Bridgestone has named its top performing stores throughout Australia for 2020, with Queensland’s Bridgestone Select Hendra, owned by Caleb Sos, claiming the title of ‘National Franchise of the Year’ in the inaugural year of the DRIVE program.
The DRIVE program was launched in January 2020 as the recognition program of Bridgestone Select and Bridgestone Service Centres, seeing the network benchmarked against customer satisfaction and business performance – designed in line with the network’s values of customer centricity, delivering a leading customer experience and exceptional value for tyre and auto services.
Four categories are recognised: Franchise of the Year for Bridgestone Select stores, Store of the Year for Bridgestone Service Centres, and Truck Store of the Year for the best performing store from Bridgestone’s commercial vehicle network, with regional and an overall national winner for each.
A dedicated national New Store of the Year title was awarded amongst the 30 Bridgestone Select locations in their first three years of trading.
According to Bridgestone Australia & New Zealand managing director Stephen Roche, 2020 was the ideal test of the DRIVE program’s criteria, and the Bridgestone Family Channel excelled in what was one of the most challenging environments on record.
“The DRIVE program was designed to identify and celebrate the exceptional stores in our network,
evaluated by the judges that matter most to our stores and Bridgestone – the customers who trust us with their vehicles,” Roche said.
“In a year where trust and customer service were more critical than ever before, the entire network has demonstrated a commitment to serving the needs of their customers and we’re delighted to recognise our network’s best and name our top performing stores – headlined by Bridgestone Select Hendra, Bridgestone Service Centre Port Hedland, Bridgestone Service Centre Geraldton, and Bridgestone Select Welshpool.”
Bridgestone Australia’s sales director, Heath Barclay, says the mixture of new and previous winners highlights the strength of Bridgestone’s network.
“The DRIVE program provides a great benchmark and comparison across our network of Bridgestone Select and Bridgestone Service Centre stores, and we’re encouraged by how competitive all of the categories were throughout 2020.
“The results of the first running of the DRIVE program highlights that across Australia, our stores are delivering on our promise of customer service, transparency and value for money and we’re thrilled with how close the results were.”