Bank customers today expect excellent service - shorter lines, cordial

Question

Bank customers today expect excellent service - shorter lines, cordial service providers, online access to accounts, etc. Each advance in the quality of service further raises customer expectations. Any bank which is satisfied with its current quality of service will soon find that its customers are not. Bank4U has recently announced that meeting or exceeding customer expectations is its goal.

Which of the following can properly be inferred from the statement above?

Which of the following can properly be inferred from the statement above?

A. Bank4U was among the first banks to introduce online services.

B. Bank4U's goal will be met only if it continuously improves its quality of service.

C. Bank4U's customers are currently satisfied with its quality of service.

D. Bank2B will attract more customers if it also adopts Bank4U's goal.

E. If a bank is satisfied with its quality of service, the quality of service is more likely to decline.

Bunuel · Accepted Answer

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION

Bank customers today expect excellent service - shorter lines, cordial service providers, online access to accounts, etc. Each advance in the quality of service further raises customer expectations. Any bank which is satisfied with its current quality of service will soon find that its customers are not. Bank4U has recently announced that meeting or exceeding customer expectations is its goal.

Which of the following can properly be inferred from the statement above?

Which of the following can properly be inferred from the statement above?

A. Bank4U was among the first banks to introduce online services.

Incorrect.

This is an Inference question, so the argument is comprised of premises only, on which basis you are asked to draw a conclusion:

Premise A: bank customers expect excellent service
 +
Premise B: every time a bank improves its service, it raises the expectations of the customers
 +
Premise C: when a bank thinks its service is good its customers will soon complain that there are flaws in the service
 +
Premise D: Bank4U's goal is to meet or exceed the service standard expected by customers
 =
Conclusion: ?

This answer choice provides new information rather than a conclusion based on the given argument. While this new information is relevant to the topic that is being discussed, it cannot be the conclusion since it is not drawn on the basis of the exiting premises.

B. Bank4U's goal will be met only if it continuously improves its quality of service.

The argument presents a kind of infinite loop: if the service is improved, the customers want more; when the customers get more, they are soon unsatisfied and demand further improvements etc.

This answer choice concludes that, based on this loop, the bank will have to continuously (and endlessly) improve its quality of service.

C. Bank4U's customers are currently satisfied with its quality of service.

Incorrect.

This is an Inference question, so the argument is comprised of premises only, on which basis you are asked to draw a conclusion:

Premise A: bank customers expect excellent service
 +
Premise B: every time a bank improves its service, it raises the expectations of the customers
 +
Premise C: when a bank thinks its service is good its customers will soon complain that there are flaws in the service
 +
Premise D: Bank4U's goal is to meet or exceed the service standard expected by customers
 =
Conclusion: ?

This answer choice presents additional information rather than draw a conclusion based on the premises in the argument. The argument provides no information about the level of satisfaction of Bank4U's customers. It merely states Bank4U's goal regarding that level of satisfaction.

D. Bank2B will attract more customers if it also adopts Bank4U's goal.

Incorrect.

Bank2B is not mentioned in any of the premises of the argument so a statement about Bank2B cannot be the argument's conclusion. The argument also provides no data about how the customer satisfaction affects the number of customers a bank attracts.

E. If a bank is satisfied with its quality of service, the quality of service is more likely to decline.

Incorrect.

The conclusion presented in this answer choice goes too far beyond the premises in the argument. We do not have any information to make such a judgement about a bank's satisfaction of its own customer services.

sumitkrocks · Answer

Option B indicates Continuous improvement is one of the necessary conditions if on wants to meet goal.

Best in the lot.

B should be correct.

Sumi1010 · Answer

This is an inference problem. The answer choice MUST BE true as per the information provided. 
Watch on the two statements 
 1.Advance in the quality of service  further  raises  customer expectation.  
2. Bank4U has recently announced that meeting or exceeding  customer expectations  is its goal.

Thus, we can clearly infer that the catching "customer expectation" is going to be a continuous process.

A. Bank4U was among  the first banks  to introduce online services.
 We don't know if Bank4U was among the 1st banks to do something. 
B. Bank4U's goal will be met  only if  it continuously improves its quality of service.
 Correct. This is what we could deduce from the statements given.
 Note:  The broad statements are more likely to accommodate the various cases and hence are often correct.
However, this is an example to demonstrate that not all the hard-toned choices are incorrect in inference based problems.  
C. Bank4U's customers are  currently satisfied  with its quality of service.
 The all that we know is that Bank4U aims for meeting the customer expectation. What's the current situation is something we don't know. 
D. Bank2B will attract  more customers  if it also adopts Bank4U's goal.
 We can't infer it unless we assume by our own. 
E. If a bank is satisfied with its quality of service, the quality of service is more  likely to decline. 
 This is something we can't infer.

IMO  B

AlexTheTrainer · Answer

Gotta be careful with non-Official material. Fortunately, this was posted by Bunuel, who knows his stuff.

GMAT CR features two (not one) types of Inference questions, just like the LSAT. Quoting the writers of the LSAT regarding the two types (unfortunately, GMAT writers don’t have anything remotely similar):

1. “Some questions test or ability to identify what follows logically from certain evidence or information. For these questions you will be presented with information that provides conclusive support for one of the answer choices.”

2. “Some questions ask you to identify a position that is supported by a body of evidence, but not supported conclusively.”

Why does this matter? Because the first type represents deductive reasoning (evidence leading to a conclusion that must be true), meaning that the correct answer will never introduce information not already contained in the stimulus. The second type represents inductive reasoning (evidence leading to a conclusion that is probably true), meaning that the correct answer can introduce information not already container the stimulus, so long as such information is directly related.

