Do you give clients your home/cell phone number?

I know that giving phone support to clients is good business.  But it is costly to have an extra phone line.  Do you give clients your personal phone number?  If so, do you bill the client for it?  Or do you have a separate phone line for freelancing business?  Or do you do freelancing only through email and IM.

Giving your home phone number can be very tricky. If you do business with people in different time zones they could end up calling you in the middle of the night. It's better to use email and IM and if the customer really needs to talk to you you can use audio in your IM or use Skype, or you can call them...

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I have my cell phone for my customers, this way they try to keep the call short because of the higher costs. OK my customer are in the same time zone...

And you can switch off your cell phone... Could be a good idea to have one cell phone just for customer support. These things are thrown at us for next to nothing anyways, so the cost of an extra phone is just a few bucks (as long as you only recieve calls on the phone)

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And you can switch off your cell phone... Could be a good idea to have one cell phone just for customer support. These things are thrown at us for next to nothing anyways, so the cost of an extra phone is just a few bucks (as long as you only receive calls on the phone)

actually you need to call customers too because you are not always available and its not really customer friendly to wait until the customer is calling the second and third time...my monthly costs for my mobile are 27.5 euro and I have minutes over every month

true, but you could always use your landline to call them back (just make sure your caller ID is switched off or they will call there next time )

Could be a good idea to have one cell phone just for customer support. These things are thrown at us for next to nothing anyways, so the cost of an extra phone is just a few bucks (as long as you only recieve calls on the phone)

Yes, I was thinking of getting an extra cell phone for incoming calls.  I have no problem calling out because I use Skype to call anywhere in the United States for free.  Where are you located in the world that you get a cell phone for "few bucks"?  A extra cell phone for me in the west coast of the United States is about $30 a month.  Either that or we get charged per minute for both incoming and outgoing calls. 

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Giving your personal number to your clients is not always a wise decision, as there are people that think that it is ok to call you in the middle of the night, no matter the time zones

Last year I was development manager for a big project, and I hated the fact that they called me for every single bull****... This is probably because big clients think that they bought you, not your time

Anyway, the best is to have a line only for business, and redirect it to your personal phone if you are not around, or close it if you are not in the mood to talk with any clients.

Where are you located in the world that you get a cell phone for "few bucks"?  A extra cell phone for me in the west coast of the United States is about $30 a month.  Either that or we get charged per minute for both incoming and outgoing calls.

In the Netherlands and in Germany you get very cheap phones with a pre-paid phone card. The outgoing calls will be charged and they are eventually paying for the phone. Incomming calls however are free of charge for you, only the caller pays.

We always give clients an assigned number which is a mobile (cell) phone that they can call, we take it in turns to have the phone so will do a couple of days with the phone (its painted red) this obviously works if you have multiple people, but clients like to know they will get some one 24/7, we also provide internal numbers for clients we provide voip services for, as well as a client only Skype address.

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