Updated April 28, 2017
There are approximately 800 telephone answering services in the United States. Most cater to a wide swath of business categories, but Centratel Answering Service limits itself to just nine vertical markets, including medical, veterinary, HVAC, Home Health and Hospice, funeral home, property management, business and professional, and front office and receptionist answering service.
Because of the narrow focus, Centratel’s staff is expert in these specialty categories.
Over ninety five percent of Centratel clients were previously with another answering service. Centratel markets exclusively to those businesses and professional offices that are not happy with their current answering service. Centratel does not serve start-ups.
Generally speaking, answering services are difficult to manage because there are so many wheels spinning – wheels that are prone to go off the tracks! Sam Carpenter, CEO of Centratel “wrote the book(s)” on systems and protocols (Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less, and, The Systems Mindset: Managing the Machines of Your Life), and has applied these principles to Centratel answering service. The accuracy of Centratel answering service is unmatched, with the most recent Customer Reported Error Rate (January through December, 2024) was 1 customer-reported error for every 6,161 message transactions processed. This is unequaled within the answering service industry.
For most answering services, a large percentage of errors have to do with message delivery: Was the urgent message relayed to the proper oncall person quickly and accurately? Hold times are also a sore spot for many answering service clients: Is the answering service’s operations department adequately staffed? Centratel’s telephone service representatives are all full-time, career employees who earn a substantial monthly bonus for superior individual performance.
For more detailed information about the phone answering service industry see the essay, What is a Telephone Answering Service? For prices, and information about Centratel’s unique 30 day free trial program, see the Price Quote page.
