Sovex Service Department Prepares for Peak Trading

As the Parcel Distribution and Home Delivery industries head towards the busiest time of the year, so too do the businesses that support them. Not least of these is Merseyside-based material handling specialists Sovex, who provide 24-hour maintenance for the equipment that keeps those parcels moving.

Sovex, perhaps best known for its innovative telescopic boom conveyors and bespoke material handling systems, provides tailored servicing and maintenance packages to several blue chip clients, all of whom will be expecting significant increases in parcel volumes as the nation starts to order its Christmas presents. Sovex pride themselves on ensuring each of their service contracts is targeted at each customer’s requirements – the frequency of pre-planned services is adjusted in line with equipment usage in each depot, and attendance times can also be increased or decreased depending on requirements. For key sites, Sovex can offer response times as short as 1 hour or, for less business-critical, a more cost-effective response can be specified.

With its head office and call centres all based in the UK, Sovex has benefitted from the dramatic increase in the home delivery industry in recent years, and National Service Manager Steve Hamilton explains how they’ve ensured they’ve coped with such rapid growth:

“Our Service department has grown rapidly – we now cover the national networks of five of the key parcel carriers in the UK. We are adding new contracts to our portfolio all the time, and we have made sure that our systems and processes can cope with the volume of business.

“All of our engineers are CSCS certified and the business as a whole is CHAS accredited, so our customers can be confident of the level of service they will receive. We’ve recently upgraded all of our vehicles to more fuel-efficient models, which also come with integrated GPS for satellite navigation and remote tracking. The latter really makes a difference to our customers, as we can now be absolutely sure that the closest engineer will be sent to each callout”.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for Steve and his national network of engineers is managing all of the data that comes with providing breakdown responses to so many sites across the country. Most parcel carriers will see parcel volume increases of up to 50% in the run-up to Christmas – a trend which continues well into the new year as some customers return unwanted items and others take advantage of the traditional New Year sales. These increased volumes put additional strain on conveyor systems, and it is critical that the equipment is up to the task, as Steve explains:

“Whilst all of our customers expect high equipment availability year-round, the Christmas peak is even more critical than usual – a breakdown which is not rapidly dealt with can be very costly, and we understand that. We spend a lot of time in the months leading up to Christmas analysing the data we’ve compiled over the year to make sure we catch worn parts quickly – often before a problem has fully developed. We hold data on every breakdown we’ve ever attended and, combined with the reports from our planned maintenance visits, we work with our customers to plan specific areas of focus for our engineers, ensuring we maximise our effectiveness at such a busy time. Our customers also have access to this data, via our secure website login area, giving them up-to-the-minute updates on their networks”.

With such extensive systems in place, Sovex is making sure it’ll be another Merry Christmas for its customers.