How to get multiple business phone numbers

Thinking about getting multiple business phone numbers? First of all — congratulations! This means your business has outgrown your personal cell phone, so it’s time to take your business to the next level. 

When you upgrade your business to multiple numbers, you can build better relationships with customers. This applies whether you’re a team of two or a growing business of 30.

You just have to find the right provider first.

This guide explains how to purchase multiple phone numbers for your business and tap into features that can better serve your customers. And if you’re hunting for business phone systems, we’ll throw our hat in the ring so you can see what it’s like to use our business phone system.

How to get multiple business phone numbers with OpenPhone

Ready to purchase more numbers?

Here’s how to get a business phone number with OpenPhone:

1. Sign up for an OpenPhone account. You’ll have access to OpenPhone’s seven-day free trial so you can try its features before you buy.

2. Choose the number(s) you wish to purchase. You can select available numbers in nearly any city or area code in the US or Canada or sign up for a North American toll-free number. With our phone picker tool, you can check for specific toll-free numbers to find the perfect number for your business.

3. Verify your account with an existing phone number and credit card. Don’t worry: you won’t be charged until your trial expires.

4. Invite your team members. Every coworker gets their own free phone number. You could also give them access to an existing shared number (more on this later).

5. Customize your phone system’s settings. This could be adding phone menus, uploading custom voicemail greetings, or setting up call forwarding rules.

Need more numbers than the ones each team member gets for free when they sign up? You can purchase additional numbers for $5 per number per month.

The best part is that OpenPhone starts at $15 per user per month. But you’re welcome to start with our seven-day free trial.

Successfully run multiple business phone numbers with OpenPhone

Multiple numbers ( local or toll-free) can help grow your business and take it to the next level.

No need to take our word for it, though.

Here are six benefits of having multiple business numbers:

1. Build trust in local markets with different types of phone numbers

When are you most likely to pick up the phone: when you see a 1-800 number or when you see a local area code? If you guessed the latter, you’d be right. Considering that 67% of people trust local businesses more than online-only businesses, it might be harder to connect with your customers without a familiar area code.

You can have local numbers in dozens of cities with OpenPhone, so your business appears familiar to customers wherever you operate. 

Don’t make many outbound calls? A toll-free number might make more sense. Not only will you look more professional to customers, but you can also scale your business into new markets.

2. Know what number your clients call by labeling your phone numbers 

If you use your personal number to manage business calls, it might be tough to know how to greet the caller when you answer the phone. It could be a customer on the line — or a friend asking if you want to grab dinner.

This is where multiple business numbers come in: you can easily name your numbers so you know how to answer the phone. For example, save one number as ‘US Sales’ so you know it’s a sales-related call. With OpenPhone, you can even name numbers by location or with emojis. 

3. Present a professional image by customizing each phone number’s settings

You may not be an enterprise brand (yet), but you can still offer the same level of professionalism with a business phone system. With OpenPhone, it’s easy to customize your virtual phone number to offer customers an even more streamlined experience.

For example, you can customize your number’s:

• Inbox: Every number on your plan comes with its own inbox, which means you can store a specific list of contacts, messages, and call logs in one organized place. You also don’t have to worry about routing calls away from your personal number or forwarding messages back and forth with your team. All OpenPhone numbers can be shared with multiple team members so everyone can work together from the same inbox (more on this later).
• Caller ID name: You can easily update your CNAM online so customers can see your business name when they receive incoming calls. This means you don’t have to worry about revealing your full name and personal number. And considering that 97% of people screen calls from unknown numbers, you can build trust and encourage customers to pick up the phone.
• Business hours: With business hours, you can set boundaries around your time by sending callers to voicemail or texting them an auto-reply if they contact you after hours. You can also set up custom routing rules. For example, if customers call when you’re off or out of the office, you can play a custom audio letting them know when you’ll be back (and how to leave a message for you in the meantime).
• Phone menu: Sometimes referred to as IVR or auto-attendants, phone menus help callers reach the right person or department. You can easily set up departments or teams (like ‘press one for sales ’). That way, customers can route themselves to the right department without any extra call routing on your part.
• Integrations: Need to connect to the rest of your tech stack? OpenPhone makes this easy. You can set up third-party integrations for specific phone numbers to save time on repetitive tasks. For example, you can connect your CRM  — like HubSpot or Salesforce — to sync contact data or call activity between platforms. You could also connect with an automation tool like Zapier to automatically send confirmation texts when somebody fills out a form.
• Voicemail greeting: Every OpenPhone number comes with its own customizable voicemail greeting, so you can create it based on your customer’s intent. If you have a toll-free number for customer support, for example, you could set an automated voicemail message letting callers know when your support team is available.

