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For a lot of independent practitioners, the first business line is the same as the personal cell. It works on day one. By month six it stops working — clients text at 10 p.m., your kids see the contact name on the lock screen, and you can’t take a real day off without going dark on your practice. Rivet gives you a dedicated practice number from the start. The number lives in the app. Calls to it ring in the app. Texts to it land in the app. Your personal cell is not involved.

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What “separate” actually means

When you sign up, Rivet provisions a local phone number for your practice — a real Canadian number in your area code. That number is the one you give clients, put on your business card, and link from your booking page.
  • Your cell stays personal. Your family, your friends, your dentist — they continue to call and text your existing cell. Nobody from your practice gets your cell number unless you choose to give it out.
  • Your practice number stays in Rivet. Clients see this number for inbound calls, outbound calls you make from the app, and outbound texts you send.
  • One device, two lines. You only carry one phone. The Rivet app surfaces the practice line; iOS and Android still surface your personal line the way they always have.

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What this gives you

An off switch. Close the Rivet app — or silence its notifications — and your practice is closed. Voicemails still come in, auto-replies still go out, but your phone doesn’t buzz on a Saturday morning because a client texted “hi just confirming Monday.” A clean slate when something changes. Switch phone carriers, replace a lost phone, hand the office to a colleague — your practice number is yours and lives in Rivet, not on a SIM card. The number doesn’t move with the device. A boundary your clients can see. Clients save “Your Practice” in their phone, not your name. If the practice line goes quiet outside hours, that’s the practice being closed — not you ignoring them personally.

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What this costs you

A small amount of conscious habit:
  • When you call a client, open Rivet first. Don’t call from your phone’s native dialer — that puts your cell number on their screen. The keypad in Rivet places the call through the practice line.
  • When you text a client, send from the Rivet thread. Texts you send from the phone’s native Messages app come from your personal number.
  • If you give a client your cell directly — for a crisis, a one-off — assume it stays in their contacts forever.

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What about urgent crisis contact?

Rivet is not a crisis line. If your practice involves crisis response, your safety protocols sit alongside the practice phone, not inside it. A crisis client should have a path that doesn’t depend on Rivet being open and your phone being on — your local crisis line, a covering colleague, an ER. The practice phone handles the routine traffic: bookings, reschedules, insurance questions, first-contact from prospective clients, the day-to-day texts that wear you down when they hit a personal phone.

Making calls

Dialing out from the practice number — what your client sees.

Managing contacts

Mark contacts as personal so auto-replies skip them.