January 2025
FOR THE HOME HEALTH HOSPICE PROFESSIONAL:
A LOOK AT ANSWERING SERVICE QUALITY
Hi, I’m Sam Carpenter, owner of Centratel Answering Service.
My company, Centratel, is the highest quality answering service in the U.S.* Being the best has been my passion for the four decades of my ownership, and over that time, extreme accuracy, promptness, and courteousness are deeply baked in. Here are some of the reasons why we’re different from the service you use now:
- Zero-defect, super-fast service to your customers and your staff
- Our phone agents are highly paid career professionals, many with tenures of over 20 years. Mature, enthusiastic and sharp, they are drug-free, their individual pay keyed directly to their individual performance
- We don’t offshore calls. Neither do we employ artificial intelligence
- A meritocracy-based American business**
- We’re systems-driven. I wrote the book on small business systems***
- We offer a unique within-industry 30-day free trial. No deposit required
- No long-term contract
So, today, call us at 1-800-664-7159 or email us at inquiry@centratel.com and we’ll have your office up and running within 48 hours. (And in these days of diminished quality customer service, you will love working with our people!)
Regards,
Sam Carpenter, owner and president
* In the third quarter of 2024, our Customer Reported Error Rate was one customer-reported error for every 6,077 message transactions. That’s a statistic far superior to any other answering service in the U.S.
**Today, two huge foreign-owned multinationals dominate the answering service industry. These mega-services quietly yet suddenly bought up thousands of small local answering services that were forced to sell in response to the March 2020 COVID six-foot distancing mandates. Predictably chaotic, these gigantic operations are stretched thin, unable to deliver high-quality service.
***My book, Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less is in its updated-for-2025 fifth edition. A $45 value, inquire about our services, and we’ll send you a hardcover copy, gratis. (See workthesystem.com).
February 2025
HOME HEALTH AND HOSPICE ANSWERING SERVICE
30-DAY
FREE TRIAL
NO CONTRACT
NO DEPOSIT
• 40 years experience
• US-owned and operated
• No offshoring or AI silliness
• No expensive time billing
• Drug-free, mature, long-term career agents
“Best in the U.S.”
START TODAY
800-664-7159
centratel
telephone answering service
GET THE HIGHEST QUALITY ANSWERING SERVICE IN AMERICA*
*One customer reported error for every 5,470 message transactions processed (September through December 2024)
YOUR ANSWERING SERVICE: HIGH COST? LOW QUALITY?
(go to www.centratel.com to find out why…)
Need assurance that every call is answered by a real person?
Our agents become an extension of your office. Let us handle your after-hours/weekend and overflow calls.
Maintain HIPAA compliance.
Get specialized answering service for Home Health and Hospice offering HIPAA compliant message delivery services that protect PHI.
HIPAA Compliant
No risk, 30-day free trial.
Keep your current answering service during the trial. Simply forward your phones to us to experience the best! We’ll have your office up and running within 48 hours. No credit card required.
Start your 30-day
FREE trial today
800-664-7159
centratel.com/home-healthcare
inquiry@centratel.com
March 2025
Greetings!
Do you use an answering service for your home healthcare or hospice office? If so, how is the quality? Does it seem expensive? These two problems are intimately related. They go together for a good reason…a reason that has everything to do with the emergence of COVID five years ago. Read on, and I’ll tell you what happened in a quick Q&A format.
What has happened to answering services since COVID started? It’s been a wipe-out. In early 2020, due to government-mandated COVID 6-foot-distancing rules that outlawed cubicles, most answering services were forced out of business, selling their customers to a handful of gigantic “mega-services,” with at least two of the largest ones foreign-owned. In 2019 there were 2,000 independent services in the U.S. Now? Perhaps 200.
Chances are, you are a mega-service customer.
OK. So why is my current answering service’s quality poor…and expensive? Most mega-services charge clients by “elapsed call time.” That’s a perfect formula for employing low-paid/high-turnover agents because the longer it takes for them to process a call, the more the client is billed for that call. And new inexperienced agents are not just slow; they make errors. On top of that, the expensive per-minute billing method is ripe for overcharging customers. Here’s an instance of a class action lawsuit by customers against their own answering service: Go to centratel.com/timebilling. Note that here at Centratel, 90% of our newest customers had bad experiences with their previous bill-by-time/high-staff-turnover mega-answering service (and still carries the original name while calls are answered elsewhere).
