Meet the Team – Radoslav Radev, the Managing Director

Get to Know One of the Key Figures in Fantastic Services July 24, 2017

Today we’ll present to you a very special team member. This is the person behind our Australian team, leading us forward to success.

Interviewer: Hello! Can you introduce yourself to our readers? Tell us more about your role in Fantastic Services.

Radoslav: Yes, sure. My name is Radoslav Radev (Ray) and I currently serve as Managing Director of Fantastic Services Group.

I have started my journey in the company 7 and a half years ago as a customer service agent in the contact centre. Then after 8 months, I was promoted to Customer Service Supervisor. Then after another 6 months, I was offered the opportunity to create a completely new contact centre which had to serve the Australian part of the business. Surely that was an awesome challenge and I took the opportunity right away, I have always loved to challenge myself.

Then in another 2 years, I was promoted to General manager of the whole company which Fantastic Services was outsourcing to First Online Solutions. And then 2 years ago after some structural changes, I was promoted to lead the mother Franchise company – Fantastic Services.

Today we operate in the 4 major Australian cities – Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Brisbane with the goal of expanding to Adelaide and Gold coast by end of 2018. 15000 clients each month are served by 1500 experts and the total services are 40 000. Quite remarkable for a 6 years old company. We have a sustainable yearly growth of min 15% with a trend to reach 65% in 2017 and 100% in 2018. Today we solve one of the global challenges which are the scarceness of time. We do that by saving people’s time from the daily routines and chores.

I’m personally responsible for:

Giving direction to the company in terms of vision, mission and operational goals
Help everyone in the company achieve their dreams through the company goals
Remove any obstacles which hinder teamwork

What is the current state of the Australian market? What is the future of Fantastic Services?

If I have to keep it simple and define it with one word, the current state of the Australian Market is dynamic. As part of the global gig economy, Fantastic Services has its unique role in the global family. We work on 3 continents serving 46 000 customers each month. I am proud of this figure. But at the same time feel responsible for responding to the increasing needs of our Australian customers for exceptional service at a better price.

Business changes in days and we are challenged to adapt quickly to the new channels of communication. And also to the new way customers expect us to perform and create added value every day. The market is much more competitive nowadays and that makes it even more exciting since this gives room for our customers to receive better service and to get it now.

For me, I can’t be happier and more excited to be in such a dynamic and fascinating period of everyday changes. After the dot-com boom, this is by far the best period to be in. We observe rapid changes in layers and markets which favour the most prepared and flexible companies, willing to provide excellent product and maximum added value in comparison with its previous self. Fantastic Services prefers competing with itself and being better every day, rather than competing with the market. I say that on purpose, because nowadays I observe lots of companies challenging their rivals, but not always challenging itself. So yes, market nowadays is dynamic and full of information and automation and extremely customer-centric. Which is great for us since we are a customer-centric company.

How will the franchisees and contractors benefit from that?

We at Fantastic Service are proud to be a great environment for newcomers to Australia. We give entrepreneurs a unique and affordable model to excel their leadership skills and grow a network of Professionals in short time. More than ever people are moving across borders of cities, states and countries. So a global brand like our serving 3 continents could be a great place to everyone who wants to benefit from the fact that we are established globally and people moving to Australia are already familiar with our high standard.

What is the most important company policy to you? Why?

I don’t really like the word policy, to be honest. But if I need to I’d say our most important policy is our culture and values. As Peter Drucker states “culture eats strategy for lunch” and I very much associated with this. We at Fantastic Services live in a culture of “people serving people” and we all show GREAT customer service towards each other. Our culture and values define our attitude towards our vendors, clients and Franchisees. What makes us all happy is giving rather than taking. We understand and value that and implement in our everyday relationships. And this is what makes us what we are – a bunch of like-minded professionals, striving to deliver a cool experience to everyone we interact with.

How is your franchise brand different than the others?

We were lucky to be one of the newest Franchises on the domestic services market in Australia. So we combined the best from all models and mixed it with our own philosophy and vision of doing things. As a result, we believe our Franchise model is win-win. How are we different? Most importantly we maintain a full schedule for our Franchisees in the long run, rather than just in the trial period. Another thing is we are very transparent when creating the business plan for our potential Franchisee. Meaning we don’t make it look peachy, but rather work with real numbers, and the customer loves that. Also two years ago we introduced the “Franchise Growth Model” – one of the main differences between us and other great franchises is that we motivate our existing Franchisees to grow and have more than one team on the road. And the best part is that we give incentives for that. Other benefits of our model are that we have incentives to make each client happy and return to us and this gives us room to give better conditions to our franchisees for these same clients.

How does Fantastic Services keep consistent in quality?

Through its culture from one side as well as through specially designed systems for real-time feedback and tracking on performance combined with Revenue based on this same performance. I reckon this system is fair and at the same time simple to follow. I have seen a great system out there which are amazingly accurate but are so complex that it’s almost impossible to implement, track and motive for better performance. So yes, it’s also important for the system to be easy to track and motivate to improve every day.

How do you treat changes and improvisations?

Yes, we live in a world changing every day. Demands are higher, feedback for the service get spread much quicker with social media and this is a great benefit to the customer. But it’s also an opportunity for us to learn from it and work towards improving it. So our secret is “The Toyota way” – We can’t stay the same and need to constantly improve – every day, every hour. I actually use the word improvement instead of change. It’s what defines us as a system – Never stop improving (changing) and deliver a high-value product.