My sister, after many years of being a partner in a major multi-office, multi-state law firm, resigned to take on a new career practicing a different type of law.
I accidentally called her old office number to wish her a happy birthday, but I was surprised to hear a phone system recording that her previous employer, had disconnected her number. This was absolutely baffling to me as she had this phone number for years! In today’s age of telephone technology and VOIP all they had to do was forward the number to the main office number or to the partner who was taking over her clients. It would’ve cost zero dollars and taken minimal effort, but instead of capitalizing on this long-held phone number, they threw it away and disconnected it.
If you have a business phone number, there’s absolutely no reason to disconnect it. It costs virtually nothing to keep it, and maybe somebody had a business card from my sister or reached out from an email signature line to try to get in touch only to find out that the numbers had been disconnected.
I still have all of my original phone numbers, including the number assigned to me when I started my company. Even though that phone number is no longer my main number, I still own it. By keeping these phone numbers under my control, any customer who might find an old piece of literature, business card, or a service sticker off the bottom of a Mac that I repaired will still be able to get in touch with me. They’ll never know anything has ever changed because all those numbers still ring through to me.