4. Solve customer issues as a team with shared inboxes 

Every OpenPhone number can be turned into a shared number, allowing everyone on your team to make and receive calls and texts from a single phone number. Everyone sees the same contacts, call recordings, voicemails, and notifications, so there’s always someone around to pick up the phone.

Let’s say one of your team members is going on vacation (but still needs to monitor specific business calls). With shared numbers, they can adjust their business hours to keep an eye on call activity without getting interrupted by incoming calls.

Shared numbers can also maintain trust and privacy for your team. No one will need to use their personal cell number for work, and only colleagues invited to specific numbers and inboxes can access sensitive contact data.

5. Access from your preferred devices

In the past, having more than one phone number used to mean owning more than one device. It also meant you were glued to your phone, whether you were juggling cell phones or a desk phone.

The good news is that technology has come a long way. With VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) , you can access multiple numbers from any internet-connected device. All you need is your laptop, smartphone, tablet, or desktop to make and receive calls and texts, which means you can work from almost anywhere with a WiFi connection.

6. Save time with texting automations

You can use multiple numbers to scale your business communications — but did you know you can also use them to automate repetitive tasks?

For example, you can use auto-replies to instantly respond to missed calls, texts, and voicemails. That way, customers know they can expect a response from your business.

You can also use tools like scheduled messages to queue up texts in your recipient’s time zone. This makes it easier to stay TCPA compliant since you don’t have to worry about sending texts after hours.

OpenPhone: Multiple phone numbers done right

OpenPhone offers more than just multiple phone numbers — you get an entire virtual phone system you can use to grow your business.

Here’s how we can help you take your business to the next level:

• Make and receive unlimited calls and texts in the US and Canada. This includes local and toll-free numbers. You never pay extra for ‘premium’ minutes, and you don’t need to worry about hitting arbitrary minute caps.
• Automate text messages so you can save time for more important tasks. This means tapping into tools like AI message responses so you can brainstorm ways to respond to customers. You can also use snippets to craft message templates and quickly respond to frequently asked questions.
• Record important conversations and push them to your team. You can manually record calls on every number or switch on automatic call recording so you have a record of every customer conversation. You can also read call transcripts and AI summaries to review (and act on) AI-suggested action items.
• Set a custom ring order so nothing falls through the cracks. In OpenPhone, you can set your number to ring everyone at once, ring in a random order, or ring batches of team members until someone picks up the phone.
• Keep an eye on key conversations. With Call views, you can easily see who’s taken which calls. You can also filter each call by missed or Unresponded, so you know which contacts need immediate attention.
• Stay up to date with analytics and reporting. Curious to see how your team is performing? Wondering what days and times get the highest call volume? With OpenPhone’s analytics and reporting tools, you can track messages, calls, total activities per user per day, and more.
• Grow your business and save time with the new OpenPhone API. We make it easy to integrate your tech stack, whether you’re automating messaging or logging activity in your CRM. You can also sync more than just phone calls and texts — read our API developer docs on how to sync transcripts, recordings, call summaries, and more.
• Take work with you wherever you go. With OpenPhone’s mobile and desktop apps, you can make and take calls and texts from anywhere with a WiFi connection. You also don’t have to worry about personal and business contacts getting mixed up since your business contacts live in your VoIP address book.
• Delight your customers with the little things. Add custom properties (like birthdays) to your contacts so you don’t forget about important details. You could also add context and tag team members directly in-app using threads and mentions — both of which are available on every plan.

Get started using multiple business phone numbers with OpenPhone

If you thought having one business phone number was cool, you’ll love what it’s like to have two or more. That way, you can get more work done, collaborate better with your team members, and tap into a business phone system that does the heavy lifting for you.

With OpenPhone, every member of your team gets their own local or toll-free number, plus unlimited calls and texts in the US and Canada. If you don’t want multiple phone numbers, you can create shared phone numbers so everyone can split the responsibility for incoming conversations.

You can think of OpenPhone as a collaboration tool for business call management (and growing teams).

And if you’re curious about why we’re rated the #1 business phone service on G2.

Sign up today for our seven-day free trial.

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