The caller to the Answerwest office
wanted to place an order from Haverhill's,
one of a growing number of catalog companies
that rely on Reno-based
Answerwest for customer service.
Moments after finishing the order, the
Answerwest customer service representative
took her next call a mother looking
for an on-call pediatrician to care for
her sick child.
The mix of calls on a late afternoon
last week wasn't unusual at Answerwest,
which continues its work as a traditional
answering service even as its Webenabled
technology allows it to take on
larger national accounts.
For instance, Answerwest recently
established a "virtual office" for Keopu
World Coffee Inc.
Keopu World Coffee operates a Kona
coffee plantation in Hawaii and a marketing
office in Sedona. Answerwest
processes all the retail and wholesale
orders for the company, whether they
come via the telephone or Keopu's Web
site.
Another Reno company, Fulfillment
Xpress, handles distribution of the orders.
"We enable Keopu to provide a highquality
order center 24-7 without diverting
resources from their core business,"
explained Cherie Humphreys, president
and majority shareholder of the privately
held Answerwest.
The company serves, too, as the customer-
service center for Ritzz Styler, a
California-based company whose
infomercials drive enough traffic that
Answerwest staffs up whenever Ritzz
Styler is scheduled to be on the air.
Some customers, however, are more
modest.
Answerwest's 35 employees take
home-delivery orders for Model Dairy.
Donors to KNBP, the public-television
station in Reno, talk with Answerwest
employees. The company connects people
in need of after-hours temporary restraining
orders with judges. It keeps track of
residents at all three hospital systems in
Reno, it provides after-hours contact for
City of Reno departments and it schedules
home showings for real-estate agents.
The common thread?
"All we're offering is customer service,"
said Humphreys. "People who use us care
about their customers."
Revenues this year will run about $1.6
million for the company, and they doubled
in the past couple of years after
Answerwest dramatically upgraded the
technology behind the scripts that its
employees use to handle calls.
Among other improvements, the Webenabled
scripts allowed the company to
get a better handle on labor costs that
typically run about 50 percent of revenues
for call centers.
Answerwest's customer-service
employees now complete a typical call in
28 to 32 seconds, said the company's
Stacy Proutsos. In the past, she said, those
same calls would take 60 to 90 seconds.
What's the difference of 30 seconds?
Plenty. Humphreys estimates that
Answerwest has handled 10 million calls
since it was founded in 1988, and the
number is growing rapidly.
The efficiency is important, too, to
Answerwest customers, many of whom
pay between 65 cents and $1.25 a minute
for the company's service.
Answerwest's billings run from $19 a
month for small users to $10,000 a month
for the largest.
Even as the Web-based technology
allows Answerwest to grow quickly,
Humphreys said her company is cautious
about taking on jobs that would swamp
its ability to provide good service.
Its employees, a mix that includes a
healthy number of University of Nevada-
Reno students as well as some who've
worked at Answerwest more than a
decade, receive focused training.
Proutsos, who handles much of the
training, explained that Answerwest
grades the difficulty of each of its
accounts on a 15-point scale. Answering
advanced medical questions those
requiring a judgment call requires the
highest level of training. So does the
work for the Ritzz Styler, because the
calls may last up to three minutes as a
customer-service representative explains
options and special pricing.
Whether the customer is a doctor's
office or a catalog company, Humphreys
said her approach is the same:
"We're a virtual office.We can be you."
