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Family keeps answering calls after 75 years; ASI expands services, keeps up with new technology.

Publication: Crain's Detroit Business
Publication Date: 17-MAR-03 		Format: Online
Delivery: Immediate Online Access
Full Article Title: Family keeps answering calls after 75 years; ASI expands services, keeps up with new technology.(Special Report)(Answering Service Inc.)(Company Profile)

Article Excerpt
Byline: Laura Bailey

In an industry characterized by consolidation and stiff competition from voice mail, e-mail and computer messaging, the third-generation answering-service company Answering Service Inc. will celebrate its 75th anniversary in July.

It's one of about eight major competitors left in the state, whittled down from the dozens in Michigan that existed in the 1980s before call-forwarding, when practically each community required its own answering service.

Southfield-based ASI has 3,400 customers and about 120 employees, said President James Robinson, the grandson of founder John Engerson.

Robinson said he has about the same number of competitors today as in the 1970s, but most aren't ``in my back yard anymore.''

Two things led to his competitors' demise: a lack of...

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