So, how is Centratel different? We bill clients for the calls we process, not for the time spent processing those calls. We reward our agents for handling incoming calls efficiently and accurately, with up to 40% of their individual wages performance-based. They are mature, career, highly paid, drug-free,* super-efficient professionals, many with tenures with Centratel of over ten years, some twenty, others approaching thirty. Our monthly billings are simple and black and white, with no room for price-gouging. We don’t use AI, and we don’t off-shore calls. And we frequently drug-test. Our quality of service? We are statistically the highest quality answering service in the United States.**
How much do you cost? Because of our efficiencies, we remain in the mid-range of the industry cost spectrum. Go to www.centratel.com/price-quote/. On that page, see “Why Choose Centratel?” for more information.
To test our quality and get a cost estimate, you’ll get a unique-within-the-industry, no-obligation, no-deposit, 30-day free trial. Keep your current service while you give us a try.
To get started, call 1-800-664-7159, email inquiry@centratel.com, or visit www.centratel.com!
-Sam Carpenter, president and owner
*Today, across a whole range of industries, chronic drug use is a major reason for poor employee performance.
**Our most recent Customer Reported Error Rate (October through December 2024) was 1 customer-reported error for every 5,470 messages processed. That’s an unmatchable statistic within our industry.
June 2025
HOME HEALTH AND HOSPICE ANSWERING SERVICE
THE HIGHEST QUALITY ANSWERING SERVICE IN AMERICA*
Technology. Yes, these days, computer and mobile phone screens are a cultural fact of life. And on the phone, we patiently struggle with mechanical non-human artificial intelligence and voice mail “receptionists.” Yes, in business, we accept this technology because it is thrust upon us, but deep inside we quietly ache to talk one-on-one with people.
Do your callers, clients, and potential clients feel differently than you do? No, of course they don’t…
And here’s the thing: in this new automated world, standing out from your competitors is simple! Offer your callers a real, live human being — a true professional who is smart, cheerful, and clear-thinking. Trust that when you do that, your callers will thank and compliment you.
*One error for every 6,161 messages (January through December, 2024)
ARE YOU USING AN ANSWERING SERVICE NOW?
HIGH COST? LOW QUALITY?
(go to www.centratel.com to find out why)
- 100% US-owned and operated
- No offshoring or AI
- Instant, flawless customer service
- No expensive “time” billing
- Free message delivery
- Career, highly paid, drug-free representatives
30-DAY FREE TRIAL
NO CONTRACT NO DEPOSIT
START TODAY
800-664-7159
centratel
telephone answering service
YOUR CALLERS WANT TO TALK TO A REAL HUMAN BEING
Instantly jump ahead of your competitors who use automated answering systems, artificial intelligence, and voicemail to greet their callers.
Think about your own personal life: When calling an organization, do you look forward to talking to a machine? Of course you don’t, and neither do your own callers.
40 years’ experience serving Home Health/Hospice.
centratel
telephone answering service
No risk, 30-day free trial. Keep your current answering service during the trial. Simply forward your phones to us to experience the best! We’ll have your office up and running within 48 hours. No credit card required for free trial.
800-664-7159
centratel.com/hh
inquiry@centratel.com
July 2025
Capture Your Callers
The Renaissance of Real-time Human-to-Human Communication
By Sam Carpenter, CEO and owner of Centratel
Are you losing new business because of an oh-so-cutting-edge yet profoundly ineffectual telephone call-capture strategy? Within the Home Health and Hospice industry, the answer is probably…yes.*
You know it’s true: people who have a need want to talk to a real person about it right now.
They do not want to bow to a machine. They want to preserve control.
My bet? After hours, you route your advertised office phone number to one of four destinations:
- Voicemail (evolved from the 1960s telephone answering machine).
- Artificial Intelligence. (Two years old, but in this context, it’s simply enhanced voicemail.)
- A mobile phone combined with backup voicemail
- A human being (“operator,” or “agent “) via a traditional telephone answering service**
For on-call and overflow traffic, do you rely on #1 or #2 above: voicemail, or AI? If so, your callers are forced to deal with a machine. So, I ask, how do YOU feel when you call a business and get a machine? For most, some degree of annoyance always occurs. But worse, for the business, potential new customers hang up and quietly go elsewhere — and the business owner doesn’t even know it.
Or perhaps for on-call and overflow traffic, you use a mobile phone, #3 above? Often, the person designated to handle a call is in the middle of another task, and so the caller is sent to voicemail…
Telephone answering service, #4 above? Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020, the answering service industry has been consolidated, and not in a good way. Visit the home page of our website (www.centratel.com) for the down-and-dirty details of this development. In any case, rising from those ashes, “live” answering service is in robust revival: people talking to people, real-time. And via Centratel, this means a clear-thinking, drug-free, cheerful human being will “capture” new callers who would otherwise have gone elsewhere.
