Refurbishment of the Stapleton’s network is well underway and customer feedback has been “fantastic”, Murai says.

The standards are much closer to a franchised dealer and this is also his aspiration for Kwik-Fit, particularly with the need to win more fleet volume.

Winning over the company car driver is key to success

“Fleet is our most important business,” Murai says.

“We tried to enter fleet with Stapleton’s, but it failed because Kwik-Fit was too strong – its IT systems, call centres and size of network are all phenomenal.”

Now he has the opportunity to steer the Kwik-Fit business and its success, he believes, will be as much about winning over the company car driver as it will be the leasing provider.

“Our key target is the fleet customer’s customer – we can’t cause problems for the end user,” he says.

“Every part of our set up, every programme, needs to be powerful.

“Our biggest challenge is improving our overall offer. Customer service at Kwik-Fit is not the best and our transparency is not 100% right.

"We have to improve our transparency and our customer service, which means investing heavily in training as well as the centre facilities.”

He describes this mix of quality service and standards as “the Kwik-Fit way”, but recognises that cultural change won’t happen overnight. “It’s a long-term journey,” he says.

Investment in facilities and people are two important boxes to tick. The third is equipment. One of the enduring concerns from fleets has been Kwik-Fit’s inability to handle 100% of servicing and repairs in-house.

Cars had to be sent to local franchised dealers for re-coding which meant they were off the road for longer.

According to Neil Kidd, Kwik-Fit Fleet UK business development manager fleet, SMR & MOT, this issue has been resolved.

The company invested in Bosch diagnostics equipment in the final quarter of 2011 and put its staff – many of whom are ex-franchised dealer – through Master Technician training.

It is now a “one-stop-shop” for SMR, Kidd claims.

“There are some manufacturers that don’t release their software to Bosch but we will go and buy the vehicle and learn the information,” he adds.

“It is very seldom that we don’t have the information now.

“So as well as lower prices, we can do the repairs just as quickly and with no higher levels of re-work or defects.

And we also have a national network with national pricing – few companies can offer that.”

The opportunities for Kwik-Fit in the fleet sector are immense. It estimates annual maintenance to be worth close to £1 billion a year and claims to take 20% of the market – albeit the vast majority is tyres.

In contrast, its share of mechanical maintenance and repairs is “tiny – we aren’t even doing 1%”, admits Kwik-Fit Fleet sales director Peter Lambert.