An Evolving History of an Answering Service

In the late 1970’s as communications grew, so did the need for a live answering service.  The need and demand of an answering service to support businesses coincided with the reduced cost of telecommunications and increased costs with labor.    The operators for the answering service would act as a receptionist for the business and dispatch the messages to extensions within the company.  All City Communications provided this service for many companies.   The message center had a revolving wheel above the operators where messages were stored after being written down.  This wheel would be accessed by spinning it to retrieve the message when the person who had a message called in for it. 

In the late 1980’s wireless communication began the next phase of communication with the pager.  Pagers were given their own telephone number where the caller could dial in and send a numeric message like a telephone number.  The next technological advance of the pager was the ability to alphanumeric page.  Alphanumeric allowed operators to type in a message and send to the pager utilizing radio towers.  All City Communications helped many businesses with their paging needs.  All City Communications would handle incoming calls and dispatch via pager as well as repair paging devices.

Voicemail became popular in the 1980’s as a way for businesses to stay in touch with customers; however it lessened the personal contact needed for businesses.  Voice mail displeasure began to increase the need for businesses to have a person answering the calls instead of a machine or voice mail  system.  Businesses discovered their competitor had a competitive advantage with a live answering service and began to reduce the use of an answering machine in lieu of an answering service.  Businesses realized the small cost of an answering service outweighed the cost of fewer customers.

In the 1990’s computer and cell phone use increased and so did the variety of ways communication was achieved.  Email and text messaging was introduced.  The operator behaves as a bridge for the message to be dispatched utilizing these new technologies.  Character limits were increased on cell phones versus alphanumeric pagers resulting in more complete messages and email began the replacement of the traditional mail service.  Communications became faster and more accessible no matter where the recipient of the message was.  All City Communications was at the beginning of the emailing and texting evolution.  All City Communications began emailing and texting messages to multiple businesses making communications available in multiple ways.

Today an answering service can utilize an API (application programming interface) that allows call center functionality to be integrated with cloud-based customer relationship management, leads management, and other applications.  An answering service such as All City Communication can function as an employee sitting in the building of their customer.  Seamless integration is achieved for the answering service allowing the business to keep the largest cost of business, labor to be lessened while increasing the availability of the service or product.