A Listing That Uses the Owner's Cell Number

The number on the listing

When a business starts, the owner's cell is the obvious number. It is always to hand, and there is nothing to set up.

It goes on the Google listing, the Facebook page, the website and the business cards. Directories copy it from there, and so do sites that copy directories.

Years later there are staff, a counter and regular customers, and the number still rings in one pocket.

Every tap on the call button in a search result reaches that phone and nowhere else.

When it becomes a problem

• Staff cannot answer it, so calls wait for the owner.
• The voicemail greeting gives a first name, not the business.
• Evenings and holidays bring business calls to a personal phone.
• A new phone plan can mean a new number overnight.
• Selling the business means choosing between the number and your own phone.

The last is the hardest to fix late. A buyer reasonably expects the phone number to come with the business, and an owner cannot hand over the number family and friends use to reach them.

A number that belongs to the business

The fix is a number whose account is in the business's name, so it can move to another provider or to a new owner along with everything else.

That can be a landline, a business line delivered over the internet that rings several phones at once, or a separate cell plan on a business account.

Numbers in Canada can usually be moved between providers, so choosing one company now does not tie the business to it for good.

What matters is whose name is on the account, not the technology behind it.

What the business line should do

During opening hours it should ring where someone can answer: the counter, the office, the van. If several people answer it, agree on one greeting, with the business's name first.

After hours it should reach a voicemail that names the business and gives the hours. Forwarding to the owner's cell is fine, if the owner chooses it and can turn it off.

People who see a cell number on a listing sometimes text it. Decide whether the new line should accept texts, and if it cannot, say how else to reach you.

Changing the number without losing callers

The difficult part is not getting a new number. It is finding every place the old one is written.

Start with what people use most: the Google listing and every page of the website that shows the number, then Facebook, Bing Places, Apple Maps Connect and Yelp.

Then the directories, one by one. Searching for the old number in quotation marks finds most of them.

Conflicting numbers across the web confuse customers, and they can confuse the services that compare one listing with another. Aim for one number everywhere, written the same way.

Keep answering the old number

Customers who saved the cell number months ago will keep calling it, and some printed material will be around for years.

For a few months, the owner should answer that number as the business, take the call, and give the new number. Suppliers and regulars who still use it are worth telling directly.

After that, a voicemail greeting on the old number pointing to the new one keeps catching the stragglers without the owner taking every call.

A worked example

A candy store on a seaside town's shopping street sells bulk candy, imported chocolate and party favours, and makes up candy bags for weddings, birthdays and Halloween.

Since opening, its Google listing, Facebook page and website had shown the owner's cell number. Two part-time staff now run the counter most afternoons, but only the owner could take calls.

When she took a week off in August, a couple planning a wedding called three times about two hundred favour bags.

They heard a greeting with only her first name, were not sure they had reached the shop, and ordered elsewhere.

The store now has a business line in its own name. It rings at the counter during opening hours and reaches a voicemail naming the shop and its hours after closing.

The listing, website, Facebook page and directories show the new number, and the bags will carry it from the next print run.

The owner still answers the old number as the shop, giving callers the new one. By the new year, the cell will be hers alone again.

Printed material and vehicles

Cards, bags, magnets, signs and van lettering carry the old number too. They do not all need replacing this week.

Change the listing and the website now, since those are what new callers see first. Reprint everything else as stock runs out, and fix vehicle lettering at the next convenient point.

The owner's privacy

A personal cell on a public listing does not stay on one listing. It is copied by directories and by lists that sell contact details, and it attracts sales calls and texts to the owner's own phone.

Removing it later does not remove the copies. Separating the numbers now limits how far the personal one spreads from here.

The counter-case

A one-person business that works from its van, with nobody but the owner ever answering, may reasonably keep a cell as the business number.

Even then it is worth a separate cell plan on a business account, so the number can be handed on and the personal phone stays personal.

And a business with a landline already in its own name only needs to make sure that line, not a cell, is the one on every listing.

For most others, give the business its own number, in its own name, and put it everywhere the cell is now.

Making the switch

1. Get a business line in the business's name.
2. Record a greeting that names the business and hours.
3. Change the Google listing first.
4. Update every page of the website that shows it.
5. Change Facebook, Bing and directories the same week.
6. Answer the old number as the business for months.
7. Reprint cards and bags as stock runs out.

Step six is the one people skip. Customers who saved the old number months ago will keep using it, and a few months of answering it as the business carries them across.

Keeping one number consistent while still measuring calls is covered in a tracking number on your Google listing.

Frequently asked questions

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