Prior Incarnation
Message Reminders Telephone Answering Services, or TAS, has a long history in the Telephone Exchange Industry going back several decades through its predecessor, Message Minders, which stood for high quality telephone exchange and dispatching services for over 30 years. The owner of our predecessor company, Ann Snyder, started Message Minders just after the days of the old plugboard exchange format with handwritten notes kept in individualized box shelves and oversaw its transformation to a more digital format with the use of older computers and programs for replacing those old fashioned methods, although she did still gravitate towards having hundreds of physical phone lines wired in from the phone company (VOIP had not really gotten going back then).
Ann believed that it took a special kind of person to be able to answer phones for her clients. That kind of person had to have a truly helpful nature and actually care about not only the job, but the people involved, too. This philosophy was very effective in creating and maintaining a long term team, which lent itself well to the company’s continued success for decades. This philosophy was reestablished when the old team was reformed from the ashes of the old company during the great recession, but more on that later. During the halcyon years of the company, an up and coming private law enforcement officer became familiar with Message Minders’ services and, after retirement as a Captain, came to work in the team of operators, fitting in well with the company’s culture and goals.
When the great recession hit, several major clients were no longer able to continue services and Ann, fearing bankruptcy, decided to sell Message Minders and all of its assets, including the team of operators, to a large corporation in San Francisco. This new company, like so many others, prided itself on its high call volume and used a very stratified form of management, making changes to suit clients very difficult. Many of the original operators of Message Minders were frustrated, being unable to give the same level of customer service as they had been previously empowered to give. After months of trying to help their new managers to understand the advantages of lateral management techniques and focusing on superior customer service instead of just statistics of machinelike operators in a high call volume environment, a mutiny began to form…