The Highest Quality Telephone Answering Service in the United States

Centratel

Telephone Answering Service

FAQ

Updated January 15, 2026 -sc

THE HIGHEST QUALITY IN THE UNITED STATES? WHO SAYS?

There are five measures that can be used to gauge an answering service’s quality.

  1. The ultimate measure of quality: The “Client Reported Error Rate.” Remember that 24/7/365 answering service call processing is performed by humans and humans make errors! The question is, how many errors do they make? The Client Reported Error Rate is simple to calculate. Every three months, we take the total number of messages processed and divide this total by the number of client-reported errors reported in that same time period. Our most recent Customer Reported Error Rate (October through December, 2025) was 1 customer-reported error for every 7,017 message transactions processed. This level of accuracy is simply not obtainable elsewhere. Most services would prefer not to calculate this statistic.
  2. Average client longevity.  Examining our client base, we find the average client has been with us six years and six months. This is significant when one considers that eighty percent of small businesses fail within any given five-year period.
  3. Average job longevity of employees. Telephone Service Representatives (TSRs, or “agents” or “operators”) are the people who answer and process incoming calls, and for this reason, they are the heart of any “human-first *” answering service. It’s a tough job so TSR turnover can be a significant problem which is why the industry suffers a reputation for suboptimal service quality (e.g., long hold times, inaccurate messages, failure to follow client instructions, high costs, etc.). At Centratel, we review over 100 applications for each TSR we hire. We don’t hire part-time people, and we drug test frequently (and without notice). There are many “hoops” the Centratel TSR applicant must navigate, and the end result is a staff of highly professional, highly paid career professionals. We have a tough time finding people who meet our requirements, but once we do, they stay for a long time. Our current average longevity for tenured TSRs is over 10 years, with more than a few beyond the 20-year mark (and some at 30). Our eight-person management staff has been with the company for an average of 16 years, with no one having a tenure of less than 13. And every one of our in-the-trenches managers, including the CEO/owner, Sam Carpenter, has had extensive “on-the-phone” human-first answering experience. We know how it all works. We know what our clients expect.
  4. TSR compensation. At Centratel, the TSR pay rate and benefits are significantly higher than the competition. Employee benefits, including health insurance, IRA, PTO, performance and other bonuses, etc., are in addition to these hourly rates. Up to 40% of an individual’s TSR pay is based on performance. Many answering services pay minimum wage and offer no benefits. (These are mostly bill-by-time “mega-service” subsidiary operations, although the handful of remaining human-first operations also mostly bill by time. )
  5. We’ll charge you by the work we accomplish for you, not by the time spent handling your calls. For call processing, we charge by the “transaction unit” rather than the duration of time spent processing a call. The huge “mega-services” now dominating the U.S. market prefer time billing because it ensures the company is compensated for low-paid/high-turnover — and thus slower — TSRs. In any answering service, it takes a long time for a TSR to become fast, efficient, and stable. At Centratel, we retain experienced TSRs and suffer little staff turnover. Needless to say, experienced agents make fewer errors than trainees who learn on the job. The large majority of our new clients come to us because of errors and overbilling in their current service.

*human-first means the caller reaches a human being. No automated screening.

WHAT IS THE HISTORY OF CENTRATEL?

The outgrowth of a traditional “mom and pop” telephone answering service, Centratel has developed into an advanced-technology, vertical market-specific “human-first” answering service with clients throughout the United States and Canada. Headquartered in Bend, Oregon, the company has been under Sam Carpenter’s majority ownership since its incorporation in 1984. Despite the sudden, externally driven decline in the “human first” answering service industry, we’re thriving. (For more information on this dramatic and fascinating “devolution,” see this website’s home page), And, see the essay, “About The Industry.”

WHAT IS THE BASIS FOR CENTRATEL DEVELOPMENT?

With a history of industry innovation and leadership, our Strategic Objective is based on:

  1. A foundation hinged on impeccable staff performance through written documentation and procedures, intense training and testing, front-line employee participation in company development, and for every employee, a generous pay-by-performance compensation and benefits package.
  2. Cutting-edge technical answering service innovation and state-of-the-art digital equipment.
  3. Constant system improvement, e.g. especially carefully monitored TSR performance and client feedback.

For comprehensive details on Centratel’s operation methodology, get the book Work The System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less, released in its 5th edition in August 2024 and written by Centratel founder, CEO, and president Sam Carpenter. If you call us to inquire about our services, we’ll send you a hard copy of the book at no cost.

WHAT ARE MY BASIC CHOICES FOR ANSWERING SERVICE?

Ninety-six percent of our clients use “traditional live” answering service in which our TSRs (Telephone Service Representatives) directly answer each incoming call. Of course, this human-to-human (or, “human-first”) interaction is critical for small to mid-sized companies that are selling a product or service. The other 4% of Centratel customers use our optional “Gold Service” in which calls are answered initially by an automated greeting. The greeting provides basic information (i.e. office hours or directions to the client’s office, etc.), and the caller is then given a chance to leave a message in his or her own voice. But the caller is also given the option to instantly reach a Centratel TSR (“agent”) for emergency on-call dispatch. Whichever protocol you choose, your account will be precisely customized to meet your needs. Centratel “human first” telephone answering service is active 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, including holidays.

WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT MY BUSINESS?

There is a good chance that we are intimately knowledgeable about your business or professional office, as we specialize in only a limited number of business categories. For these business operations, we are tele-communication experts

WHAT DETERMINES A HIGH QUALITY OF ANSWERING SERVICE FOR MY CALLERS?

A highly dedicated, individually performance-rewarded, drug-free, mature, long-term staff, constantly monitored, is the key element in providing a superb-quality telephone answering service. Each TSR (Telephone Service Representative, or “agent”) is a career professional. They have to be: Much of their time is spent as emergency call support personnel, handling an enormous array of situations, including medical emergencies. (We serve hundreds of medical offices nationwide). Other times, we provide “overflow “answering service. And, many of our accounts also use us as their “front office,” as we substitute and/or enhance the client’s on-premise staff in addition to acting as their after-hours receptionists. At Centratel, pay rates/benefits are higher than 100% of those offered by competing telephone answering services. As a result, staff turnover is low, and dedication is high. The caller is treated courteously and professionally and leaves the line confident that the message will be delivered. Names and numbers are correct, messages are complete. The caliber of service is “front office.” This is quality so high that, unless we inform the caller otherwise, they assume we are not an answering service at all, but that our agent is actually part of the account’s actual office staff.

ARE CENTRATEL TELEPHONE SERVICE REPRESENTATIVES QUALIFIED?

To ensure quality answering service, a stable staff is essential. For this industry, Centratel Telephone Service Representatives receive the highest rates of compensation in the United States. The average length of service for staff members is over ten years which is a unique statistic for an industry traditionally plagued by employee turnover. Training and monitoring of the Telephone Service Representative are ongoing with the goal of near-zero defects. And becoming a Centratel TSR is not easy. Our most recent Customer Reported Error Rate (October through December, 2025) was 1 customer-reported error for every 7,017 message transactions processed.

DOES CENTRATEL USE THE TOOLS AND PROCESSES THAT IT SELLS TO ITS CLIENTS?

Yes! Internally, we face similar business challenges as our clients, and we use the same tools and protocols to operate our own internal and external communications. Many of the products we offer were born out of our own internal necessity.

ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY: WHY IS THAT IMPORTANT?

Our technology is more advanced than the huge majority of answering services in the US and Canada. This means solid reliability, superior voice quality, numerous options for clients and a more flexible, user-friendly operating system for our Telephone Service Representatives. Our philosophy is this: In order to provide superior answering service to our clients, the people who handle your calls must come first. Therefore, it follows that we must provide them with the best answering service tools available. In 2024, we achieved full 100% operational redundancy with two hosting sites , one in Oregon and the other in Texas.

IS AUTOMATED INTELLIGENCE A TOOL, OR IS IT A REPLACEMENT FOR HUMAN JUDGEMENT?

Per ChatGPT, paraphrasing Karen Hao from her quintessential book, Empire of AI, published in 2025

“In Empire of AI, Karen Hao situates today’s AI boom within a repeating historical pattern rather than a clean technological breakthrough. She points to Perceptrons, the 1969 book by Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert, as the moment when symbolic, rule-based AI displaced neural network approaches. That intellectual shift ushered in roughly fifteen years of dominance by ‘symbolist’ systems, culminating in commercially successful expert systems during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Those systems attracted enormous investment, confident predictions, and claims of near-human intelligence—until they collapsed under real-world complexity, brittleness, and escalating costs.

“The relevance for investors today is not that neural networks ‘failed’ then or that they are ‘failing’ now, but that AI hype consistently overstates generality and durability. In the 1980s, symbolist systems worked impressively inside narrow, well-structured domains and failed catastrophically outside them. Today’s connectionist models show the same structural pattern: remarkable performance within trained distributions, paired with opacity, hallucination, and weak causal reasoning when conditions change. The technology has advanced; the economic dynamics have not. Capital, talent, and narrative momentum again concentrate around systems that appear intelligent but remain fragile at the edges.

“The historical lesson is therefore one of valuation discipline. Each AI era declares that prior limitations have been solved ‘this time,’ only to rediscover new constraints at scale—cost curves, trust boundaries, regulatory exposure, and human-oversight requirements. Skepticism does not mean rejecting AI; it means recognizing that enduring value accrues to businesses that integrate AI as a tool, not as a wholesale replacement for human judgment. Investors who understand this cycle are better positioned to distinguish durable operating leverage from another period of inflated expectations.”

I AM MANY MILES FROM CENTRATEL – WHAT ABOUT ANSWERING SERVICE RELIABILITY?

The switched telephone network in the United States and Canada is incredibly reliable. And long-distance rates absorbed by Centratel have been at historic lows for many years now, so it has been common for a business or professional office in one state to use a telephone answering service in a distant state. Telephone conversations and data travel at light speed. There are no delays: The distance between the client and the answering service simply does not matter. And the highest quality telephone answering service available anywhere is right here at Centratel, at your doorstep.

