Technology drives Answerwest growth

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."