Finger Lakes Business Services acquires Capital Region answering service

AUBURN, N.Y. — Finger Lakes Business Services, Inc. (FLBS), a firm that operates answering services for businesses, announced it has purchased the assets of Chatham Answering Service.

Based in the town of Chatham in Columbia County — southeast of Albany, Chatham Answering Service has been serving the Capital Region since 1982.

FLBS didn’t release any financial terms of its acquisition agreement.

The previous owner of Chatham Answering Service has decided to leave the business due to medical issues, FLBS said in a news release.

FLBS, headquartered at 42 Westlake Ave. in Auburn, offers answering service, call center, message center, and paging-center services.

FLBS is “pleased about the potential” for the Chatham company and its customers, Gardner McLean, company president, said in the release.

“We look forward to continuing the services of Chatham Answering Service and further grow it by providing additional offerings to its Capital Region clients. We’re handling their calls across our Auburn, Syracuse, Watertown and Tampa offices,” said McLean.

FLBS is “under the impression” that Chatham had four employees who “requested to seek employment elsewhere or opted to retire,” Lisa Anderson, sales and marketing manager for AnswerUSA Group, a division of FLBS, said in an email response to a BJNN inquiry.

FLBS employs 70 people companywide, Anderson added in the email response.

Chatham is FLBS’s 12th answering service acquisition. The company previously purchased New York operations in Auburn, Ithaca, Syracuse, Oswego, Rome, and Watertown.

Outside New York, the company has acquired answering services in Tampa and Brandon in Florida; and in Steamboat Springs, Greeley, and Hotchkiss in Colorado.

Each answering-service location conducts business as part of the AnswerUSA Group.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com