February 5th. 2003 -- The customer service representative (CSR), increasingly "in the crosshairs" as the printing industry transitions to a service-driven business delivering an ever-wider array of values, will be in the spotlight when GRAPHIC ARTS THE CHARLOTTE SHOW 2003 opens in Charlotte, NC on March 13, 2003. The CSR's role is changing quickly, and how well companies and individuals keep up with this change is a key to profitability. GRAPHIC ARTS THE CHARLOTTE SHOW will help with this challenge by offering a targeted five-session seminar track tailored expressly to today's CSR. GRAPHIC ARTS THE CHARLOTTE SHOW runs March 13-15 and is the leading industry show serving a print region generating some $17 billion in annual sales. Magazine articles, white papers, and conference sessions throughout the industry in the last two years have focused on challenges to today's CSR and the CSR's expanding role in successful companies. In the past, the CSR spent most of his or her time "fact-finding" on behalf of clients-tracking job status and digging up answers to questions. Today, web-based processes have enabled customers to do most of these things themselves. Moreover, when customers assume high quality production and competitive pricing, they increasingly look for other values in their vendor relationships, values like technical support and advice, to maximize the effectiveness of their communications. These new challenges have shaped the development of five special seminars for CSRs at GRAPHIC ARTS THE CHARLOTTE SHOW: * Don't Get Lost in the Customer Service Triangle will describe how the CSR can provide excellent customer service while dealing with the sometimes contradictory concerns of sales, production, and customers. * Growing Customer Service for Improved Revenues and Profits focuses on the changing relationship between sales reps and CSRs, offering 20 specific ways for the CSR to become more important to the customer. * Customer Service in the Printing Industry will help printers gain a competitive edge through a successful customer service program. * Delighting Customers will explore how personal improvement techniques, team techniques, and telephone techniques can help CSRs handle every situation professionally. * Communications in the Printing Industry looks at how print company personnel interact with outside customers as well as internal colleagues. The session includes telephone skills, verbal and written communication, developing listening and sending skills, and more. "Today's CSR is right in the heart of all the powerful trends remaking the printing, publishing and converting industry, trends that are creating opportunity even as they challenge long-standing ways of doing business," said Graphic Arts Show Company (GASC) President Regis J. Delmontagne. "A seminar track explicitly dedicated to CSR concerns has never been more important or valuable, and these offerings make GRAPHIC ARTS THE CHARLOTTE SHOW 2003 essential to forward-looking, customer-focused companies all over the Southeast," he added. The program of more than 60 education sessions at GRAPHIC ARTS THE CHARLOTTE SHOW will address such topics as management strategies, flexo printing, pressroom quality and productivity, sales effectiveness, and wide format digital output. In addition, some 200 companies are expected to take part in the exhibition.