Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

A service with all the answers

Real people are still on the phone taking and delivering messages.

By PAUL SWIDER
Published June 27, 2007

ST. PETERSBURG - In an age of cell phones and voice mail where anyone can be reached anywhere at any time, the answering service would seem to be a dinosaur.

But a few still survive and thrive.

"Most people have been conditioned to have a negative reaction to leaving a voice mail, " said Tom Baur, who, with his wife Cindy, runs CallStar, an answering service with about 600 clients around the greater Tampa Bay area. With his service, he said, "you know that a human will take responsibility so you can turn away and relax."

Baur has plenty of doctors as clients, of course, but others with emergency situations also rely on answering services. Baur takes calls for churches and air conditioning companies and those who clean up after a messy death. Pretty much anyone whose customers will disappear or be distraught if they can't get some action now.

"You know who else needs us is the plumber, who lives and dies on emergency calls, " said Baur, who's been in the business since 1980. "He's got one shot at getting your business. If you get voice mail, you'll call someone else."

There are about 2, 800 answering services in the United States, according to the Association of Teleservices International, but there were three times that many just 20 years earlier. Technology has certainly changed the business and weeded out those companies that could not adapt, but has not killed demand entirely.

"We've seen automation creeping in, but there'll always be that human need, " said David Reynard, who has run Bay Area Medical Exchange for more than 30 years. "The business is still evolving."

Reynard is developing some of those evolutionary influences, including software to prompt operators for a variety of clients and their unique situations. He says economic swings also affect the business, such as demand for sharing employees when times get tough.

"Our clients are doctors but also anybody that needs what we call half an operator, " Reynard said.

The answering service can act as a filter to keep a business from being overrun with routine calls. Baur said his system takes 275, 000 calls a month, but only 70, 000 need a human response and only about 50, 000 of those result in a message, either an outbound call or a text message sent to the client.

Some customers like using answering services but don't want to talk about it lest they tip their competition to their secrets. Gaining the upper hand also drives some business.

"In a hot market, if you don't get the message right away, you might not get the sale, " said Lou Brown, a real estate agent who uses CallStar for sales calls as well as those on rental management. "As many Realtors as there are in the phone book, with an answering service you may buy yourself some business."

Baur has lawyers as clients, too, particularly those who cater to accident victims. Sometimes people call the lawyer hotline from within a wrecked car, before they've called police, one of a long list of unusual calls Baur receives.

"You wouldn't believe the calls we get that should go to 911, " he said of would-be suicides or people with serious injuries who just dial out of panic. "Our operators have to deal with all sorts of human grief."

Frantic calls were Baur's entree to the business when he was a young volunteer with the Door, a Tampa center that helped people with drug problems in the early '70s. He passes along his experience to his employees so they can handle distressed callers tactfully and efficiently.

Answering services are a form of outsourcing, but they are not as subject to offshoring as other businesses. Baur said even a foreign-born doctor would be unlikely to send his calls overseas because it would create the wrong impression for his patients.

"There are some things you can't outsource, " he said. "This business is never going to go away."

Paul Swider can be reached at 892-2271 or pswider@sptimes.com or by participating in itsyourtimes.com.

[Last modified June 26, 2007, 20:41:28]