Why we don't have a phone number, year three of the experiment
We turned off the office phone in early 2022. Three and a half years in, here's what changed, what didn't, and what we'd warn other businesses about.
In early 2022, we turned off our office phone. We told customers via email, updated the website to remove the number, and started routing everything through a single inbox monitored by Donna and the office team. Three and a half years in, this is the post-mortem nobody asked for.
What we expected
We expected customers to be annoyed. We expected to lose a small percentage of business that wouldn't tolerate the change. We expected the email volume to roughly double as customers redirected phone calls to email. We were right about half of those.
What actually happened
Customers were annoyed for about two weeks. The angriest were the customers we'd worked with longest, because they'd built relationships around phone calls. After about a month, almost everyone had migrated to email and stopped complaining. About 4% of our customer base went quiet during that period and never came back; we lost less than we expected.
Email volume tripled, not doubled. That was harder than we'd planned for. We had to add an office headcount and build internal workflow software to keep up. The first six months were rough.
What got better
- Quote accuracy. Written quotes don't have misheard quantities or misremembered sizes.
- Dispatcher concentration. Donna no longer breaks focus 30+ times a day to answer the phone.
- Audit trail. Every customer commitment is now in an email chain rather than a memory.
- Off-hours response. The inbox doesn't care that it's 6 PM. Phone calls did.
What got worse
- Emergency speed. When something genuinely needs an immediate answer, email is slower than a phone call.
- Relationship feel. Some of our oldest customers miss the chat-on-the-phone aspect. We've replaced some of it with occasional in-person visits, but it's not the same.
- First impressions for new prospects. Some new prospects find "no phone" weird. We've made peace with that.
Would we do it again?
Yes, but with the caveat that the first six months would still hurt. The structural advantages of email — written record, async handling, no concentration breaks — are real and durable. The structural disadvantages — slower for genuine emergencies, harder for relationships — are real but adaptable. On balance, we're better off.
Other small businesses considering the change should know two things. First, plan for the temporary email volume spike — staff up before you switch, not after. Second, expect to lose 3–5% of your customer base permanently. If you can't afford that, don't switch. If you can, the long-term shape of the business is better on this side of the switch.
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