What is a proxy phone number? | Benefits, disadvantages, and features

As a small business owner, you end up sharing your phone number on several platforms every day. This significantly compromises your privacy. A solution to that is a proxy phone number, which helps mask your private number.

If you use the same number for work and personal communication, your private number could be on your storefront, website, social media channels and online directories. Everybody has the potential to get their hands on it. A proxy phone number is your protection against those risks.

What is a proxy phone number?

A proxy phone number is a cloud-based feature that allows you to make calls or send texts without revealing your number. When you make a call, you’ll be dialling a proxy number. That’s what the recipient will see on their device. Since it hides your real phone number, it’s also called phone number masking.

With a proxy phone number, both parties in a conversation can protect their real numbers. This makes it highly useful for not just business owners but also their employees, particularly those in sales or client service. As more and more businesses are encouraging BYOD or Bring Your Own Device, a proxy phone number would help them protect their privacy.

How do proxy phone numbers work?

You don’t need any hardware to use a proxy phone number. The service is performed on the cloud-based server that routes the call. Once you get a proxy number, you can connect to the server which will link you to the receiver.

Proxy phone numbers are useful in a variety of situations, from hailing cabs to coordinating with delivery personnel. If both parties use a proxy service, the number you get from the recipient will also be a ‘false’ number. When you make a call, it will be directed through your proxy service. Both the caller and the recipient wouldn’t see each other’s real numbers but would be able to engage in a conversation.

If the call gets disconnected, the recipient will be able to call you back through your proxy number. When you get the call, the number you see on your device won’t be the real number of the recipient.

Why do businesses use proxy phone numbers?

If you run a small business, most of your day-to-day calls with external parties could be transactional conversations. If your team has to call several prospects in a day, a proxy phone number protects their personal phone numbers.

A proxy phone number is useful and unavoidable for businesses in certain sectors. If you’re a cab aggregator, e-commerce store, or logistics and delivery service, your employees’ calls will be one-time calls. If an employee uses their real number, just a single call can increase its exposure. A proxy phone number is an ideal solution for these instances.

Advantages of proxy phone numbers

• Privacy: Proxy phone numbers make sure that both your employees’ and customers’ phone numbers stay protected, which would enable more seamless engagements. Calls to more prospects would increase your conversion rates.
• More transactions: When customers are confident about your platform due to its privacy protection, they will be encouraged to conduct more transactions. Low leakage means more revenue for your business.
• Tracking: With a proxy phone number service, you can track, record and transcribe your calls. Tracking your team’s performance will reveal problems and help improve your customer service.

Disadvantages of proxy phone numbers

Unprofessional: While proxy phone numbers are beneficial for some industries, they don’t suit everyone. For a business to be credible, it needs to have a consistent phone number. Different proxy phone numbers may make a business seem unprofessional and unreliable.

High costs: If your whole team has to use a proxy phone service, it could turn out to be costly. This is especially true in the case of lead generation.

Chalkboard: A better business alternative to proxy numbers

A proxy phone number is not a long-term, professional solution to improve your privacy. For that, you need Chalkboard, a virtual number designed for productivity and a better work-life balance. A second number that you can easily add to Android or iPhone, it gives you several features to grow your business.

You can share your second line for work with customers and colleagues and protect your personal phone number. Just like setting up auto-reply on iOS and Android, Chalkboard allows you to set pre-written messages for calls that you might miss.

Unlike a proxy phone number that only masks your real number, Chalkboard gives you several business tools. With messaging, you can organise your contacts into lists and broadcast SMS in one go.

Download Chalkboard and try it now. It combines the benefits of a proxy phone number and advanced business features.