About Us

Updated March 20, 2012

Centratel LLC provides exclusive-quality 24/7/365 telephone answering service to all 50 states. The company is owned by Sam Carpenter and Sam Kirkaldie. Founded in 1984,  administrative offices and operational headquarters are located in Bend, Oregon.

What do we sell? Something that is in short supply these days, across all business categories: service quality that is consistently superb. We’re trustworthy and steady, and our clients receive this near-flawless, terrific quality at a reasonable price. We provide the best quality answering service you’ll find anywhere…and not just some of the time. ALL the time.

Our most recent customer reported error rate (January through March, 2012) was one reported error for every 9,352 message transactions processed. This is a statistic unmatched anywhere in the industry. (See Customer testimonials. ) As a result, customer attrition rates are also substantially below industry standards.

The company serves a select group of client categories. Ownership’s primary attention/emphasis is placed on the people who handle the calls: Telephone Service Representatives (TSRs). Driven by a systematic, intensely managed set of documented protocols/guidelines and with additional independent departments dedicated exclusively to quality control and customer services, ownership and staff’s single-minded focus is “to do whatever is necessary to maintain the position of the highest quality telephone answering service in the United States.”  The operation of the company is the basis of Carpenter’s book, Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less, Third Edition, Greenleaf Book Group, 2012.

Nearly 100% of new answering clients come to Centratel from other telephone answering services where service quality was a problem.

For an overview of how the company operates, see introductory letter, “Why Centratel” from Sam Carpenter, President of the company.