all times at night and in the early morning! We couldn't turn the ringer off because we were afraid of missing an important late night phone call. Fun stuff. We went to Fax.com as a solution and now we get lots of sleep! =) |
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Posted by Home View on Jan, 06 at 3:30 PM
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Change your personal phone number, update your contacts. BOOM, problem solved. |
Posted by Josh Powell on Jan, 06 at 5:36 PM
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I have this problem as well. My intention was to have people just call me, I wanted to be accessible. Little did I know that my number would be indellibly printed in Google as the wrong cotact info for a company I'd left long ago. Google Voice and Ribit seem like good options to look at. Online fax services have saved me countless times! Josh has a point, but I didn't want to change my number because it was well established elsewhere, and simply updating my contacts would not have helped my business at the time. |
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Posted by Prospect Marketing on Jan, 06 at 6:31 PM
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I have foolishly given my personal number when purchasing equipment which now means I regularly get sales calls asking if I need to buy anything. For legal or other business use we use a VoIP solution provider which means we can have voicemail emailed to a distribution group if the phone can't be answered (e.g. we want to sleep!). The benefit of VoIP (like Google Voice etc) is it's portable if you're travelling. Unfortunately Google Voice isn't available outside the US otherwise that would be my preference as I have an android phone! | |
Posted by gymnag on Jan, 11 at 7:17 AM
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http://www.bigstartups.com
