February
19, 2009 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SYRACUSE
, NY —Finger Lakes Business Services, Inc. (FLBS) last week
purchased the assets of Answer Bay Area, Inc. ( ABA ), an
answering service based in Tampa , Florida . ABA does business
under the names Answer Bay Area, Answer Medical and Answer
USA . ABA has been in business serving the west coast of
Florida since 1978.
ABA
is the third out-of-state answering service acquired by
FLBS in the past 3 years. The company previously purchased
the Communications Center of Steamboat Springs, CO. in November
2006 and Greeley Telephone Answering of Greeley CO. in August
2007.
Gardner
McLean, President of FLBS is excited about the potential
for the company and its customers: “We look forward to continuing
the solid performances of Answer Bay Area and further grow
it by providing additional quality controls along with additional
marketing efforts. They have a solid staff of 12 to add
to our NYS staff of 54. We eventually will have them operating
from our equipment in Auburn . This will allow Florida customers
to have the opportunity to have calls answered primarily
by their Florida team, but with the ability to overflow
to the NYS teams in case of busy times, bad weather and/or
staffing disruptions.”
ABA
is a full-service call center located in Tampa , Florida
and was established in 1978. ABA ’s clients will have
no interruption in service and will benefit from Finger
Lakes Business Services’ continued investment in new technology
and focus on customer service. In June, Finger Lakes
Answering Service of Auburn and Communications Group of
Syracuse were both honored with the exclusive 2008 ATSI
Award of Excellence for the 4th consecutive year.
The Award of Excellence is a program that provides independent
testing of quality in customer service levels.
“This
acquisition is the first that really involves a “remote”
office since our existing Syracuse and Auburn offices are
so close. We will be using more technology to manage the
remote office, but the benefit will be that we now will
have more resources available to all our customers. We currently
have our Syracuse and Auburn offices linked and this has
improved our service levels. Once all 3 offices are connected,
we can have all offices, including the ABA office in Tampa
, assist with calls. This can be especially helpful in the
event that weather related office closings increase our
call volumes, or in the event that a cold or flu runs through
one office,” says Ray Schremp of Cicero NY who is Vice President.
“Plus it is a great excuse to get out of the winter weather
for a few days here and there.”
“We
expect the transition of the call activity to the Auburn-based
telephony system to take place over the next 6 months. This
will not have an impact on employment in either region,
but will facilitate further growth with a more efficient
infrastructure,” said Gard McLean of Skaneateles , NY .
According
to industry sources, this places Finger Lakes Business Services
in the top 5% of all 4,000 answering services in the country
in terms of size, with over 1,300 clients and 66 employees.
ABA joins existing call centers: Finger Lakes Answering
Service, Communications Group, Communications Center of
Steamboat Springs, Executive Support Services, and Greeley
Telephone Answering under the Finger Lakes Business Services
corporate umbrella.
For
more information regarding Finger Lakes Business Services,
please visit the corporate website www.callflas.com
or call 800-308-5544.
Namelines:
Gardner
McLean, President
Ray Schremp, Vice President
