Man vs machine?
When it comes to machinery companies, you’d think automation was the way forward, but Avantek Machinery is keen to point out that there’s no replacement for people when it comes to delivering exceptional customer service, as sales director Nigel Bishop explains.
I’ve been in this industry for almost 20 years, and have seen many advances in technology, enabling exciting new products to be developed in ever-efficient ways.
When it comes to business relationships, however, it’s very clear to me that people still want to deal with people. That’s not only the case right from the start, from a sales perspective, but it’s important to keep an ongoing dialogue too. If anything should go wrong, there’s no substitute for the personal touch.
That’s why at Avantek we’ve built our team of on-the-road service engineers to eight; as soon as they’re needed they can respond. And as they’re all full-time employees, as well as expert engineers, we don’t need to use sub-contractors who may not be familiar with the machinery or our customer base.
We’re also investing in a huge stock of spares for the Urban, Wegoma and Supercut machinery we offer, so the parts are to hand whenever they’re needed.
All of this means a massive reduction in machine downtime when compared to using alternative suppliers and has been purely based on listening to customers and delivering exactly what they need
Going the extra mile for customers is also why we’ve turned the old industry-wide system of ordering a new machine on its head.
Instead of waiting up to 16 weeks for new machinery to be built and made to order from abroad, Avantek actually has a wide range of machinery in stock. This means if the machine you need is already in stock, we can supply it straight away, often within the same week if the transport can be arranged. We’re official UK dealers for both the Urban and Wegoma ranges, and have a good range of both to choose from.
The huge financial backing of our parent company Quanex Building Products makes it possible to invest in both people and machinery, as well as being able to offer attractive payment options to our customers.