Sam Carpenter

My name is Sam Carpenter and I am majority share owner of Colejenn, the umbrella corporation for Centratel, a high-tech telephone answering service (TAS) located in Bend, Oregon. I am the General Manager and CEO of the business. In an industry that includes some 2,500+ services nationwide, Centratel serves a relatively narrow band of vertical business answering service categoriescategories. Our answering service client base, 75% of which is outside Oregon, is comprised of approximately 700 accounts ranging from medical clinics to HVAC companies to funeral homes to veterinarians to property management companies. Providing “live operator assistance” exclusively to businesses and professions 24/7/365, approximately 95% of our business is derived from providing the following specific answering service functions:
1) Screening incoming calls and then delivering emergency messages to on-call personnel and/or
2) Taking and delivering messages while offering a “front office” image to small companies
The other 5% of our business covers a wide range of very specific call handling tasks including taking orders, setting appointments and providing information, etc.
Our expressed goal is to be "the highest quality answering service in the United States." At the risk of arrogance or simple naivety, it's my firm conviction that Centratel is, at a minimum, within the top 1% of quality services available anywhere. Notwithstanding the subjectivity of measuring "high quality" within this industry, there are very tangible reasons for this assumption. Review them in our website at Centratel.com
My partner, good friend and very active staff member, Sam Kirkaldie (yes, both owners of the company are named Sam...) is 9% owner of the umbrella corporation, Colejenn. Sam heads up our special "assertive customer care" department. It's a unique concept as we developed the department from scratch; its sole purpose to reach out to clients twice yearly to "see how things are going" and to keep account details updated. This effort is not typically taken by our competitors.
December 1st, 2004 marked Centratel’s 20th anniversary. Within within an industry that has contracted by over 70% in the last twenty five years, we’ve grown from monthly revenues of $5,000 back at our beginning in 1984 to $170,000 now. I created this Blog as an information source for anyone considering using an answering service, for current customers AND as information for others in the industry: our competitors. What goes around, comes around. I’m also going to add some items of personal interest.