If you work from home, implementing a few home office telephone tips and strategies will help you to maintain a professional image for your home based business and keep your business and personal time separate.
Most people who work from home will tell you that professional telephone issues fall into two main categories. The first issue is in making sure home business calls always sound professional. Somehow it seems that when you are working from home, the important call you've been waiting on from a crucial client always happens when your kids are crying or your dog is barking. That kind of background chaos doesn't do much for your professional image.
Then second home office telephone issue revolves around keeping business and personal time separate. Anyone who works from home will tell you that putting work completely aside and taking some personal time can be a big challenge.
If you work from home, you know what I mean. You are trying to relax and enjoy some personal time when a business call comes in. Even if you manage to gather the self control needed to let the call go to voice mail, sooner or later your curiosity will force you to yield to the little blinking light on your phone and you will take the message. Suddenly, before you've even realized it, you find yourself buried in your work again.
Maintain a Professional Image for Your Home Business
There are plenty of telephone tips and strategies that people who work from home can use to manage telephone professionalism.
1. Teach other members of the household to completely avoid answering the phone during typical business hours to maintain a professional image from your home office.
2. Use call display, and instruct family members to answer only when they recognize the phone number.
3. Use a pre-established hand signal, or as my former team leader called it, a "look of death" which communicates to others that you are on a business call and need others to be quiet.
4. Establish a dedicated business telephone number. You will always know when the call is business related, so you can answer in a professional way. Also you can ensure that no one else in the household answers when a call comes in on your business phone number.
More on establishing a business phone number…
Based on my experience, when you work from home and are expected to maintain a certain level of professionalism on business calls, establishing a dedicated business phone number is crucial. Depending on the options you choose, your dedicated business phone number doesn't have to be very expensive.
You can establish a separate phone number for your home business in a couple of ways.
Establish a Second Phone Number on an Existing Phone Line
If you work from home but don't get a lot of business calls, you may choose to simply set up a second phone number on your existing telephone line. This approach is a simple and inexpensive way to immediately establish professionalism for your business when you work from home.
When a customer calls this number, it will ring on your personal phone(s), but the ring will sound different than it does when your personal phone number is called. You can train family members to avoid answering the phone when they hear the "business ring." Also, you will know instantly when an incoming call is business related, and you can avoid answering if there is some kind of loud chaos happening at your house.
Establish a Second Phone Line for Business Calls
Another option for establishing a dedicated business phone number for your home business is installing a completely separate phone line in your home. You will then use that separate line use for business purposes only.
Having a separate phone line is typically the more expensive of the two options. You will likely pay an installation charge and higher monthly fees than you would pay for a separate phone number on an existing line. However, a separate phone line has the advantage of ringing only on your business telephone and not on your personal telephones. This approach allows you to dedicate a specific telephone for business use only.
Asking others in your household to avoid answering your business phone is a fairly simple, uncomplicated request. The other advantage of this option is that it can really help you to address the second issue around taking business phone calls when you work at home: separating work and personal time.
Your personal phone line will not ring with business calls. The only phone that will ring will be the one in your office, so you will be limited to answering business calls in your dedicated work space.
This strategy has worked well for me. In my previous line of work, many of my phone calls were stressful. An incoming phone call was rarely good news and almost always meant a problem was brewing. Establishing a separate business phone line in my home office was crucial to preserving my personal time.
I turned the volume of the ring down on my business phone so it could only be heard in my office. That way, I was never tempted to deal with or even check incoming calls outside of office hours. It made a huge difference in my ability to manage the stresses and demands of a highly responsible job.
Working from home can be extremely rewarding, but learning to work from home effectively takes a little thought and planning. Implement a few of these simple strategies and you will be on your way to establishing a professional image for your home based business.
