Meet the team: Sarah Singleton, After Sales Service Co-ordinator

At Yamato, we believe in providing exceptional service before, during and after your decision to purchase our machinery. We speak with Sarah Singleton, our After Sales Service Co-ordinator, to find out what level of support you can expect to receive post-purchase.

Hi Sarah! You’ve been at Yamato for nearly seven years now – could you tell us what first attracted you to the role?

Before joining the team at Yamato, I already had a background in scheduling and coordination. I’ve been dealing with engineer diaries for over 25 years now! The role looked exciting, and when I found out more about the job and the company at the interview, I knew it was something I would enjoy doing.

What does your role entail daily?

I handle the end-to-end service, meaning I’m usually the person the customer speaks to when seeking support. This includes creating quotes, managing orders, organising calibration and inspection visits, dealing with invoices and coordinating our engineers to conduct repairs when required.

I organise the engineers’ diaries so they know where they need to be and when. This enables us to swiftly assist plants dealing with breakdowns or other emergencies for maximum efficiency. 

What’s your favourite thing about working for Yamato UK?

That’s an easy question to answer – it’s the people I work with daily. As part of my role involves passing customer queries onto the relevant department, I work with everyone – from our engineers to our commercial operations teams. Everyone here is so friendly and happy to help, and this extends into our customer care.

How have things changed in Yamato since you first joined?

The most significant change for me has been our move to larger premises in 2016. We now have a lot more warehouse space, enabling us to work on more substantial projects.

The move brought technological upgrades across the site, including intelligent digital systems. That’s made my job easier and our service more efficient. We now capture more data across our solutions that suit more needs and allow our customers to get better insights. It also makes everything much faster!

What challenges are you seeing in the industry today?

From a service point of view, we are experiencing issues obtaining the components needed to create some of our machinery in the current climate. As a result, lead times are slightly longer. This is not just a Yamato problem, but one across the entire industry.

It can also affect some of the parts needed for repairs. The challenge is finding ways to continue to serve our customers while overcoming supply chain disruption.

What is Yamato doing to manage expectations with the risk of delay and supply chain disruption?

We actively try to maximise our stock levels to have as many components available as possible to meet whatever needs our customers might have. This includes increasing the stock that our engineers carry to jobs so that they stand a better chance of being able to fix any issues they come across when visiting a site.

We communicate with Yamato’s subsidiaries worldwide to source parts we need if we do not have them in stock ourselves. This speeds up timeframes so we get the right solution to the customer sooner. If all else fails, we will also seek alternatives when necessary, such as finding innovative solutions for repairs that avoid the supply chain obstacles. 

What do you see in the coming years for Yamato?

I hope to bring onboard many new customers and continue to have the edge over our competition!

It would be great to work on projects across more industry sectors. We pre-dominantly work with food manufacturers, but our solutions are compatible with a wide range of industries outside of food.

We usually start by providing companies with a few machines, then fill the whole factory, so the aim is to bring our support to more plants!

If you’re looking to work with a machinery supplier with first-class customer service, Yamato is here to provide the solutions you need for your plant and back it up with outstanding aftersales support.