And your current customers? They will be delighted.
It’s a renaissance! Instantly jump ahead of your competition. Give us a call and let’s get you started on our unique-within-the-industry 30-day free trial.
*But know that most of your competitors are also experiencing similar losses for the same reason.
**The first answering service appeared in Boston in 1877, a year after the telephone was introduced.
August 2025
centratel
telephone answering service
HOME HEALTH AND HOSPICE ANSWERING SERVICE
HOW DO YOU TREAT YOUR CALLERS?
The simple key to your home health and hospice operation’s growth?
That’s easy. Move ahead of your competitors by providing superb customer service to your clients and potential clients: day and night, have a real, live person answer your incoming calls.
Ask yourself: when you call a business, do you look forward to tedious voicemail or AI “jails” or would you prefer a quick, super-efficient chat with a sharp, cheerful human professional assistant?
Remember that one can’t measure the new business lost as first-time callers get instantly frustrated with machines, disinterested low-paid agents, and/or infuriatingly long on-hold delays.
ARE YOU USING AN ANSWERING SERVICE NOW? HIGH COST? LOW QUALITY?
(go to www.centratel.com to find out why)
- For over four decades, serving home health and hospice professionals
- US-owned and operated. No offshoring
- Zero artificial intelligence gyrations
- Career/long-term, drug-free staff
- No expensive “time” billing
- No contract. No deposit
30-DAY FREE TRIAL
START TODAY
800-664-7159
OR EMAIL US AT
inquiry@centratel.com
telephone answering service
GET THE HIGHEST QUALITY ANSWERING SERVICE IN AMERICA*
For four decades, we’ve been processing after-hours and daytime overflow calls for home health and hospice professionals. We’re America’s “boutique” live answering service, offering the highest quality service to be found anywhere.*
Compared to 2020, in 2025 the majority of live telephone answering services are—directly or indirectly—provided by foreign multi-nationals, and their quality of service reflects that fact. See our website homepage for the details of this recent answering service industry earthquake: www.centratel.com.
Our telephony and internet foundation is as high-tech and sophisticated as you will find anywhere, yet our aim is to stick to the basics: to provide the highest-quality human-to-human telephone answering service available in the United States.
*One error for every 6,161 message transactions processed
(January through December, 2024)
30-DAY FREE TRIAL
START TODAY
800-664-7159
OR EMAIL US AT
inquiry@centratel.com
“Statistically, the highest quality answering service in the U.S.”*
centratel
telephone answering service
September 2025
Finding (and Keeping) Great People in your Home Health and Hospice Business
By Sam Carpenter, CEO/owner of Centratel Answering Service
These days, more and more small business owners are desperate for clear-thinking, dedicated, long-term employees. For some, it’s the largest challenge of all.
Here in 2025, why is that? Three reasons:
- A too-large portion of the new workforce exhibits an aversion to hard work, the unsurprising result of marginal quality public education and bad political/social leadership
- Drug abuse. Cannabis leads the way, making users—and I am being polite here—less than ambitious. It’s a prime contributor to #1 above
- Excessive screen time results in reduced attention span and fewer human-to-human conversations. Practiced, patient, refined communicators? Not so much
Can the above be fixed? Don’t hold your breath. But in this moment, is there anything a home health and hospice business owner can do to find and keep “great people?” Yes!
- Face the reality that you must pay higher wages for the best people (if possible, pay based on performance). High performance equals an increase in the quality of your operation
- Administer drug tests randomly and regularly. Most small-business owners have given up on ongoing drug testing, settling for warm bodies. Not an optimal strategy for the long term
- Encourage real-time one-on-one conversations with potential clients and current clients. For example, voicemail and artificial intelligence are inexpensive for after-hours telephone coverage, but I suspect they are quietly costing you new sales. And yes, your current clients don’t like it. People want to talk to people! See the Centratel home page message (www.centratel.com) and, especially, www.centratel.com/cleanscreen.
Instantly jump ahead of your local home health and hospice competition! Call us at 1-800-664-7159 or email us at inquiry@centratel.com to find out about our 30-day free trial! *
*Contact us and we’ll send you a copy of my book, Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less, just published in its 5th edition.
