Analysis of an argument

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Analysis of an argument

by ragskashyap » Mon Mar 09, 2009 7:05 pm
"During a two week study of postal operations, the presto city post office handled about twice as many items as the Lento city post office, even though the cities are about the same size. Moreover, customer satisfaction appears to be higher in presto city, since the study found fewer complaints regarding the presto city post office Therefor the postmasters at these two offices should exchange assignments; the presto city postmaster will solve the problems of inefficiency and customer dissatisfaction at the Lento city while the Lento city postmaster learns firsthand the superior methods of Presto City"

The authors reasoning here is flawed by not considering numerous aspects of customer satisfaction. The author assumes that the main category to rate customer satisfaction is based on the number of complaints the post office receives and the amount of work that the post office completes.

First the author is trying to compare the customer satisfaction of two post offices based on number of complaints received. For example the author does not consider any other criteria such as handling of the job itself. How many letters were handled correctly without any issues. There is no report on how the job was completed by Presto city. Even though that city handled twice the amount of work there is no explaining on the quality of the work itself.

Second there is no mentioning of what type of complaints were received by the post office. The Lento city post office might be slow due to the fact that they were doing the job right the first time and without any errors. Basing the success only on the amount of work done might not be sufficient.

Third the nature of the work itself in these two post offices are not reasoned well. What if the Presto city post office did get a technology upgrade and due to which they are performing much better than the Lento city post office.

Finally the author is assuming that if the post masters work in the other post office they might tend to solve the inefficiency and customer dissatisfaction. There is no mentioning of how the post masters would do this. If the author clarifies all the reasoning mentioned above then the argument here would be more plausible.
Source: — GMAT Essays (AWA) |

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