Recession rings the bells for answering services

Answering-service businesses, long considered to be doomed by voice mail and the cell phone, are making a strong comeback during the recession.

Cost-cutting employers in industries ranging from real estate to medicine have eliminated front-desk reception positions.

The number of people employed in administrative support positions a category that includes receptionists in Washoe County has fallen by nearly 30 percent since 2006, the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation estimates.

While many employers are content to rely on voice mail and other technology after eliminating reception positions, a growing number are contracting with traditional answering services.

Rena Zatica expects to double revenues this year at the franchised operation of Front Office Staff that she owns in Reno with her sister, Loretta Bonilla.

Cherie Humphreys, who's operated Answerwest in Reno since 1988, has been forced to turn away some new clients in recent months because she can't find enough good help to keep up with demand.

It's a dramatic change for a sometime-sleepy business sector. Since the late 1970s, one industry analyst estimates that the number of businesses using answering services fell by 90 percent, and the number of answering services in the United States and Canada fell to less than 2,000 from 20,000 three decades earlier.

But the recession is spurring interest in answering services from companies that haven't wanted to risk their customer relationships on the thorns of an automated phone tree.

Zatica's pitch to potential clients goes something like this: A receptionist will make $25,000 a year maybe more but a professional answering service can handle inbound calls for $250 a month.

Typically, a virtual receptionist can take a message or offer to direct a call to another extension or voice-mail. Front Office Staff targets home-based businesses and firms with three or fewer employees.

Some recession-strapped clients, Humphreys says, contract for a wider range of services.

Unwilling to lose potential customers to busy signals, some clients use an answering service to catch the overflow during peak calling hours.

"We're here to answer, no matter what," she says.

While answering services often have been used as appointment-setters for medical customers, Humphreys says that some real estate brokerage houses now use answering services such as hers to schedule showings of homes for sale.

The savings: Real estate offices no longer schedule agents to work floor time, waiting for calls that might come in.

(As an aside, Humphreys notes that calls for residential showings are beginning to perk up, a sign that a real estate recovery may be taking hold.)

Technology, too, boosts answering service businesses, allowing them to easily handle calls from across the world.

While Humphreys says most of her company's customers are in Nevada, Zatica and Bonilla are trolling for customers from coast to coast.

The Reno office has added 12 clients in the last two months, Zatica says, including customers from the East Coast and Hawaii. They're working today to land clients in Boston, New York and elsewhere.

Growth, however, requires good help. That's particularly true for answering services, where the quality of the staff is the product that's purchased by the client.

Humphreys says the long decline in traditional answering services left a staffing void that's difficult to fill. Relatively few potential staffers, she says, have the old-fashioned telephone skills that Answerwest seeks.

Even with those skills, new employees often need 90 days to become fully acquainted with the needs of individual clients.

That's led Humphreys to occasionally turn away business for fear the firm's staff of 30 would be swamped.

Front Office Staff, with five workers in Reno, hasn't yet encountered recruiting issues.

"With the economy, it's improving our ability to find good people," Zatica says. "Our receptionists are our product."

She says the Reno office, franchised from Sacramento-based Front Office Staff, was profitable within a year after its launch in May of 2008.