Phone number masking: Is it the best option for businesses?

As a business owner, you end up sharing your phone number with strangers every day. Whether it’s a customer or vendor, some interactions will necessarily have to be over the phone and this increases the risk of digital privacy violations. That’s why phone number masking is now becoming increasingly popular among business owners and entrepreneurs.

What is phone number masking?

Phone number masking, also referred to as call masking, allows you to hide your personal number when making calls by displaying a different number. The recipient will only see that temporary number on their screen and not your mobile number.

This temporary anonymity is enabled by software that acts as the intermediary between the caller and the recipient. When you make a call, it first goes to the software which will assign a temporary number for you and forward it to the recipient. The person receiving your call won’t know that it’s not your real number.

Phone number masking can be used to hide the number of both the caller and the recipient. This is increasingly becoming popular – and almost a necessity – in certain industries with one-off interactions between individuals. The feature is embedded into the apps of several businesses where the person only has to tap on the ‘Call’ button to make the call to hide their number.

Why is phone number masking important in business?

While phone number masking can protect both businesses and their customers, it has enormous benefits for business owners. To understand that, let’s first acknowledge the importance of phone calls to small businesses.

A phone call is the most immediate form of communication. Unlike an email or a text, you know that you’ll be directly engaging with the recipient. This makes it the most personal of all mediums. But it also invites risk since you’ll be dealing with strangers.

With phone masking, you’ll be covering that risk and unlocking the potential in your team. You and your colleagues can now reach out to more people, which will significantly improve your lead generation. It also improves customer experiences and delivers data to constantly manage customer interactions.

Think about it this way: would you send promotional and marketing emails from your personal email address? No, you would use a company email for that because you want to protect your privacy. Phone number masking works in a similar way and allows your business to confidently engage with a higher number of people.

Phone number masking: The pros and cons

Pros

Safeguards your privacy

In certain sectors such as cab aggregation or delivery, businesses have to make one-off calls to customers. Phone number masking helps businesses protect their personal number from landing in the hands of strangers.

Increases reach

With call masking, you and your team members can make cold calls to a greater number of people. Once you know that they’re genuinely interested, you can share your personal phone number.

It's cost-effective

Businesses that don’t use phone number masking may have to use a business answering service although the smarter option would be a second line for work. Outsourcing call answering will needlessly increase expenses for small businesses.

Unifies communication

Being a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) feature, call masking gives a unified view of all your calls. You would know how many calls your team makes. You can learn from these analytics to improve the quality of your calls.

It's remote-friendly

If your remote team members have to make cold calls, they don’t have to wait until they get back to the office or find a secure line. Phone number masking empowers them to conduct business without interruptions.

This isn’t to suggest that call masking doesn’t come with disadvantages. Small businesses opting for phone number masking should also be aware of its problems.

Cons

It seems unprofessional

You have a permanent website and social media handles because that makes you look professional and credible. If you don’t seem to have a permanent phone number, customers may think of you as an amateur or inexperienced business.

It decreases trust

When customers don’t have a permanent number to call you back, they might believe that you don’t have enough people for customer support. The last thing you want is an aggrieved customer commenting online that your business doesn’t even have a telephone number.

Chalkboard - The smarter solution to phone number masking

Why go for a temporary solution when you can get a permanent number loaded with business features? Chalkboard gives you a second line for work that you can freely use to call leads and customers without worrying about privacy. This is how you keep your work and private lives separate.

With Chalkboard, you also get messaging to talk to your customers like friends. In case they call first and you miss it, you can use auto-reply to send pre-written messages.

Download this highly affordable virtual number. You won’t have to worry about phone number masking again.