SHOULD SMES KEEP THEIR LANDLINE TELEPHONES?
One of the UK’s leading accountancy firms, PwC, announced recently that it was getting rid of landline telephones on all office desks, with all staff being expected to use mobiles by the end of the summer. Is this an option for SMEs, however? . Here we look at the extent to which the use of landline phones has declined – and why dispensing with your company landlines may not be a good idea.
The Decline in Traditional Telephone Calls
In 2010, UK businesses racked up almost 38 million minutes of calls. Last year, this figure had more than halved to 18.8 million minutes.
Eight years ago, there were more than 10 million business landline numbers. By the end of 2017, this number had fallen to 6.4 million. The number of residential phone line numbers has increased, but this is mainly because most homes need a landline for their broadband services. The amount of domestic phone calls has also fallen, by more than 50%.
This shows the extent to which we rely on our mobile phones and other internet-based forms of communication such as emails. PwC already supplies all its staff with mobiles, and it believes that dispensing with landlines is “a more efficient way of working.”
Although it can seem tempting to dispense with landlines, there are several excellent reasons for keeping them, especially for businesses which are smaller than the accountancy giant.
Permanence – A landline gives the suggestion of a physical presence in the community. Most numbers have a code which confirm the business’s locality which can be important to some customers. It also suggests you employ staff rather than being just a ‘one-man band’ which can put some prospective customers off.
In a recent experiment by one virtual phone service provider, two otherwise identical advertisements were placed online, differing only in the phone number to respond to – one advert had a mobile number, the other a landline. The latter received four times as many enquiries from prospective customers.
Technical Reasons – Landlines won’t be as badly affected by a poor signal. You won’t want to miss out on an important order because you can’t hear the other person clearly, or because you have been cut off.
Many of the newer alternatives to landlines, such as VoIP (voice-over internet protocol), also rely on a high-quality internet connection. This can be a problem in many parts of the UK, particularly rural areas.
Cost – You may feel that if you are facing expensive rental charges, this may not be a price worth paying if you don’t use your landlines much. The reality is that customers and business owners prefer to call landlines as they are usually less expensive than a mobile. In many cases, telecoms companies need a landline to supply their customers with an internet connection.
‘On Call’ – Although mobiles allow you to carry on your business wherever you are, the flipside is that you never get a chance to relax, unless you have one mobile for business calls and another for domestic calls.
With landlines, you can limit the times you are accessible to your clients, with out-of-hours calls from customers going to voicemail.