Curtis Kadlec, owner of the Kadlec Restaurant Supply Company, started his company in 1988. He began selling new and used equipment to schools, hospitals, restaurants, and lounges by traveling throughout the state, meeting with customers one-on-one. Two years later, he added an eight page catalog to his marketing mix, and distributed it to prospects in three states.

By providing excellent customer service and high-quality products, Curtis' business grew. Soon, he dropped his outside sales route and concentrated on his mail order business. He added a receptionist and an inside salesman to handle the telephone orders. Each year, he inserted a few more pages to the catalog and added more states to the mailing list.

"Being a mail-order business, we were pretty comfortable working 8 to 5, Monday through Friday," said Curtis. "We started on a shoestring, so we've been pretty frugal with our cash outlays – our phone system was pretty basic. After hours, we'd just flip on the answering machine and go home. I'd come in at 7:30 to check the messages each morning. We'd always have messages but some of them were just partial and others were impossible to understand, which was frustrating. Once in a while, we'd have orders, but usually people did not want to leave their credit card numbers on an answering machine. It was okay; I mean, I'd never done anything different."

When the company launched its website, Curtis recognized that technology was going to play a big role in his company's future. Online orders were coming in at hours that were outside the office hours they'd been keeping.

"That was a real eye-opener. We were doing well with our hours. Our catalog now goes to all 50 states, but I hadn't realized how many of our orders came in from outside our own office hours. I realized that we needed to extend our order-taking staffing to cover all domestic time zones." After investigating the cost, Curtis outsourced his after-hours calls and order-taking to a professional, full-service answering service.

"I was absolutely amazed. We used to get about 15 or 20 catalog requests a week on the old answering machine . Now, we are averaging an additional 200 orders since people are answering our phones after we go home. I had no idea how many orders we’d been missing all this time. Plus, we figured that with benefits it would cost us over $60,000 per year to add two staffers to cover the phones' extended hours. So, with the telephone answering service, we're saving that money, reducing our employer liability, and still taking in over 200 additional orders a week! I never would have guessed what a difference an answering service could make!"

Learn more about telephone answering services and discover how the might be able to help you.