How to tell the difference between the two? Inductively reasoned inference question types will use the word “most” in the stem. For example, “most strongly supports” or “most strongly supported by”.

Deductively reasoned inference question types will NOT use the word “most”. Typically these questions will ask “which of the following must be true” and more rarely, will use phrases such as “properly inferred” - like Bunuel’s post.

Note how the four wrong answers all introduce information not contained in the stimulus. Only one answer (B) does not do so, making it the correct answer.

Not trying to make trouble, but a lot of folks in GMAT/LSAT prep are unaware of the difference between these two Inference question types. While the difference conceptually is minimal, the type of logic being tested between the two is significantly different. The result is that one Inference p question type does not allow outside information in the correct answer while the other type does allow such outside information.

Official material will always be consistent with the assertions above. Cannot say the same for non-official material. Although as previously indicated, Bunuel knows his stuff.

Posted from my mobile device

kantapong · Answer

Prompt: Inference
1) Bank 4U goal: meeting or exceed customer expectation
2) Each advance in quality of services will increase customer expectation.
3) If bank is satisfied with current quality of service, then the customer will not be.
Infer: If bank4U goal is to meet or exceed customer expectation, it must not be satisfied with current quality of service. (Combine 1 & 3)

A. Bank4U is among the first banks ... (no info about history here)
B. Bank4U goal will be met only if it continuously improves its quality of service (very similar to prediction)
C. Bank4U customers are currently satisfied with ... (no info about customers of Bank4U, only customers in general)
D. Bank2B will attract more customers ... (no info about the result)
E. If a bank is satisfied with its quality of service, the quality of service is more likely to decline. (good trap answer: the implication is only that the customers will not be satisfied, but about the quality of services, we do not know)

Ans = B

asishron29181 · Answer

A inference question where we are not allowed to bring outside information. B can be inferred from the context of the passage.

Improving services ----> meeting customer expectations

B. Bank4U's goal will be met only if it continuously improves its quality of service.

IMO B

IanStewart · Answer

Bunuel is definitely amazing at GMAT Quant, but he and others post a lot of questions here from third-party sources. Some of those sources are much better than others. The poster of a question is not usually the author of the question, and even when the poster is great, the question's author might not be. That's important for test takers to know, so they know to what extent to trust questions posted in this forum. I've seen a lot of questions here with "no source" as the tag that have been culled from small company websites. This is one example I was just looking at: https://gmatclub.com/forum/economist-a- ... 63544.html If you do a quick google search, you'll find the original source (it's not a gmatclub-designed question). And it's clearly a low-quality question, from the standard of writing alone. My point is one for test takers: when deciding if a question deserves your attention, it's the original source of the question that matters, and not the identity of the question poster. To that end, it would be helpful, when questions posted here come from smaller third-party sites, if posters were more scrupulous about source attribution.

mSKR · Answer

If customers expectations continue to increase then bank needs to increase their quality of services
Whatever exceeds today may not exceeds tomorrow or just meet customer expections tomorrow

With this vier in mind

A: irrelevant
B: Whatever exceeds today may be only “ meet expectation” tomorrow , so bank needs to continuously improve to satisfy the customers/ meet the goal
C: Actually we are not sure whether they are currently satisfied or banks need to improve
D: Irrelevant Bank2B
E: it is not necessary that QoS may decline. It maybe possible that customers expectations may not meet.

B is the correct answer.

HarshaBujji · Answer

Which of the following can properly be  inferred  from the statement above?

Customer's expectations are always updated, Hence if Bank B meets customer's expectations by improving their service can't be idle, It need to increase it's services by targeting the updated customer's expectations .

A. Bank4U was among the first banks to introduce online services.   OFS

B. Bank4U's goal will be met only if it continuously improves its quality of service.   Yeah, Inline without thinking. It's a no-end process.

C. Bank4U's customers are currently satisfied with its quality of service.   It's their goal but we are not sure whether they met it/not.

D. Bank2B will attract more customers if it also adopts Bank4U's goal.   OFS

E. If a bank is satisfied with its quality of service, the quality of service is more likely to decline.   Irrelavent

IMO B

AlexTheTrainer · Answer

Rarely do I even comment on non-official material.

Also, don’t know how long it took you to completely master all of the official material, but it took 
me a lot longer than any sane person should study for the entire test. My point: there’s more than enough (GMAT only) official material for everyone. Using any other material is unnecessary at best and counterproductive at worst.

Posted from my mobile device

IanStewart · Answer

I agree, with a few exceptions. There's a big supply of official questions available now (things have changed a lot over the last few years), and there are so many official questions to use now that there isn't a good reason to use low-quality questions from another source. High-quality Verbal questions are so hard to write (I have yet to find an unofficial source of Verbal questions even close in quality to the official sources) that I agree with how you characterize things -- unofficial sources can even be counterproductive to study from. There are situations where I imagine they might help some test takers though; I could imagine certain SC drills might be useful early in prep for some people, for example. In Quant, things are a bit different. Test takers who don't have a long history with algebra often need more practice with fundamentals than the official questions provide (official questions aren't designed to help a test taker learn to add fractions or solve 2 equations / 2 unknowns problems, say). And there's still not an enormous supply of high-quality hard questions to practice from, so test takers near the top of the Q scale can benefit from unofficial sources that provide realistic difficult GMAT practice (Bunuel writes a lot of great questions, I've prepared a few very challenging problem sets, and Brent has posted some great hard questions to this forum, for example). A lot of "challenging" questions on the market aren't realistic, though. And for medium-level test takers in Quant, there are so many official questions to practice from, there's not much reason to look elsewhere.

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