IS THERE A LONG-TERM COMMITMENT FOR ANSWERING SERVICE?

Service is on a month-to-month basis. We don’t ask for long-term contracts (nor do we ask for a deposit). This is a philosophical issue. If your telephone answering service is a good value for you, you will choose to continue each month. If it doesn’t work for you, you are free to stop using it immediately. We have numerous clients who have used this month-to-month arrangement for over 40 years.

HOW WILL MY BUSINESS CALLS REACH THE ANSWERING SERVICE?

Through various telephone company call-forwarding switching features. By dialing a special code on your keypad or simply by pressing a button on your internal telephone system, your incoming calls are routed to Centratel. When you are ready to take your own calls again, the system can be instantly de-programmed. Other options include routing your calls to the telephone answering service only after a specified number of rings or when your lines are busy.

WHO IS IN CHARGE OF THE ANSWERING SERVICE?

Kendra is our Director of Operations and she, or one of our supervisors, are ready to talk to you about any operational questions or concerns you may have. Seven days a week our operational-administrative hours are Monday through Friday, 6:00am to 8:00pm PST (9:00am to 11:00pm EST). During regular business hours you may call Kendra at our main office telephone number (1-800-639-1818) or email her at kendraa@centratel.com.

HOW DO I PICK UP MY ROUTINE MESSAGES?

Message delivery options include voice mail, fax, alphanumeric page, SMS or text message, email, live call, etc. Various combinations are possible. Electronic message delivery is at no charge. A widely popular method is to use our recently trademarked “CLEAN-SCREEN” service. It’s super-fast for the caller (who will never be put on hold) and inexpensive for you. In fact, for on-call dispatch, most of our clients use it.

WHAT MAKES CENTRATEL URGENT MESSAGE DELIVERY “NEAR ZERO-DEFECT” RELIABLE?

Medical telephone answering service sets the standard for quality for all nine of our other business specialties. If there is an emergency situation, our TSR (Telephone Service Representative or “agent”) will exactly follow the client’s emergency-relay-protocol, which involves a series of 1-2-3 steps to reach on-call personnel directly. This “E-relay” is custom-designed for the individual account. For instance, the first step might be to text the on-call person on their cell phone. If there is no response within 15 minutes, the second step may be to call that individual’s mobile number directly. A third step might be to send a page to another member of your staff. The fourth step may be to call that person’s home number, etc. In any case, the relay sequence/protocol is up to you and can be instantly adjusted at any time. With E-relays, our TSRs tenaciously follow client instructions until the message has been delivered. If there is ever a recurring glitch in delivering a message, we work with the client to immediately adjust the message relay format to one that works perfectly every time. Check out our inexpensive, fast CLEAN-SCREEN service, which addresses the fundamental reality that no one, except a time-billing answering service owner, wants the caller to spend a lot of time with the answering service agent. You might want to review the essay on our home page again…

WHO DO I CALL IF I HAVE A QUESTION REGARDING MY ANSWERING SERVICE?

Operational questions are handled by an operations department supervisor, who is always available. And to keep your account information up to date, you will be contacted regularly by one of our customer service representatives. Here’s our operations department phone number: 1-888-482-4393.

HOW IS CENTRATEL DIFFERENT?

The quality of service we offer is unmatched. Our most recent Customer Reported Error Rate (October through December, 2025) was 1 customer-reported error for every 7,017 message transactions processed. Following are four reasons why we are able to maintain this level of service quality:

First: Whichever answering service you choose, the fact is that your calls will be handled by a human being and the quality of service will be 100% dependent on that individual’s training, attitude, comportment…and compensation plan. At Centratel, Telephone Service Representative (TSR) wages/benefits are substantially higher than competing answering services nationwide, thus ensuring low turnover and top-quality performance from long-term, career employees. And, intensely monitored and reviewed, individual TSRs earn up to an additional 40% bonus each month based on their individual performance.

Second: Centratel operates with a focused concentration on a limited number of special business categories. Most services (and now, the mega-service operations that dominate the market post-COVID), cater to every business and professional category, and the end result is a lower quality service for all clients, as TSRs (“Telephone Service Representatives,” or “agents”) attempt to meet the needs of an endless array of business and professional client demands. At Centratel, the goal is to meet the exact needs of a limited range of clients. One of the specialties is medical telephone answering service in which there is simply no room for error. The special protocols necessary to handle medical answering service emergencies are standard protocols for our other vertical specialties.

Third: At Centratel, the necessary 100% digital answering service computer/telephone answering systems are the most sophisticated and user-friendly available. A qualified IT engineer—one of several on our IT team—is on-call 24/7/365.

Fourth: Unusual for this industry, the company’s day-to-day operations are highly strategic, driven by documented procedures for every facet of the operation (it is hard to believe, but within this industry, few competing independent answering services take the time to document their internal procedures). This aspect of the business is fully detailed in Centratel President, CEO and owner Sam Carpenter’s book,Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less, now in its fifth edition (published in August, 2024). Call us, and we’ll send you a hardcover copy as a gift.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN ANSWERING SERVICE AND A CALL CENTER