2 Evaluate the impact of the chief executive’s involvement in soliciting feedback. ‘What differentiates us from the competition’, explained Kwik-Fit’s customer services manager, Kenny King, ‘is that we actually entice people to call us or write to us.’ Indeed Sir Tom Farmer, chairman and chief executive, has his picture all over Kwik-Fit’s corporate literature, exhorting customers to do just that.

From the opening of the first Kwik-Fit Centre in Edinburgh in 1971, the Kwik-Fit Group is now one of the world’s largest automotive parts repair and replacement specialists, providing and fitting tyres, exhausts, brakes, shock absorbers, batteries, oil filters, wiper blades and child seats. It operates around 2,000 centres across Europe, with plans to open further centres in other countries.

Over 9,500 repair centres (which include recent acquisitions of Speedy and Pit-Stop) in England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Holland, France, Belgium, Germany, Spain and Switzerland now service the needs of almost 7.5 million motorists a year.