Your business phone number is one of the oldest things your business owns. It is on your trucks, your business cards, your Google listing and every review site that mentions you. When owners hesitate to switch phone providers, losing that number is usually the reason.
You don’t have to lose it. Moving a number from one provider to another is called porting, and it is a routine process. It just has to be done in the right order.
As Vice President of Operations at DirecTech Connect, I oversee our managed VoIP and telecommunications services. These are the steps I’d want every owner to know before they start.
Don’t cancel your old service first. This is the most expensive mistake. If you close the old account before the port is finished, the number can be released and you may not get it back. Keep the old service active until the new provider confirms the number is working on its side.
Pull a recent bill before you do anything else. The new provider will ask for the details exactly as your current carrier has them on file: the account number, the name and service address on the account, the authorized contact, and often a PIN or passcode. If any of these don’t match, the request gets rejected and the clock starts over.
List every number you have. Main lines, fax lines, toll-free numbers, the old number that still forwards somewhere. Numbers that get left off the list stay behind, and you find out when a customer can’t reach you.
Ask for a scheduled date and time. A port happens at a specific moment. Pick a slow part of the week, not your busiest morning, and make sure someone is available to test when it happens.
Test the moment it moves. Call every number from an outside phone. Check that calls ring where they should, that voicemail works, and that after-hours routing still sends calls where you expect.
Then close the old account. Once everything is confirmed working, cancel the old service in writing and keep the confirmation.
Your number is part of your reputation. Moving it should be boring, and with the right order of steps, it is.
Danielle Lemons is Vice President of Operations at DirecTech Connect, a Nashville provider of business phone systems, managed IT services, websites and digital marketing. More about Danielle.
