Features

3RD ANNUAL WESTEDGE DESIGN FAIR​

WestEdge is a four-day event that offers the best in modern design, all in an environment designed to engage, entertain and inspire. The fair offers the opportunity to shop from premium home furnishings brands-many new to the West Coast and meet the designers behind thousands of inspiring products. In addition, attendees gain insight from leading names in the design industry with a full series of educational programs and special events.

“WestEdge is all about bringing people together to experience the best in class within the home furnishings industry,” says the event’s co-founder Megan Reilly. “We’re pleased to expand this platform for design and encouraged by the enthusiastic response from both exhibitors and attendees this year.”
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SUMMER LAS VEGAS MARKET

The largest-ever Las Vegas Market, highlighted by increases in new registrations and overall attendance, as well as expansion of leading showroom resources and the debut of five new resource destinations, exceeded buyer and supplier expectations August 2-6, 2015. The Summer 2015 Market celebrated its 10th year with five launches: Casual/Outdoor on C12 and 13, gourmet housewares on C11, better home décor on C5, and the Pavilions at Las Vegas Market featuring DISCOVERIES, a new temporary exhibit venue with 90,000 net square feet of exhibit space.
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“We set the bar high for our tenth anniversary this August, and we exceeded our customers’ expectations, as well as our own,” said Robert Maricich, chief executive officer of IMC. “We launched five new destinations simultaneously, introduced new-to-market showroom resources and debuted major showroom expansions by leading vendors like Christopher Guy, Global
Views, The Phillips Collection, Michael Aram, Ivystone/CMA and many more. We have made exponential progress towards our goal of becoming the only ‘whole home and gift’ market in North America, and anticipate continued and remarkable growth as we continue to build upon our strong foundation.”
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​MONARK PREMIUM APPLIANCE COMPANY LAUNCHES MULTI-REGIONAL BRAND

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Monark Premium Appliance Company of California is launching with the opening of its first flagship showroom in Santa Clara, California. At these distinctive idea centers, builders, developers, designers, architects and homeowners collaborate with our expert staff to shop a curated selection of cooking, cooling and cleaning appliance brands. Monark® now offers these experiences from coast to coast, with 15 locations across Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada.
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Book Review

WIN THE CUSTOMER: 70 Simple Rules for Sensational Service

By Flavio Martins
A respected customer service fanatic, Flavio Martins knows that securing a coveted service edge on customer satisfaction and loyalty takes more than reading stories of incredible service and role-playing in training meetings. In WIN THE CUSTOMER: 70 Simple Rules for Sensational Service, he offers practical techniques and inspirational insights that reinforce core customer-care principles and demonstrates how to apply them in day-to-day service work.

Providing a standard for measuring the effectiveness of a company’s customer service processes, complemented by straightforward, results- oriented instructions for engaging with customers on a more personal level, WIN THE CUSTOMER’s collection of rules for achieving consistently excellent customer service include:
  • Be prepared to break traditional rules. “The reality is that customer service is hardly black-and-white,” Martins acknowledges. “If it means brightening your customer’s day, break the rules sometimes.”
  • Compete only against yourself. “Most businesses obsess about watching their competition, so much so that they begin to lose track of their own strengths, their own vision, and all the aspects that make them unique to customers,” Martins observes. Instead, he urges: “Measure what you do.”
  • Embrace your service imperfections. “Service requires human interactions, and humans make mistakes,” stresses Martins. “Use mistakes as opportunities to test your processes and your resolve to deliver the ultimate service experience that your customers deserve.”
​Learn something new every day. Find a way to say yes even when the answer is no. Don’t be a Zappos to your Jack Welch customers... Accept that you can’t please everyone... Take care of employees so
they’ll take care of customers... Forget mission statements: create action statements... Allow for random acts of wow... Get a reality check.
About The Author
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Flavio Martins is also the author of the popular Win The Customer! blog. He was recently ranked #2 among the International Customer Service Management Institute’s Top 100 Customer Service Thought Leaders and cited in Huffington Post’s Top 100 Most Social Customer Service Pros on Twitter @flavmartins (over 30k followers) and blog winthecustomer.com/blog/.
Publisher: Amacom