Request for Price Quote
Updated 5-15-09Here is information regarding Centratel's service guarantee, placing an inquiry for service, details of the 30 day free trial, Terms of Service Agreement, and pricing considerations.
For an overview of Centratel, see "Why Centratel?," a message from Centratel's president. For an overview of the telephone answering service industry see "About the Industry."
We are sorry but we do not take applications for new or "startup" companies. Note also that Centratel does not accept all applications for service. Additional consideration is given to the business or professional office that has been in operation over two years and is clearly searching for quality rather than simply price-shopping. Also, in order to keep our service quality high, we only accept new accounts that fit into one of our ten specialty categories. (Due to this careful screening process, our average client tenure is over seven years.)
We do not ask for a term contract for service (our clients should have the opportunity to evaluate their arrangement with us each month). Our Terms of Service are simple and straight-forward. Accounts are billed on a month-to-month basis. Your first month is free.
Note! At Centratel, we use a “monthly" billing cycle in which invoices are compiled from the first day of the month to the last day of the month. When soliciting quotes from other telephone answering services be sure to ask if the base rate charges are monthly, or if they are billed on a “28 day billing cycle". 28 day billing cycles have become popular with many answering services as some customers, without careful consideration, assume 28 days is equal to a month. Customers billed on a 28 day cycle actually receive 13 billings per year and therefore overall costs for service are higher.
Comparing apples and oranges:
Centratel and most other answering services charge by the "work unit." Some charge by "time." With both billing methods there is a recurring "base rate" which includes a fixed quantity of work units or minutes. Once this allotment is exceeded in a given billing period, "overcall" charges begin.
Comparing pricing among various telephone answering services is a difficult game as there are many ways to calculate unit charges and each telephone answering service has its own formula.
In order to provide you with a cost estimate, we ask you to give us the average number of calls you expect Centratel to process in a monthly period as well as a description of how your current service delivers call information to your office and your on-call staff. Please consider that even with this information it may still be difficult to provide you with an exact figure. We won't have a truly accurate estimate of your account's monthly costs until we have handled your calls for at least a month. So, despite the initial difficulty in estimating charges, we should have a good idea of what your average monthly cost will be by the end of your free one month trial period.
Remember, the first month of service is at no charge: Whether you decide to stay with Centratel or not, you will NOT pay for this first month of service. Note: Many of our new accounts continue to keep their current answering service account active, simply forwarding their phones to us for the duration of the free one-month trial. In the unlikely event that Centratel service is not satisfactory, returning to the original answering service is easy, just a matter of forwarding the phones back again. If the new account chooses to switch permanently to Centratel, we credit this new account the monthly base rate charge billed from the former answering service.
Answering service quality is absolutely dependent on human decision making, and in the course of a day a multitude of human decisions are made; sometimes these are "grey area" judgments. Errors can be made. Also, telecom equipment can fail. Note that Centratel's error rate is light years ahead of industry standards. For example, from January through March 2009, we received one customer reported error per 7,940 message transactions processed.
To apply for service, please fill out the form below which will help us to configure a price quote. If we receive your request for a cost estimate on a non-holiday weekday between the hours of 7am-3pm PST (10am-6pm EST), our New Accounts Manager, Andi Freeman, will do her best to call you back on the same day to discuss your specific requirements. She will then be able to give you a cost estimate over the phone.
(Yes, you can simply call us if that is more convenient: Call 1-800-664-7159 and ask for Andi.)
(Note: If you contact us about answering service, we will send you a free copy of Sam Carpenter's book Work The System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less. There is more information regarding the book at workthesystem.com). In book stores May 1, 2009, it's also available on Amazon and on the Work The System website.
If we receive your request for a cost estimate on a non-holiday weekday between the hours of 7am-3pm PST (10am-6pm EST), our Account Manager, Andi Freeman, will call you back ASAP, usually within the hour, to discuss your specific requirements and to give you an estimated cost.
Thank you.
