Newark-based telecom company Phone.com has joined with Web.com to provide a just-in-time communications solution for small business owners juggling personal calls and business calls during the challenging shelter-at-home circumstances.
Phone by Web.com is a dedicated business line, including a mobile app, that enables professionals to use separate business and personal phone numbers on a single mobile device.
It remedies the reliance on call-forwarding functions for short-staffed small businesses that typically rely on staff members working from their brick-and-mortar stores or who might be out on delivery, Phone.com CEO Ari Rabban said.
The app streamlines both business and personal calls from one device, reducing telecommunications costs (no need to carry two smartphones in your pocket) and helping small- and medium-sized businesses better organize their business. For desktop users, the expanded web app (web.phone.com) allows a user to process messages, faxes and more from a laptop at home or any location.
Phone.com has thousands of clients nationwide, mostly businesses with less than 50 employees. Rabban said New Jersey ranks in the Top 5 states for business.
Phone.com’s new offering utilizes artificial intelligence to match relevant phone numbers and domain names, helping businesses make their phone number more memorable.
“The technology helps us to assign phone numbers based on a person’s name or company name,” Rabban said. “We might not have the perfect seven-digit number to give them, but, for example, if you are ‘Ed’s Pizza,’ we will try to assign you a number that best comes up in search results based on typing the letters of the company name, rather than having to go to the company website and look up the number.”
Chris Ortbals, chief product officer at Web.com, said the goal is all about creating a separation of your personal and business identities.
“We all have our work emails and our personal emails — usually a Gmail account — so, whether it’s the calls you make or the texts you send, being able to distinguish the two is important for a small business’s operations,” Ortbals said.
Phone by Web.com customers can cancel anytime; unlike traditional phone numbers, there is no contract and no long-term commitment required. Rabban is offering a free 30-day membership to new clients.
The product is a unique business communications tool for today’s always-on, mobile professional, Web.com Group CEO and President Sharon Rowlands said in a release.
“Providing the ability to address both business and personal calls on a single device was an easy decision once we started looking closely at it,” Rowlands added. “We’re thrilled to be able to partner with Phone.com, a forward-thinking company that shares our obsession with supporting small business owners and entrepreneurs.”
