About the Industry
Revised October 18, 2007
There is no question that the telephone answering service industry has not been part of the telecommunications boom of the last twenty five years. Our immediate history has been bleak.
It's a simple truth: Since 1980, as voice mail, cellular, paging and sophisticated telephone company switching services have become commonplace, the total number of businesses and professions using traditional telephone answering service has declined by approximately seventy percent. In lock-step, the number of answering services in the United States and Canada has declined from over seven thousand to fewer than two thousand.
The industry also suffers a bad reputation. It's not surprising as the quality of service is typically not very good. It's always been that way as this is a complex business and lots can go wrong. But the problem is compounded by the typical answering service owner's failure to invest in the strategies that produce top quality. I speak extensively of these methods in a book I am writing entitled Work the System.
Before 1980, because there were no other alternatives, there was a broad cross section of businesses and professions that outsourced to telephone answering services. But, although fewer in number and belonging to relatively narrow vertical markets, the telephone answering service customers of today still absolutely require a human being at the end of the line. There simply are not that many quality answering services from which to choose.
To stay afloat, many surviving answering services cut costs by compensating answering staff with minimum wages/benefits while failing to upgrade to the necessary digital equipment. Too many are locked in a "who can offer the lowest price" battle. Predictably, especially because of the historical low-pay/high staff-turnover syndrome, there are just a handful of telephone answering services that offer a truly superior quality of service. These select services offer answering quality equal or better than your own front office staff.
And how does one find a truly superior quality answering service? Good luck: There are no resources that you will find that rank quality. The best one can do is take the time to investigate and try to make an informed choice.
As previously mentioned, operating a telephone answering service is a very tough proposition. The product is based on human decision-making, as well as very complex telephone equipment which in turn is interfaced with an even more complex network of telephone companies. To survive at all is a challenge; to excel and grow is a significant achievement.
At Centratel we consider ourselves "the highest quality telephone answering service in the United States." We support this contention with a variety of statistics including the most fundamental indicator available: A telephone answering service's bottom-line quality of service to customers. At Centratel this is reflected in the "customer reported error rate" statistic. Centratel's most recent statistics (October through December 2007) show one error for every 13,900 message transactions. This is a remarkable statistic considering the complexity of the work.
For further information about the ins and outs of the business, check our FAQ page.
Based in Bend, Oregon, Centratel provides 24/7/365 toll-free service throughout the United States. So, if your business or profession is one of our specialties, thoroughly investigate this web site. I suggest your next step be to review "Why Centratel," a summary of how we operate. Then, contact us via phone (1-800-664-7159) or through this website via the Price Quote page.
-Sam Carpenter
President and majority owner, Centratel
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