Critical Reasoning

Callers to a customer help line frequently complained about the quality of service. Seventy percent of survey respondents cited the services agents' lack of knowledge of how to solve the problems they were calling about. To address the problem, management decided that each service agent should go through regular training. Each agent spent half a day each week in sessions covering how to respond to callers' problems. Nevertheless, after three months of training, the rate of caller complaints has not decreased.

Which of the following, if true, most helps to explain why the training failed to achieve its goal?
A. The training program created significant additional cost in running the help line.
B. Taking service agents out of the group answering calls at any given time causes the average wait time of callers to rise.
C. The ongoing training does not cover all possible caller problems.
D. The proportion of repeat callers to the help line is low, so callers have no way of observing that service agent knowledge has improved.
E. The company providing the help line has lost customers due to their dissatisfaction with the quality of service, both before and after the regular training began.

OA : B

However I have selected C. B is not at all making any sense to me. it will probably increase the time to solve a problem but how come it is blocking them to solve this problem??? while C is explaining clearly that why they can't solve problem, cause they have not been educated about it.

Please help.

gkkk wrote:Callers to a customer help line frequently complained about the quality of service. Seventy percent of survey respondents cited the services agents' lack of knowledge of how to solve the problems they were calling about. To address the problem, management decided that each service agent should go through regular training. Each agent spent half a day each week in sessions covering how to respond to callers' problems. Nevertheless, after three months of training, the rate of caller complaints has not decreased.

Which of the following, if true, most helps to explain why the training failed to achieve its goal?
A. The training program created significant additional cost in running the help line.
B. Taking service agents out of the group answering calls at any given time causes the average wait time of callers to rise.
C. The ongoing training does not cover all possible caller problems.
D. The proportion of repeat callers to the help line is low, so callers have no way of observing that service agent knowledge has improved.
E. The company providing the help line has lost customers due to their dissatisfaction with the quality of service, both before and after the regular training began.

OA : B

However I have selected C. B is not at all making any sense to me. it will probably increase the time to solve a problem but how come it is blocking them to solve this problem??? while C is explaining clearly that why they can't solve problem, cause they have not been educated about it.

Please help.

Consider simple examples to illustrate. Let's think about B first. Imagine there are normally 10 agents. If, say, 7 of them are in training, you'd be left with a mere 3 agents left to take calls. Even if those 3 are very good, this is going to slow things down dramatically, and customers will be unhappy with the service quality. Looks pretty good.

Now consider C. Just because the training doesn't cover all potential problems, doesn't mean it isn't effective. If, for example, the training addressed 98% of potential problems, it's fair to consider this training effective. Remember, the goal is to increase the quality of service, not to solve every possible problem imaginable.

Hi David,

Thanks for your reply. It says here "Each agent spent half a day each week in sessions covering how to respond to callers' problems", Will it be really a problem if you are giving half a day out of 7 days, That too not at same time. it could be that you can attend it anytime. Also isn't it evident that better training means better quality, cause you will do your work with excellence. training could cover how to solve problems fast? if they do they don't need to take group calls. which will eliminate B also.

gkkk wrote:Hi David,

Thanks for your reply. It says here "Each agent spent half a day each week in sessions covering how to respond to callers' problems", Will it be really a problem if you are giving half a day out of 7 days, That too not at same time. it could be that you can attend it anytime. Also isn't it evident that better training means better quality, cause you will do your work with excellence. training could cover how to solve problems fast? if they do they don't need to take group calls. which will eliminate B also.

That's not an unreasonable response, but think of it this way: we know three things to start - 1) callers frequently complain; 2) in response, the service agents have to do more training and 3) the complain rate still does not decrease. We have to account for why the complain rate doesn't decrease, despite the supposed benefit that service agents would derive from additional training. In other words, if the training provides a benefit, and complain rates still don't decrease, there must be some negative that undermines the benefit. That's what we're looking for in an answer: some negative associated with training. If we take B at face value, the training will cause wait times to go up. (We may not have thought this outcome likely, but we're not asked to evaluate which outcome is likely. We're asked to determine which scenario, if true, could account for the discrepancy in the argument.) Increased wait times is a definite negative that could offset whatever positive the training provided.