‘Friendly faces’ key to success at Northampton’s Garage of the Year as voted for by YOU

A business that has been crowned Northampton’s Garage of the Year as voted for by you, has accredited its success to their ‘friendly faces’ approach.

In Town Automotive in Minton Business Centre, Far Cotton has taken the top spot in the competition run by Northampton Chronicle & Echo and voted for by readers.

During the last two to three years, the garage has gone from strength to strength as the team has picked up several other awards and improvements have been made to the building and staff training.

Bosses at the garage were thrilled to be presented with their most recent award.

Kim Dorr, manager at In Town, said: “We think all awards are great, especially as this one is voted for by local people.

“It hasn’t been decided by judges, this is actually how people feel about our service.”

Reflecting on winning the award, the team think their friendly approach is one of the main positives for customers.

Kim added: “We are independent so customers get main dealer service but friendly faces.

“We get good customer feedback and we have a high customer retention rate because of this.

“We know our customers, we know their cars, we know their families.

“We don’t use jargon when we’re explaining what has happened, it all goes through me.

“If I understand it, they will understand it as I’m not a mechanic and that is the approach we have always had.”

Owners Mike Palmer and Terry Dorney both praised Kim, who has been the ‘face of the garage’ for the ten years the business has been running, for her work.

The company is currently making improvements to its premises and is looking ahead to a busy winter as drivers who had an MOT extension during the pandemic look to get their vehicles checked over.

Terry said: “The start of the pandemic was really scary as we didn’t know what to expect.

“But now we have seen capacity levels back to normal in August and we think over the next three months we’ll have lots of MOTs, especially with people using public transport less.

“This should be really positive for the motor industry.”

To help cope with the surge, the team has implemented extra slots taking the total to 20 MOTs a day, which are priced at £20 instead of £54.85 as part of an offer.

In second place for the Chronicle & Echo’s Garage the Year award was J & S Auto, Kingsthrope and Tony Brooks in Court Road took third place.

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