{"id":653,"date":"2013-04-19T16:22:59","date_gmt":"2013-04-19T16:22:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/?p=653"},"modified":"2013-04-19T16:22:59","modified_gmt":"2013-04-19T16:22:59","slug":"small-business-owners-say-no-to-giving-out-personal-mobile-number-survey-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/small-business-owners-say-no-to-giving-out-personal-mobile-number-survey-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Small business owners say no to giving out personal mobile number, survey says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.plantronics.com\/us\/cmpn\/big-trends\/big-trends.jsp\"><img class=\"size-full wp-image-613 alignleft\" alt=\"smb-tech-trends\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/smb-tech-trends.jpg\" width=\"188\" height=\"181\" \/><\/a>Do you freely give out your personal mobile phone number to the people you do business with? A recent survey conducted by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.evoice.com\/\">eVoice<\/a>, a small business virtual phone number service, found that 75 percent of respondents in a small business survey indicated that they won\u2019t share their personal phone number with staff, 81 percent with partners or investors and 82 percent with vendors.<\/p>\n<p>The survey also found some out some interesting preferences and habits of small business owners when it comes to mobility and mobile technology. Among them:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Only 33 percent of respondents listen to voicemail from business contacts. Only 18 percent will listen to a voicemail from an unknown number.<\/li>\n<li>Texting is on the rise among small businesses. Among survey respondents, 58 percent indicated that they text for business at least once a month. (Still there are times when it\u2019s better <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/19\/when-its-better-to-call-than-text-at-your-small-business\/\">to call then text.<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>Among male respondents, 20 percent said they would fire a full-time employee to cut their monthly cell phone bill by 50 percent.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>UC lets you keep personal numbers to yourself<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Your reluctance to give out your personal number as well as declining voice mail use is a good reason to consider deploying a <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/08\/must-have-unified-communications-features-for-your-small-business-part-i\/\">unified communications<\/a> (UC) platform to integrate your small business real-time communications services.\u00a0 Most notably, UC can give one number reach or \u201cfind me\/follow me\u201d capabilities. You\u2019ll get one number \u2013 even a virtual one &#8211; to give out.\u00a0When someone dials that number, the IP telephony system routes the calls to numbers you have selected \u2013 office phone, mobile number, home phone or other \u2014 at the same time or sequentially.\u00a0 If, after routing the call to all the numbers, you still don\u2019t answer; the system will leave the call in your voice mail.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/message-received-on-smartphone.jpg\"><img class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-654\" alt=\"Mobile phone text message or e-mail\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/message-received-on-smartphone-300x199.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" \/><\/a>Still don\u2019t want to listen to that voice mail? You don\u2019t need to. Your UC system will transcribe the text of your messages and send it to you in the body of an email so you can read it and easily forward it on to someone else if you need to share it.<\/p>\n<p>UC systems also give you background on a call so you might be less inclined to let it go to voicemail. When a call comes in, screen pops can bring up a profile of the caller from your customer relationship management system (CRM) or other contact databases you use so you have background information to facilitate the call. A screen pop can occur both during an incoming call or when an outbound call is placed.<\/p>\n<p>UC has lots of benefits, among them enabling you to have your communications your way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do you freely give out your personal mobile phone number [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[510],"tags":[637,580,446],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}