Make personal phones in the workplace work for your businessEmpower employees without putting security, compliance or your brand at risk

How personal phones infiltrated the workplace

First came the landline. Twenty years ago, that’s what most employees relied on when it came to making business calls.

Fast forward ten years and most workplaces had gone mobile. Suddenly, employees were juggling two phones: their own and their work BlackBerry.

But using their own mobile for work? Unthinkable.

Now? Now it’s totally, completely normal. Up to 70% of employees use their personal phones for work.1

Letting employees use their personal phones for work comes with some definite advantages for both them and the company they work for.

Employees are happy using phones they know and love and use all the time anyway — it’s much more convenient than juggling two different devices. And companies save a lot of time and money not having to buy handsets or maintain them.

On the other hand...

It doesn’t come without risks, either. Keeping business and personal separate is difficult — it can be difficult to maintain control of business contacts and make sure communications are compliant and secure. Employee reimbursements can be a nightmare. And the customer experience suffers, too.

This is the personal phone paradox.

Your people want to be able to use their personal mobile phones for work; you want a secure, effective system that you can manage easily.

The solution? Simple. One phone. Two lines.

1. Frost & Sullivan 2018 Mobile Business Solutions Survey

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Empower them to use personal phones with Sprint MultiLine

The main issue with people using their own phones for work is exactly that — they own the phone. They own the number.

If they leave, they might well take your customers with them — or at any rate, leave a gaping hole in the customer journey.

But imagine if you could add a second number on their phone — a company-owned, business number. Suddenly, they have a separate work number on their personal device.

One that the company owns.

It works on any smartphone, regardless of carrier. You can be sure communications are compliant and in line with your company standards without infringing on anyone’s privacy. You can transfer the number to a different phone if the employee leaves the company. There’s no disruption to them, or to your customers.

In short, the potential impact is huge.

And it all comes down to the four Cs.

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The four Cs of a secure personal device policy

01Control

The person who owns the number owns the relationship.

Say your sales reps are giving out their personal numbers to customers. If they change territories or leave, they take that number with them. At best, your customers can’t reach the right resource. At worst, they follow your rep to their new job.

But if it were your company-owned number, you’d stay in control.

More than that, you can:

• Put those numbers on your website without infringing on employee privacy.

• Secure both your company’s data and the company image.

• Forward calls to a centralized system outside of office hours for a more professional experience.

• Reassign an employee’s number to someone else when that employee leaves, no problem.

• Gain visibility into business usage, making employee reimbursement easier.

• Get more flexible coverage.

Your employees are happy, your customers have a better experience, and you don’t have to buy new hardware.

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A large enterprise dealing in credit data and analytics wanted to take back control over their customer relationships and maintain continuity across their customer experience.

They rolled out MultiLine, so their employees could use their own phones without having to give out their personal numbers. Instead, they have a separate, company- owned business number — that still reaches their own smartphone, regardless of the carrier or model they’re using.

This way, the company was able to assign numbers to particular sales territories — and those numbers never have to change. Customers can always reach them and any sales transitions are smooth and easy.

That’s not all though. The business is also saving money on mobility costs, and can train more salespeople using MultiLine’s call recording capability.

This particular client saw a 90% reduction in per-user mobility costs.

See it in action: Keeping contacts in the company

“What gets me excited is the ownership of the number that clients contact us at.”

VP of Sales

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02Customer Experience

It’s not just you and your employees getting frustrated — customers often find themselves on the wrong end of your workplace device policy too.

We’ve already mentioned customers struggling to reach the right resource because the number they’re using belongs to someone who’s left the company. But it doesn’t stop there.

Customers increasingly expect timely responses, which a single employee can’t always provide. And what about when they’re off on vacation? If you rely on your people’s personal phones, you’re relying on them being available all the time. It just isn’t realistic and it will damage your customer service.

A separate business line can be managed by someone else when needed. It will also make your business look a lot more professional — which your employee’s casual personal voicemail greeting could be undermining right now.

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See it in action: Delivering the service your customers expect

Happy employees deliver better customer experiences — fact. One of our clients, a construction company, was struggling with their own employees having bad experiences and the impact that was having on their customers.

Employees were getting calls from customers at all hours of the day. It was interrupting their work and their private lives, and leading them to try and restrict communications to emails. The employees were stressed, and the customers weren’t getting the service they wanted — and going elsewhere to find it.

By installing Sprint MultiLine, the company managed to transform both the employee experience and the customer experience:

• Customers could easily get hold of service people while they were in the field.

