Work at Home Craft Business Telephone Tips

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Work at home craft business owners can benefit by implementing a few telephone tips and strategies to maintain a professional image and keep business and personal time separate.

When I started to work at home, I found that my professional telephone issues fell into two main categories. The first was making sure my home business calls were always handled in a professional manner, and the second was not allowing business phone calls to creep into personal time. These telephone tips outline several ideas for dealing with those challenges.

Work at Home Craft Business Telephone Tips:
Maintain a Professional Image

If you have kids at home, then you'll understand how maintaining a professional image while on a business call at home can become a huge challenge. Although my business is home based, right from the start, I knew I didn't want to come across to customers as a mom at home stringing beads on my kitchen table. I wanted to develop the image of a professional artist and jewelry designer. So it was important to me to maintain that image over the phone while working from home.

There are plenty of telephone tips and strategies that home based craft business owners can use to manage telephone professionalism. Some people teach young kids to completely avoid answering the phone during typical business hours to maintain a professional image from their home office. Others use call display, and family members are instructed to answer only when they recognize the phone number. In some households, a pre-established hand signal which communicates to others that you're on the phone with a customer is a useful strategy for maintaining professionalism.

Establishing a dedicated business telephone number can be very useful in building a professional image for your home office. You'll always know when the call is business related, so you can answer in a professional way, and you can ensure that no one else in the household answers when a call comes in on your business phone number. Also, depending on the options you choose, establishing a dedicated business phone number doesn't have to be very expensive. You can establish a separate phone number for your home based craft business in a couple of ways.

Establish a Second Phone Number on an Existing Phone Line
If you don't get a lot of business calls, you may choose to simply set up a second phone number on your existing line. This approach is a pretty simple and inexpensive way to immediately establish professionalism for your business while you are working from home.

When a customer calls this number, it will ring on your personal phone, but the ring will sound different than it does when your personal phone number is called. That way you'll 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. Also it's fairly easy to train family members to avoid answering the phone when they hear the "business ring" as opposed to asking them to avoid answering the phone at certain hours.

Establish a Second Phone Line for Business Calls
The other option for establishing a dedicated business phone number for your home based craft business is installing a completely separate phone line in your home, which you'll use for business purposes only. Having a separate phone line is the more expensive of the two options. You'll 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 the household to avoid answering your business phone is a fairly simple, uncomplicated request. The other advantage of this option is that you will not be tempted to take a business call while you're in the family room or the kitchen, so it helps you to separate work and personal time. The only phone that will ring will be the one in your office, so you'll be limited to answering business calls in your dedicated business environment.

If your home based craft business is new or structured in a way that you don't receive very many business calls, then using a separate phone number on an existing line may be the best option because it is more cost effective. However, if you are working from home and receiving a lot of business calls on a regular basis, you may find it's worth the expense to establish a completely separate business line.

Work at Home Craft Business Telephone Tips:
Keep Business Calls and Personal Time Separate

As your home based craft business grows and you get busier, you may start to find that working from home begins to encroach on a significant amount of your personal time. Setting up some boundaries around answering and making business phone calls can help you to maintain personal time separate from your business.

Confine Business Calls to One Phone in Your Home
Even if you just have a business number on your existing personal line, dedicating a single phone in your home office to business calls, and not making business calls from other rooms in your home can help you avoid the temptation of making or receiving business calls on personal time.

Set Specific Telephone Hours
One effective strategy for preserving personal time while working from home is establishing set hours when you will and will not accept or make business calls. You'll need to consider the nature of your business and customers when you determine your telephone hours. Depending on the nature of your business, you may have to accept calls on the weekend, if that's a typical and reasonable customer expectation.

If you do business nationally or internationally, then answering calls from 9-5 in your time zone may be inconvenient for your customers. I'm not suggesting that you answer business calls at 3:00am on a regular basis, just that you consider your typical customers' needs when determining your hours.

Building a home based craft business and working from home can be personally and professionally rewarding. Following a few telephone tips can help you to establish some boundaries around professional telephone use in your home, keep your business image professional and protect your personal time.

 
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