In the age of being able to work from home, depending on how your company allows clients to call reps, they are sometimes getting personal phone numbers of employees. Our office, a small insurance office for example, has us use our personal phones to call clients back or text them as we do not have the capability to have the office phones route to our homes. And we only work from home when absolutely necessary, like bad weather for example. But it has allowed our clients to have our personal phone numbers. And they absolutely have abused this! Calling/texting my coworkers on the weekends, after 5pm, major holidays, or while they’re on vacation. And, for some stupid reason, they answer them. Something I will absolutely NOT be doing if that ever happens to me. They will be ignored, and called back from the office number when I am back on the clock. If they call me over and over during my time off, they will get completely blocked.
I’m not your on-call doctor, therapist, lawyer, whatever. I’m a service rep that works 9am-5pm Mon-Fri. I do not work major holidays, nor the weekends. And once 5pm rolls around, I’m off then too. If I’m on vacation, I will also not be picking up.
As a client, having an employee’s personal # does not give you 24/7 access to them! If you call the office during non-business hours, and no one is there, leave a voicemail. We will get back with you when we return to the office. Do not think “oh, well, they’re not open. That’s okay I have “so-and-so’s” number. I’ll just call her.”
Shouldn’t it be common courtesy that, if the office is closed that means we are off work so…maybe you shouldn’t be bothering us? Yeah?
Also probably worth mentioning, the most common way clients get our personal #’s is having to text. If we’re working from home, or our in-office text app isn’t working, and a client needs to provide photos for a claim, or of property to insure for example, well…we have to give them our # so they can send us the photos/files. More often than not that’s how they get them. Which can happen even if working in office. I had to give a client my # once because she had to get pics to us for a rather urgent matter and our office text app was down. Luckily she was respectful and has never once tried to contact me personally since. But not everyone is this courteous, unfortunately.