• Appropriate redirects ensured customers wouldn’t be kept hanging.

• Customer communication no longer impinged on people’s private lives.

• Employees could manage all of the above — while still only carrying one phone.

Win-win.

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03Compliance

Compliance is another major area where your people using their personal phones for work can create serious headaches for your business.

That’s especially true if you’re in a highly regulated industry, like healthcare or finance — but it also applies to your own corporate or company policy.

Texting, in particular, is often noncompliant, making it one of the biggest points of exposure for companies. In some workplaces, it’s been banned altogether, even though it’s one of the most effective communication tools available — with 90% of texts opened within minutes.2

A separate business line means your people can use the tools best- suited to their job, without your company risking fines or suspension from regulators. You’ll have access to the call recordings and text logs you need for compliance — and you can use them for training, too. Your people will retain their privacy, as well as the flexibility and freedom to choose their own phones and carriers.

2. http://mobilesquared.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Conversational-Advertising.pdf

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A home healthcare service provider needed to track employee communications to meet compliance requirements.

Enterprise-level security and the right controls — like the ability to record calls and log texts — were required, but impossible on their employees’ personal phones. It was a problem that was losing them customers, by hampering their staff’s ability to be responsive to patients.

The solution? Adding separate, company-controlled numbers to their employees’ personal phones with the ability to record calls and log texts on the business line. Their employees could go back to responding instantly to patients, without putting the company at risk.

The company was better able to serve their clients and no longer had to worry about things like logging communications or sensitive patient data accidentally going astray via text.

See it in action:Being responsive and staying compliant are not mutually exclusive

“Compliance was an added bonus. The staff wants to text, but I need to be able to check to make sure they’re compliant.”

Head of Nursing

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04Cost containment

Many businesses would consider paying more for a system that gives them control, compliance, and a better customer experience.

But the good news is they don’t have to. The right system not only brings those advantages, it actually reduces costs, too.

Using employee-owned phones can avoid the capital expense of providing company-owned handsets, not to mention the time and money that goes into maintaining them. On the flip side, employees using their personal devices for work can be an expensing nightmare — both for them and the company.

Having a business line on a personal phone is none of those things.

Think about it:

• It means you don’t have to buy hardware every time someone is hired.

• You don’t incur huge maintenance costs keeping that hardware going.

• It cuts the administrative costs associated with compliance.

• It makes employee reimbursement simpler and more reliable.

MultiLine is a good move for small businesses who can’t afford to give their employees corporate handsets.It’s a good move for large businesses who want to reduce the amount they’re already spending on corporate phones and complicated, high- maintenance infrastructure.

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See it in action:Spend your money on better things than company handsets

Working in the education sector means you’re always looking to make the most of your budget. There’s generally not a lot of money to burn on things like expensive communication systems.

Our clients were paying over $25k on cellular services annually in order to give their administrators corporate phones. And if that wasn’t enough, their IT department was spending a lot of time managing and maintaining those phones.

MultiLine helped them cut their cellular costs by half. Their employees now have the freedom and flexibility to choose the phone and service that suit their needs. And IT doesn’t have to chase after them managing and updating those phones all the time.

“The difference between issuing a full device with service and just paying for Sprint’s MultiLine service is [that the] cost is cut in half. It meets the need of having a unique district-owned, district provided contact number without the additional overhead or the additional costs associated with providing full service.”

Director of IT

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More of the benefits, less of the risk

The way people communicate at work has changed. More importantly, the way people want to communicate has changed.

The best option isn’t newer, better, extra phones, or complicated infrastructure. The best option is the simplest. Let people communicate on their own phones, on the handset and carrier of their choice, but with a separate work phone number.

One phone, two lines.

All of the benefits of mobile communications — better, more responsive customer experiences, greater flexibility, and more convenience for your employees — and none of the risks. So you no longer have to worry about compliance, costs, or who controls the customer relationship.

Beat the personal phone paradox and make the most of personal phones at work. Your employees and your customers will thank you.

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Let’s talkWe’re Sprint Business and we help businesses like yours find the solutions they need to the problems that hold them back. Whether you’re a small company looking to empower your people to use their personal cell phones for work, or a big one looking to simplify your infrastructure and make your workforce more mobile — or anything in between.

Find out what MultiLine can do for you. Contact your local Sprint representative today to learn more. Call 1-866-287-9926 or see more details on sprint.com/multiline