Introducing Kris Denos: New President of R.O. Writer

The R.O. Writer team is excited to welcome new President Kris Denos. Recently, we sat down with him and had a quick conversation about his background and his vision for the software.

Kris is a real advocate for taking a customer-first approach, and he has some exciting plans for R.O. Writer! Read on to learn more.

 

Tell us a bit about your career thus far, and how it makes you a good fit for R.O. Writer.

I’ve been in the software business for 30 years.

I started my career in customer service. I came out of college with an accounting degree, and I was doing customer support for an application for powersports dealerships and marine dealerships and RV dealerships to help them run their entire business.

I moved over to product for a little while, then moved back to customer service, managing the entire customer service department over time.

Then I took on the implementation group within our business for about the first 10 years of my career, and during that time I also spent some time as an onsite trainer in our dealerships.

Then after that I took on the product side, including the full R&D engineering group, and I managed that group for about 8 years. Then I became the senior executive of that business and was a senior executive of that business for about 10 years.

So, I have a lot of experience in software, and a lot of experience with dealerships. I think that’s why I’m a good fit for R.O. Writer. I’ve spent a lot of time with service shops, because these dealerships had service as such a big component of their business. So I think it’s a great fit in that way.

 

What is your vision for the future of the company?

I think we have an opportunity to be the clear leader in the service management systems business for automotive. We have a great foundation of people, and we understand our customers and their business better than anyone else in the market.

And I think we have a team that really cares about our customer success. So that’s a great foundation to start from. Similarly, our product has a great foundation, and the breadth of our product is unmatched.

So I think today you could say we’re the most complete solution for our customers and in the future, I would like to add that we’ll be the most responsive solution as well.

Responsive both in the way that we enhance our product and responsive in the way that we listen to our customers, that we bring new products to market, and that we provide service to our customers and so on.

I think if you partner “most complete” with “most responsive,” that’s a pretty powerful combination for the future.

 

How do you see our company evolving over the next few years?

I think you’ll see some pretty big changes over the next few years. And actually, you’ll see a lot of changes here in the near future.

Some of the things you’re going to see is we’re improving our technology, and you’ll see we’re coming out with a next generation version of our product that will make service shops more efficient and more productive than they’ve ever been.

And we will add applications to our core product, so that some of the solutions you’re getting from other providers, you can get in a one-stop shop.

Having said that, I know that our customers want to have choices, right? So, we need to make it easier for our customers to integrate with other systems, and we’ll do that as well.

And then, like I said, we want to be more agile, more responsive to our customers than we’ve ever been before.

So that means that for our customers, maybe you don’t have to wait as long to get to see something get fixed in our system. Or maybe you don’t have to wait as long to see the improvements that you’re looking for in our system.

And I think on the service side, we’re going to continue to improve there. We’ve introduced a customer portal that’s only going to get better, and it will help you to seamlessly navigate from working in R.O. Writer to getting support and making sure that you can quickly get back to servicing your customers. So, I think those are some things you’ll see change quickly over the next months, but certainly over the years to come.

 

Are there any upcoming events or forums where customers can meet you and hear more about your plans?

I will be at the SEMA show in Las Vegas in November, so that’s definitely one that’s on the calendar.

And beyond that I’m looking at ways that we can do some regional customer events, so that that is to be determined going forward.

 

Can you share a personal story or anecdote that reflects your leadership style or customer focused approach?

I started my career in customer service and so I spent a lot of time in customer-facing roles before I became leader of the business.

And so one of the things that always stands out to me is when I go into a business, whether it be a restaurant or a retail store or whatever.

Do the people that are interacting with me really get it from the owner’s perspective?

Are they treating me like the owner would want them to?

A lot of businesses say the customer is important, but it really shows in how you interact with the customer, and you can tell in the first 15 to 20 seconds when you visit a establishment whether they truly believe that or not.

So I want to make sure for our business that if you’re interacting with us, whether that be on the customer service line or implementation, or sales, or any group, that that’s the impression we give – the customer really, really does matter. We really live our values.

 

What message would you like to convey to our customers about your commitment to them?

The number one thing is I’m listening.

One of the first things I asked when I came to this business was what are customer customers saying about us, and what are we doing about that?

The good news is we’re we are taking action today on customer feedback, but I also think there’s always more we can do to ensure that we’re listening to our customers and we’re taking action on the feedback.

 

Is there a final message that you want to share with our customers as you begin the journey with R.O. Writer?

I’ll just say I’m super excited about R.O. Writer’s future and I hope you’re excited to take that journey with us. We have great people, and we have a great product.

Not to say that we don’t have issues to solve, we do. But we’re committed to getting better at everything we do. And I’m confident you’ll see evidence of that in the months to come, and certainly on a long-term basis.