Answering services. Handwritten tabulations. Charge accounts.
Each are phrases that you’ve probably never heard of or have not heard about within the past 20 years. However, these business processes actually do still exist in Baton Rouge and are used daily by a smattering of small businesses throughout the city, as Business Report details in a feature from the latest issue.
Despite countless advancements in technology over the past half-century—voicemail systems, credit card machines and inventory management software, to name a few—some local professionals prefer embracing old-school methods for their daily operations as a “just-in-case” measure, like the commercial real estate professional who relies on an answering service to mediate incoming phone calls in case his voicemail is backed up.
Then there are those who say tracking purchases by hand helps employees not rely so much on the internet, instead fostering practical skills for his workers.
Of course, others justify their embrace of an anachronistic system by saying it’s for the customer’s benefit, like Southdowns pharmacy co-owner Steve Yellott who’s slowly phasing out charge accounts, though keeping them alive for older customers who for decades have been using the “buy today, pay in full at the end of the month” service.
Whatever the reason, these professionals are united in one aspect: their nods to the past in the modern-day Capital Region business scene.
For example, every transaction that takes place at Capitol Cyclery on Essen Lane is recorded with pen and paper. It’s a way of business for Clayton Weeks, general manager of Louisiana’s largest bike dealer.
Bob Cullen, who’s owned the business for all of its 47 years in Baton Rouge, requires employees to hand-write every sale, a number that ranges between 30 to 150 per day. It’s a policy not up for debate—at least not at this location, one of six in the region.
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