An answering service is different from a call center because the focus is on answering after-hours and emergency phone calls for small businesses. While a call center may take orders from shoppers and supply basic information about a large corporation, professional answering services often answer calls for service-oriented businesses. Think about the homeowner trying to reach a plumber when the toilet backs up in the middle of the night or the client trying to reach their in-home nursing agency before the office is open.
If you’re interested in providing exceptional service to each of your customers without personally fielding calls around the clock, you can minimize overhead cost, spark business growth and enjoy increased profitability by working with an answering service with experience in your professional field.
Let’s take a quick look at how answering services work so that you know what to expect.
Consultation and Setup
When you first partner with an answering service, they will ask questions designed to understand your needs and expectations. For instance, they may ask how you want to receive urgent messages and what information you want phone representatives to give your customers in certain circumstances.
Professional, Prompt Answering Services
Phone calls going to your small business during specified hours are redirected to professionals representing your telephone service. This works through simple call forwarding and is easy to setup. Since phone representatives are employed by the service, you can minimize overhead cost for your business.
Call representatives are polite and friendly, greeting each caller with the respect that you would give them personally. They listen carefully to the caller’s request, and they can take messages that are forwarded to you or another representative of your small business. Advanced technology gives you immediate access to messages online or through a cellphone, and urgent calls are forwarded to you immediately.
Increased Profitability for Your Small Business
Call forwarding is a simple concept that allows you to provide exceptional customer service. As a result, many of your customers will remain loyal, which will encourage business growth in the months and years to come. With this service on your side, your customers know that you’re never out of reach.
Note: Centratel Telephone Answering Service focuses on a select number of vertical markets, including Medical, Veterinary, HVAC, Home Health and Hospice, Property Management. Centratel answering service serves approximately 1,400 clients. Located in Bend, Oregon, we provide services to clients in every one of the 50 states. There is simple pricing with no hidden fees and no long-term contracts. Is your business or profession one of our answering service specialties?
Price quote request
To Apply for Service, fill out the form below. If we receive your request on a non-holiday weekday between the hours of 7am and 4pm PST (10:00am and 7:00pm EST), a member of our sales team will do their best to call you back on the same day. As an alternative to filling out the form, you can call our sales line direct at 1-800-664-7159, or email us at sales@centratel.com.
By clicking on the sections below you will find information regarding prerequisites for service, Centatel’s service guarantee, details of the 30 day free trial, pricing and comparison shopping considerations, determination of cost, an outline of the “human factor” element, the Terms of Service Agreement…and a gift for you.
We are sorry but we do not take applications for new or “start-up” companies. Note also that Centratel does not accept all applications for service. We serve businesses or professional offices that have been in operation over two years, and owners/managers who are clearly searching for quality rather than simply price-shopping. Also, in order to keep our service quality high, we only accept new accounts that fit into one of our ten specialty categories. Note that our average client tenure is approximately seven years.
We do not ask for a term contract for service because we believe our clients should have the opportunity to evaluate their arrangement real-time, without constraint. Our Terms of Service are simple and straight-forward. Accounts are billed on a month-to-month basis. Your first month is free, with no obligation.
Important! At Centratel, we use a “monthly” billing cycle in which invoices are compiled from the first day of the month to the last day of the month. When soliciting quotes from other telephone answering services, be sure to ask if the base rate charges are monthly, or if they are billed on a “28 day billing cycle.” 28 day billing cycles have become popular with many answering services as some customers, without careful consideration, assume 28 days is equal to a month. Customers billed on a 28 day cycle actually receive 13 billings per year and therefore overall costs for service are higher.
Starting as low as $58 per month, our pricing is affordable and competitive.
Our most popular plan includes 120 calls per month for just $200.
Yes, that’s based on the total number of calls per month, not on minutes or seconds like some other answering services that can drag out calls to increase cost.
Apples and oranges: Comparing pricing from one answering service to another is difficult. There isn’t an industry standard for billing, and each service has its own formula. Also, some services charge by “time,” others by “work units,” while others might combine the two. At Centratel, we charge for the work we do, not by the time we spend. This is important: At no risk to you, the 30 day free trial will not only give you an idea of the quality of our service, but will provide you an accurate estimate of ongoing monthly costs.
In order to provide you with an initial cost estimate for service, it’s helpful for you to provide us the average number of calls you expect Centratel to process in a monthly period, as well as a description of how your current service delivers messages to your office and/or your on-call staff. Please consider that even with this information it will still be impossible to provide you an exact figure. We won’t have a truly accurate estimate of your account’s monthly costs until we have handled your call traffic for at least one month (remember, this first trial month is free, with no obligation).
Remember, the first month of service is at no charge. Whether you decide to stay with Centratel or not, you will NOT pay for this first month of service. During their free trial, many of our new accounts choose to continue to keep their current answering service account active, simply forwarding their phones to us for the duration of the trial. In the unlikely event that Centratel service is not satisfactory, returning to the original answering service is easy, just a matter of forwarding the phone lines back to the original service again. If the new account chooses to switch permanently to Centratel, after one month of paid service, we will credit the monthly base charge billed from the former answering service during the trial.
Answering service quality is 100% dependent on human decision making, and in the course of a day a multitude of human decisions are made by the people who handle the calls, our Telephone Service Representatives (TSRs). Sometimes these are “gray area” judgments. Errors can be made. Also, telecom equipment can fail. But note that Centratel’s error rate is light years ahead of industry standards. Our most recent Customer Reported Error Rate (October through December, 2018) was 1 customer-reported error for every 11,034 message transactions processed.
Here’s a recent testimonial from a new medical client that just finished their 30-day trial:
Hi Angie,
Of course, I love the “per month” amount as it is pretty close to the amount I was allowed by the president of the company. I did tell him that if we did not continue with Centratel, I would resign as the Director of Customer Service and I meant it. I never make those types of statements unless I am ready to be accountable for both options. It’s a great fit, we have had NOT ONE complaint from a client which, as you know, we received daily (with our former answering service). I love how the reports are being generated by first name. Everyone here is just so happy and I don’t know how you do it, but that daily report is in at exactly 9 am; not 9:01 and not 8:59. I keep each one in my Simple Nursing Centratel folder, and it’s a great review for me to make sure all the calls are going to the correct person, and they always are. That part is certainly difficult because the calls can be vague and could easily be sent to the wrong person.
I love you, Centratel and the price. I’m ready to sign whatever documents you require.
Thanks for the great service, the free month, your reliable calls and your willingness to find easier ways to make me happy.
To a great partnership,
-KB, Phoenix
If you talk to us about answering service, we will send you a free hardcover copy of Sam Carpenter’s book Work The System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less. There’s more information regarding the book at workthesystem.com. First published in May 2008 and now in its 3rd edition and revised for 2019/2020, the book is also available on Amazon and in your favorite bookstore.