March 2020

fab – I could have told him that. What he did do was provide some solutions. The man is a star. He famously said ours was the second- worst reception he had ever seen. He then pointed out that first-worst one did not actually have a reception. Hence, the new portacabin.“ Future On our way towards the door, we asked Rebecca about plans for the future: “We will be putting a new floor in the other unit. We also have some new signage coming. We are also looking at changing one of the courtesy cars, we might go for an electric. We are very green here. We are big on recycling, so are very proud of that. We like to be aware of those things. More training too, obviously, and more systems as well. It is a cleaner way of doing things. What we don’t like is when the staff go on holiday, and all their jobs are still there. We want to put systems in so when they go on holiday, they get a complete break and come back and someone has done your stuff for you.” That sounds like a good idea, but we are fairly certain that when we come back, Rebecca and Dave will still be doing their own thing, their own way. MARCH 2020 AFTERMARKET 51 www.aftermarketonline.net the local area, other garages, and we also do lots for the main dealers. We also do all the normal stuff, servicing, MOTs etc. You have to do that. We try and keep aware of the technology, and we have the 1234yf gas machine a long time before anyone else in the area. We usually look into things and wanted to get it because environmental was going to keep going. We used that regularly last summer.” Customers Considering how all the garages in the area have landed in the same area, we wondered about the passing trade situation: “All of Harrogate knows that if you need something doing, you come down this road. There are other garages, but you do get some passing trade because people are looking down here.” We asked her if she thought being in an area with other garages meant they tended to work harder to stand out in terms of customer service and presentation: “I don’t consider any of the garages down our road to be our competition,” Rebecca replied. “For us, the main dealers are the competition. The other businesses down the road are our colleagues. We do MOTs for some, we help with diagnostics too. They are our friends.” Training We asked what brands they generally see: “We see lots of BMWs, Audis, VWs, Fords, Peugeot, Citroen.” The full spread then. Does that keep the guys on their toes? “Absolutely” was the response, but not without training. This brought us onto one of Rebecca’s pet subjects: “I think training is the most important thing. No one in Harrogate has the training budget that we have. “We are absolutely dedicated to training, and that is what the technicians probably enjoy most. Euro Car Parts have a package which offers you unlimited training. We have been doing aftermarket training with James Dillon and Frank Massey for years. We also did it for a long time with Bosch Aftermarket, then Euro Car Parts put in this deal. You spend via the Gold Package and you can do as much training as you like. I bought all the team training through that.” It’s best to lead by example, and Dave certainly does that, having been in the top 10 of Top Technician twice, as well as doing Bright Spark. They also work on the business side of the business: “We have done all sorts of things. We had Andy Savva, The Garage Inspector, down here twice. What he said about our garage was unprintable, but it was exactly what we needed to hear. “Since then we made lots of strides forward. We wanted his input. We had some problems we were not able to solve. He identified the problems –