Our Portfolio
A focus on the virtual receptionist and answering service industries, CCaaS software development, commercial real estate, early stage startups, and recurring revenue has proven to be successful.
Here is a list of our current holdings.
On October 15, 1974, Herman and Dorothy Shooster South Florida, purchased a small business, Ding-A-Ling answering service from brothers Frank and Joe Brooks. While the Shoosters knew that their hard work and drive to succeed would grow the company, they never imagined what the future held. With a fully U.S.-based team and a reputation for cutting-edge technology, Answering Service Care is known as a company that values people above all else.
In addition to this unique focus, the company’s internal team has created a workforce whose longevity and dedication are known industry-wide: a rare combination of services, technology, and true friendliness. In the first year, founder Herman Shooster didn’t collect a paycheck, and put all that he could back into the business together with his wife Dorothy. Over the years, the Shoosters connected with others in the answering service industry and continued to acquire many of these small businesses. The small “mom-and-pop” has grown into Answering Service Care (ASC), one of the premier providers of professional answering services in the country. The ever-growing business, which began operations in a small storefront location, now has several locations in the US: North Carolina, New Jersey, Washington, Massachusetts, and the headquarters in South Florida.
Berkshire Receptionists provides 24/7 Virtual Receptionists to businesses of all sizes and industries.
- Perform Lead Intakes
- Schedule Meetings
- Transfer Live Calls To You
- Answer FAQs
- Prevent All Robo Calls
- Take Client Payments 24/7
- Record All Important Calls
- Integrate With Thousands of Business Applications And Much More…
No matter what, we are there when you need us, at a price that just makes sense.
Learn more at www.berkshirereceptionists.com.
Kauneonga built Liberty, the first true, all-in-one cloud-based platform built for your answering service. Streamline your operations with a simplified experience for your agents, supervisors, and clients. Access real-time reporting and analytics, giving you full visibility into your business’s performance, so you can make informed decisions on the fly. With Liberty’s multi-tenant environment, agents can seamlessly support thousands of businesses within a single application.
Liberty was designed specifically for the Telephone Answering Service industry with the founder, Michael Shooster, having 30+ years of experience in the Answering Service and Contact Center spaces. Now, the platform can empower any Telephone Answering Service, Contact Center, or Enterprise Business with total control and visibility of all omnichannel communications.
- 100% Cloud-Based.
- Omnichannel.
- White-label Mobile App.
- Cloud-Communications Provider.
- Real-time Reporting and Analytics.
- Workforce Management.
- Performance Management.
- Supervisor Dashboard.
- Fully Secure and Redundant.
- Dynamic Agent Scripting.
- Integrate with 5000+ Applications.
- Payment IVR.
- HIPAA and PCI DSS Compliant.
In the Summer of 2020, at Kauneonga Lake, NY, Michael Shooster received a call from Peter Gross, co-CEO at Sunshine Answering Service. Peter asked if Answering Service Care (ASC) would consider letting others in the TAS industry use the software that had powered ASC over the last 10 years. Software development is an expensive proposition, so the thought of having other answering services partner in the cost of this software development seemed like a great idea.
It’s difficult to come up with a company name let alone find an available internet domain, so in an effort to solve that problem much of Summer 2020 was spent coming up with names. All along, founder Michael Shooster was staring through his window at Kauneonga Lake. He checked if the domain was available and that was the beginning of the CCaaS startup known as Kauneonga.
777 Properties offers commercial properties including offices spaces and warehouses providing generous parking, and high visibility. Easy access from the I-95 and the Florida Turnpike and the Ft. Lauderdale Executive Airport. All office spaces are provided on a gross lease which means that they pay all expenses including common area and utilities. Imagine a lease without an electric bill.
The properties are located in central Broward County, Florida and offer competitive leasing programs with professional property management.
The team is composed of Boston University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni. Shooster Holdings was an early investor and Michael Shooster is also on the Board of Advisors at Cleana, along with several other industry experts. The team has now won multiple entrepreneurship competitions, including BU’s $64K New Venture Competition.
After having raised its first round of financing, Cleana plans on beta-testing with over 25+ partner institutions throughout the year including the New England Patriots and HubSpot!
Global Response
In 1989, Michael came back into the business. At the time, his father Herman was talking about growing the business to make more room for family members to join. Herman’s idea was to start working with a larger call volume where clients might need a toll-free number. Global Response grew into 4 offices in South Florida and Michigan with over 2000 employees. In 2019, Global Response was sold to AEA, a private equity firm, as a strategic acquisition for one of their portfolio companies. By the time the Shooster family parted ways with Global Response, they had worked with clients such as Zara, MoMA, National Geographic, Vineyard Vines, Tory Burch, and many more high-profile brands.
Shipwizard
After building the contact center: Global Response, clients would come with an infomercial and a widget asking for a toll-free number to advertise. Several problems occurred during the process of these products being distributed. Eventually, Global Response decided that they would take over the shipment of these products to ensure that they were delivered correctly. This business was named Global Response Fulfillment. It grew very rapidly and by 1997 we had to move it to a 15,000 square foot facility that had multiple loading docks. In 2019, in advance of the Global Response business being sold, we had to rename the fulfillment center from Global Response Fulfillment to ShipWizard. By 2020, ShipWizard was also sold by the Shooster family after being grown into a 37,000 square foot facility.
“ShipWizard started at my desk in 1990.”
– Michael Shooster