You’re In Good Company

Since 1990, our live answering services have helped thousands of businesses give their customers exactly what they want – frontline receptionists that are friendly and helpful on every call. Behind the scenes, you’ll find a team of people committed to helping businesses grow and succeed through personalized customer service that is second to none.

Our Vision and Mission


We help entrepreneurs turn their dreams into reality – one conversation at a time.

Our mission is to make your customers love doing business with you by providing flexible, personalized services from our caring team straight to your frontline.

Our Guiding Principles


Some businesses call these “values”, but we find that term, and the resulting list of “typical” values, a little too generic. At PATLive, we wanted to focus on actionable principles that could actually guide us in our decisions and behaviors. These principles are the non-negotiables that serve as the foundation for our corporate culture and reflect what we believe is most important as an organization.

WE…

  • Figure it out. How hard could it be?  😊
  • Answer to our customers, not distant investors.
  • Share the data and earn the trust.
  • Put ourselves in our customers’ shoes.
  • Believe in balance. In our books, in our time and in our efforts and rewards.
  • Are open and kind and want everyone to have a seat at the table.
  • Never sacrifice customer experience, nor compromise on the quality of our service.

The People Traits We Value the Most


You should know, we believe the best thing about us is our people. And we’re not biased at all. 😉  But let’s be honest, having the best team is a conscious effort.  So, when we’re considering new people, here are the things we think matter the most:

Alison – Writing on the biggest chalkboard in the world (back when we were all in-office).
  • Fun. Funny? On a scale of “IRS Auditor” to “Robin Williams”, you should definitely lean Robin’s direction. We use skunk puppets in our company meetings, after all.
  • Smart. Not in a Sheldon Cooper kind of way (if that’s you – go cure cancer!). More like a “make sure you invite them to the meeting – we need to figure this out” kind of way.
  • Adept at looking for the simplest solution. Someone has to maintain it!
  • If the paper towel holder is empty, you will instinctively refill it. Enough said.
  • So friendly and helpful even Canadians are surprised.
  • You have to do the “right” thing in order to sleep at night. No insomnia here.
  • You’re professional, but not uppity about it. Sometimes we cuss.
  • You’re here for the long haul. We want to grow old together (but also, retire young).

Learn More About our Mission, Values, and Guiding Principles

Read the open letter from our CEO.

“I tried another service (SAS) and while I was in their free trial period, I had such a bad experience that I switched to PATLive. I felt like my rep, Darla, cared about my business and wanted to make sure I felt like my company was in good hands. PATLive was a little more expensive, but I feel like SAS would have cost me more due to the quality of service. I highly recommend this company.”

– Auction Vcommerce LLC

Our History


PATLive was formed in 1990 by Glen Davidson, an entrepreneur who believed that taking care of customers as the first priority was the only way to run a business. Our story is unique, however, as we didn’t set out to be an answering service. Our roots are actually in the telecom industry, where we provided a one-of-a-kind networked voice platform that allowed distributed teams to communicate in an era before e-mails, cell phones and texting. To support that platform, we formed a customer service department that assisted customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Our team earned us rave reviews from our customers and helped land us on the Inc. 500 list several times in a row. Pretty soon, our customers started asking if our team could answer calls on their behalf.

After listening to our customers’ needs, we rebranded and launched PATLive – a flexible answering service that was designed to answer calls for a variety of different industries and scenarios. We developed and wrote our own software to manage the receptionists’ call handling instructions, applying what we knew about providing great customer service to our customers’ calls. Since that time, we have grown into a modern answering service that still holds true to our roots – focusing on our customers first and providing them the best experiences possible.

Glen Davidson, Founder

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