Q11 - Businesses frequently use customer surveys

[mshinners]

Question Type:
Explain a Result

Stimulus Breakdown:
Expected: Businesses that use a customer survey should do well.
Unexpected: Businesses that use customer surveys did worse than other businesses that didn't.

Answer Anticipation:
We need to explain why the survey group has declining profits, while the non-survey group doesn't. Keep focused on the difference between the two groups.

We don't have much other information to go on! We know that businesses use survey in an attempt to improve sales/increase profits, but we don't know if they actually work. First thought here might be that the surveys are somehow hurting these businesses, despite their best intentions.

Correct answer:
(C)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) We don't know that any business increased their profits - the non-survey group just didn't have declines. But even if they had, this wouldn't help explain *why* they did.

(B) The fact that surveys are routine doesn't explain anything about profits declining.

(C) This answer gives us a completely different explanation though. The surveys themselves aren't hurting the businesses. But they are correlated with complaints! The complaints trigger the surveys, but they probably also trigger declines in profits!

(D) First, this only tells me that sometimes the customers respond inaccurately. But more importantly, I have no idea how that inaccuracy relates to profits! The inaccuracy probably makes the survey less effective, so many it might explain why profits don't increase, but not why they decline.

(E) Like (D), this suggests the surveys don't end up being very effective, but not why profits actually declined. Additionally, this is only about some of the businesses in the survey-group!

Takeaway/Pattern:
Be sure to read through a question stem that's giving you more information than usual! This stem pretty much spoils the entire question for you.

#officialexplanation

[GlenH807]

Can't we also argue that because these businesses address customer complaint, they should be able to improve their sales and increase profits by directly tackling their deficiencies?

[ohthatpatrick]

Yes, that storyline would presumably play out eventually ... but the stimulus is saying "during the course of the study" profits were declining.

At that point, the customer complaints have been logged (and the backlash is in full effect), but the company is still learning about its deficiencies, via the surveys in this study.

So even if ultimately the study leads to insights that lead to corrections that lead to improved customer satisfaction that leads to increasing profits ... there's still a window of time where the companies having these studies are basically doing damage control (so their profits would currently reflect that damage)

[KenM242]

Can't we also argue that because these businesses address customer complaint, they should be able to improve their sales and increase profits by directly tackling their deficiencies?

As much as I want to agree with you (trust me I got this wrong too), it's the phrase "only as a response" makes a subtle, yet, big difference. If there wasn't "only", then (C) can be interpreted either way, which would still allow us to arrive at the correct conclusion. However, "only as a response" makes (C) sound as if it is concerned with explaining WHY these businesses use/conduct surveys at all, rather than what they are planning to do with it after (i.e. gather the info and use it to improve their goods and services and eventually increase sales).

Rather than making complicated inferences above, it's much more simple to treat the stimulus at its face value and establish the following:

1. Profits declined in most of the businesses that used surveys. In other words, these businesses had complaints from customers.
>From this we can safely infer that these businesses had some issues that can reasonably lead to decrease in sales.

2. Profits did not decline in most of the businesses that did not use surveys. Here, we don't know if there were any customer complaints for these businesses.
>From this we can't infer that much and we don't have to. For these 'resolving discrepancy' questions, I find that the correct answer sometimes has to explain only one side of the phenomenon. Although, it is true that there is nothing definite which could contribute to a decline in profit for these businesses.

[ReginaP412]

With C -- Are we assuming that the businesses that didn't have the surveys didn't have complaints? They're not giving out the survey for the purposes of the study not because there are no complaints, right? Or am I misunderstanding the stimulus and the use of the survey among the two businesses were not just for the purpose of the study?

I guess the 'during the course of the study' part is making me think that.

[Misti Duvall]

With C -- Are we assuming that the businesses that didn't have the surveys didn't have complaints? They're not giving out the survey for the purposes of the study not because there are no complaints, right? Or am I misunderstanding the stimulus and the use of the survey among the two businesses were not just for the purpose of the study?

I guess the 'during the course of the study' part is making me think that.

I think we are assuming that the businesses that didn't send out surveys during the study didn't have complaints. And I think we can make this easier by clarifying the process for explain a result questions a bit. For explain a result questions, we accept everything in the stimulus as true and then for each answer ask, if this were true, would it explain the discrepancy?

So we know that some companies didn't send surveys during the study. And C says that most of the companies in the survey only send surveys along with complaints. If true, that could explain why some companies sent surveys and others didn't (complaints v no) and also why the senders saw a decline in sales and the non senders didn't (complaints v no).

Hope this helps.