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helped him with Top Technician? “As the guys say at the competition,” remembered Declan, “it is a process. You can apply that process to any make or model of car. You can apply a lot of the processes that I have learned on Volkswagen courses to anything. That is what I have done. I have applied all my diagnostic tech courses before I got to the assessment, I did all of them before I went to the final, which I was quite lucky with. That helped me greatly.” No man is an island, even in Northern Ireland, and Declan has had a lot of great people helping him along the way, inside and outside of the business: “The guy I owe everything to is called Alan Kerr at Downpatrick South Eastern Regional College. When I left school, I started in the technical college straight away. He is really switched on when it comes to diagnostic techniques, advanced systems and PicoScope diagnosis. He has been my mentor since I was 16 up until I did Level 4 three years ago. Everything I know I owe to him. “Then there is Daryl, one of our master techs. He has been working here since he was 16. He is in his 50s now. He has a lot of background knowledge on Volkswagen systems and engines ranging from the old, old Beetle right through to the latest Arteon and even the High Voltage systems we are now seeing with the e-Golf and GTE models. He will share it with you. A lot of the other guys have been Volkswagen since they left school too, so they have a lot of knowledge as well.” Looking to the future, Declan said: “I’m already back to the drawing board for Top Technician 2020. I've a couple of training courses planned, mostly PicoScope based as I’m so used to using the VW diagnostic equipment. This will be beneficial to me in the competition. I've recently started working occasionally for Integrity Tyres and Auto Services in Lisburn, helping them with their more complicated diagnostic work. As they work on all makes and models, this is keeping my ear to the ground on the independent level. I'm getting the best of both worlds. I want to continue to work and learn with Volkswagen and hopefully in the not so distant future I’ll be a High Voltage Expert (HVE). That's the way things are going and you've got to go with it.” DECEMBER/JANUARY 2020 AFTERMARKET 49 www.aftermarketonline.net We are delighted with him. We try to train them up that way, when we grow them from apprentices, and Declan has been a great success story.” Since we were here, we had to ask the question; Did Roy think the franchised dealer side is so very different from the independents in terms of approaching the work? “I would say that the gap has got closer,” he suggested. “Independents have upped their game, I guess the Fred in the shed is disappearing. “There are still make-do repairs that the independent would be doing where the retailer wouldn’t get involved. As far as the technicians are concerned, there are maybe different work skills.” Perhaps unusually for a franchised dealer, Phillips Volkswagen are still getting a very wide range of cars in, including classic proper Beetles, which gives depth to the knowledge of the techs. Roy explained: “I have been here for many years, and we have kept customers regardless of what they drive. Sometimes they have owned their cars for 15-plus years, and they have just been loyal and keep coming to us. We are quite different in that we still see 1990s cars, not that regularly, but enough to keep their hands in as far as that level of technology is concerned. We are also different in that we have a very loyal staff. The average term of service is over 20 years here. That is especially unusual for franchised dealers as the being in a franchise can put a lot of pressure on individuals, standards and so forth, doing all the bits they want you to do in the way they want you to do it. The independents are free of that, but maybe not for much longer.” New age We normally provide a whistle-stop tour of a garage’s history in the opening, but here we are doing it in the middle, and we asked business owner Graham Phillips to tell us the story: “We started over on an adjacent site in 1987, franchised as Renault. We changed franchise to Volkswagen in 1994, and moved into this new site three years ago. At this stage the business went up quite a bit in size. “On opening night here three years ago, the local vintage VW clubs appeared out of nowhere and lots of cars were about that evening. We do quite a bit of work for those guys as well. It is something we like to see. There are always old cars sitting about. Obviously, things have moved on leaps and bounds, and now we are moving on into a new electric age, but you need to keep a broad knowledge as vehicles will turn up, and you need to be able to work on them.” Phillips Volkswagen is a family owned, privately-owned dealership, which is unusual in today’s world. Did Graham think this makes a difference in the way it approaches customers? “I think absolutely so,” he said. “Northern Ireland is quite a small place, but even it is dominated by a couple of larger groups, lookers and Sytner. Apart from being a family business, quite a few of the people who work here have been here for many years. Guys like Declan have worked their way through apprenticeships here. They tend to stay with us, maybe because of the family orientated nature. It works, that’s what I know.” Franchised dealers are set up to sell cars, but they the biggest part of the business is often the workshop. Is the workshop is the real engine of Phillips Volkswagen? “Absolutely,” replied Graham, “it always has been, and down to the long-standing relationships we have with our customers. The retention rates on aftersales are very high. We are also getting a lot of service business in from those bigger groups because customers feel, quite rightly, there is a less personal approach in those larger institutions. We work hard at that and it does work well for us.” Top Technician Back to Declan. As we saw earlier, he had started here, gone out come back, and worked on all sorts of different vehicles. Did he think that Below: Declan’s Top Technician achievement made the local press