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When starting your business, understandably, you want to keep costs as low as possible. To do so, you probably have considered using your personal cell phone number as your business contact number. After all, it’s familiar and convenient.

Weighing the pros and cons of business cell phone plans may feel like an unnecessary waste of time and money. However, it’s one of the most important investments you can make for the future of your business and to maintain personal cell phone privacy.

Unfortunately, “business” and “personal” are completely contrasting areas of life with mutually exclusive systems of management, purpose and use. Using your personal phone number for business is like opening Pandora’s Box — it lets out a series of sinister business plagues you want to avoid at all costs. Because they will cost you.

Quickly, those plagues welcome inefficiency and potential data threats in to wreak havoc on your business. Here are six ways having a business cell phone plan protects your privacy.

No Need to Give Out Your Personal Number

As reported by a 2017 Pew Research report, 77% of American adults own a smartphone. These always-handy devices keep adults connected to loved ones in their personal lives and to important contacts in business. However, combining the two worlds poses risks—most folks don’t consider the large amounts of personal data that smartphones collect.

Giving out your personal number leaves you vulnerable, and you may receive malicious texts and files that compromise your personal data. That’s why many people use a virtual second number whether it’s to network among strangers or sign up for shopper savings cards. So, keep your phone number private by getting a business cell phone plan.

Separate Work From Personal Life

By starting your own business, you hope to achieve greater autonomy in your life’s narrative. That means you can finally achieve a healthy work and life balance, in theory, with your personal life separate from work.

Now, that falls apart if you start giving out your personal number to every networking or business contact. Disconnecting from work is easy harder when your personal phone and business phone are one in the same.

Your personal line will receive phone calls at hours that interfere in life, and life is far too busy already without further complicating it. Keep your personal life and professional life separate with your own business cell phone plan.

Have a Virtual Receptionist Take Your Calls

There are many benefits to having a virtual receptionist for your small business. You can better manage your time, and let the virtual answering service take a phone call for you. Investing in a small business cell phone plan means that your lines are always answered during business hours.

Maintain your professional brand image and save money by providing reliable automated customer service for basic requests. Then, you free up valuable time to enrich the customer experience.

Transparency in Business Without Risk

Did you know that 73% of consumers are willing to spend more for products with total transparency? Another 39% stated they’d switch over to a new brand to pursue a desire for product transparency.

So, add value and transparency to the customer experience by being readily available while protecting your personal data and business data. Call forwarding to multiple numbers and devices on your business cell phone plan affords privacy, convenience and more time to help customers. Then, you can focus on providing a quality customer experience while you protect your business and serve customers.

Often using your personal number for business purposes puts your data privacy at risk and you end up trading privacy for convenience. Protect your information, maintain data privacy and regulate business data security. You can have transparency in business without risk.

Manage Your Data

If your employees utilize their personal lines to interact with leads or consumers, you’re basically choosing to give up control and visibility into that aspect of your business. You need to be able to easily view all business activities, including sales, customer service and communications, and logistics.

A business that puts trust in employees connecting with customers through personal lines become less personal themselves. You won’t know when your staff speaks to clients, how conversations are handled or what tasks fail when.

A small business cell phone plan offers perks to help manage your data in ways you may have not considered. Call records assist with lead generation while keeping you safe. By keeping track of phone calls and monitoring call history, you can more easily discern between customers and harassing “trolls.” . Should an issue arise, your call logs can also offer you a legal record of proof.

Optimize Your Business Phone System

Per Consumer Reports, three out of every ten phone calls in the United States are recorded marketing messages. Even more, the FCC and FTC receive more than 150,000 complaints due to robocalls every month. Unfortunately, some of these calls are even accompanied by scams that cost the United States an estimated $350 million each year.

Robocalls and scammers can also severely drag down your business’s revenue. Automated calls clog your lines and eliminate and take up call time that would otherwise be used to communicate with your customers. You can use business optimization to redirect phone lines to the appropriate departments and team members as well as dissuade “trolls” and scammers. Take back the phone experience, and thus, the customer experience as you avoid spam calls.

Using a personal phone for work carries many risks for your privacy and the sustainability of your brand. A business cell phone plan can offer you that elusive work-life balance, security, convenience and affordability.