September 2025
centratel
telephone answering service
HOME HEALTH AND HOSPICE ANSWERING SERVICE
PEOPLE WANT TO TALK TO PEOPLE. NOT MACHINES.
In your home health and hospice operation, are you forcing your after-hours callers into one-way “conversations” with voicemail or artificial intelligence?
Here in 2025, a societal resurgence toward authentic human-to-human dialogue is underway, and there is a simple step you can take to instantly join this renaissance:
have a real person answer your incoming calls.
If your callers are reaching an automated system there is no question that some of them are hanging up in frustration and are immediately calling your competition. Instead, treat your callers to a classic two-way human-to-human interaction.
Our agents will “capture” every single incoming call!
Proof? Ask yourself this question: When you call a business, do you prefer a one-way Q&A session with a machine over a concise two-way chat with a sharp, cheerful, intelligent human being? Of course you don’t! And the people who call your office after hours are no different. People want to talk to people!
HOW CAN CENTRATEL BE THE BEST ANYWHERE WHILE
REMAINING INEXPENSIVE?
(see our home page message at centratel.com to find out why!)
- For over four decades, serving home health and hospice professionals
- All calls answered in the U.S.
- Zero artificial intelligence gyrations
- Career/long-term, drug-free staff
- No expensive “time” billing
- No contract. No deposit
30-DAY FREE TRIAL
START TODAY
800-664-7159
OR EMAIL US AT
inquiry@centratel.com
ARE YOU CURRENTLY USING A “LIVE” ANSWERING SERVICE?
IF SO, HOW IS THE QUALITY? HOW IS THE COST?
Due to the COVID-19 “six-foot distancing rule” mandated in early 2020, few independent “live” answering services remain in business in the U.S. and Canada. At fire-sale prices, over 95% of independent services were immediately snapped up by gigantic foreign-owned multinational corporations.*
If you are using an answering service for after-hours call handling now, there’s a good chance you are a direct customer or subsidiary-customer of one of these behemoths. (Or perhaps you’ve never used a “live” answering service. If so, see the reverse side of this postcard…)
Centratel Answering Service has not just survived the industry debacle, but more than ever, we offer the highest quality of service available anywhere. How long have we been in business?
Over forty-one years under the same ownership.
Is your current answering service expensive? Error prone?
Investigate our trademarked “CLEAN SCREEN®” service at
www.centratel.com/cleanscreen.
*For further details regarding this industry upheaval,
see the home page essay at www.centratel.com
centratel
telephone answering service
“Statistically, the highest quality answering service in the U.S.”
800-664-7159 or email us at inquiry@centratel.com
October 2025
Bottlenecking
Are you, right from the start, bottlenecking your organization?
Truth is, you probably are. Most Home Health and Hospice businesses are doing exactly that.
This has to do with potential clients who call your office after-hours, and yes, also during regular business hours. I’m Sam Carpenter, CEO and owner of Centratel Answering Service, and in this letter I’m going to challenge you to carefully consider something that could be seriously affecting your bottom line.
“Could be” is an understatement.
For your after-hours phone traffic (and during high-traffic business hours), my bet is you fall into one of two categories:
- Callers are greeted with voicemail or artificial intelligence, or
- They are routed to an answering service
In the first scenario, you are forcing your callers to interact with a machine. For the caller it’s a one-way “dialog,” and there is no question that some of them are hanging up in frustration and immediately calling one of your competitors. How many? Impossible to measure, but it’s certainly happening. Yes, the automated systems are inexpensive, but you are not “capturing” all the callers who are considering doing business with you. And your current clients? Just like you, on the phone they prefer to talk to a real person. In the short run and in the long run, automated answering is affecting your bottom line.
Instead, via my company, Centratel, allow your callers to have an actual conversation with a sharp, cheerful, intelligent human being. We’ll “capture” your callers before they hang up and go elsewhere. People want to talk to people!
Or perhaps you fall into the second category because you understand the value of human-to-human interaction: you are already using an answering service. But how is the quality? And how is the cost? If quality is not good and the cost seems excessive, there is a single very tangible reason. These two less-than-optimal conditions, low quality and high cost, are inextricably entwined. It’s due to a fascinating recent development in the answering service industry. For the full story, see our home page at www.centratel.com.
We’re the “highest quality answering service in the United States,” and have been in this call-capture business for over 40 years. With no obligation and at no cost, I invite you to try us out for a full 30 days. I promise you’ll be pleased!
Quickly remove your bottleneck by giving us a call at 1-800-664-7159 or by emailing us at inquiry@centratel.com.
