When it comes to considering useful business technology, while artificial intelligence and predictive analytics no doubt have a very important tole, the basic smartphone remains the one tool that freelancers and business owners indicate that they cannot do without. This is in keeping with data from IBM, which also shows a growth with call answering services.
However, given the ubiquity of mobile forms of communication, there remain phone etiquette issues which vary across the generations. This appears to be particularly so whilst using people use personal mobiles for work (something which connects with the growing ‘bring your own device‘ philosophy, which normally comes under a set of rules governing a corporate IT department’s level of support for employee-owned PCs, smartphones and tablets).
While many workers have transitioned to working remotely, using mobile phones for work purposes is set to become much more common. This trend is drawn from new data compiled by outsourced communications provider Moneypenny . The company has conducted this research by polling 500 business owners and freelancers to find out their habits when it comes to using personal mobiles for work, including consideration of whether a smartphone or a landline is the best option.
One of the showed a demographic difference in that the younger a self-employed person is, the more likely they are to change the way they answer the phone to sound more professional. With this, 82 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds surveyed, said they make a conscious effort to answer the phone in a professional way.
Furthermore, young business owners and freelancers also are more likely to prefer to use smartphones over landlines. It also stands that this demographic are more likely set up a voicemail greeting that mentions the name of their business. However, overall, 39 percent of self-employed admitted they have not changed their voicemail settings.
In terms of people bringing their device to work, almost half of these surveyed (48 percent) and who use a personal mobile for work said that a friend or family member has answered their phone to a customer or potential customer. This is something that needs to be considered in terms of the responses given to the customer. The proportion of people using their own devices was 77 percent.
