From the very first point of contact, we aim to ensure customers receive and appreciate a professional, courteous yet friendly approach from all of our staff.

We aim to build on this approach throughout the duration of any customer relationship and as such have carefully considered all contact points with customers. Fortunately our smaller size usually enables staff to have a personal knowledge of customers, and as such any enquiries or problems are dealt with both quickly, efficiently and in a friendly manner.

However professional our everyday service may be, the priority of all customers lies with the reliability of equipment together with service responsiveness and effectiveness should problems arise.

Modern vendors will only provide continuous reliability when they are serviced and maintained regularly - our operatives carry out routine replacement of parts subject to wear and tear, and our engineers also conduct random preventative service calls.

If faults or breakdowns do occur, customers can take comfort in the knowledge that Northern Vending Services has a team of 18 trained engineers - that's the largest of any company in the region. Each one is both locally and strategically based to enable us to reduce response times to the absolute minimum. We undertake to rectify 90% of all service calls within 1 working day, the rest by the end of the next working day. (A recent internal report showed us that 86% were attended and resolved within 4 hours!)

All our engineers complete an in depth induction course featuring both certificated factory training with our suppliers, and also on the job training with senior engineers. After a six month period we feel they are specialists in vending technology - skilled in fault diagnosis and repair across a wide range of manufacturers equipment.

Our technical vehicle fleet is mobile-phone linked to an operations controller, providing an efficient response to breakdown calls. Each van is equipped with a full complement of spares such that all but the most unusual fault can be resolved on the first visit.

More recently, through a real-time reporting package called OPERA , we are focussing even more on how we can bring improvements to our service department by analysing reponse times and resolution rates.