About Us

Updated January 4, 2011

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 by Carpenter, administrative offices and operational headquarters are located in Bend, Oregon.

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 singled-minded focus is to “do whatever is necessary to maintain the position as 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, Greenleaf Book Group, 2009

Our most recent customer reported error rate (October through December, 2011) was one reported error for every 13,241 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.

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.