Telex Mobile Phone Corporation had experienced three straight years of

Question

Telex Mobile Phone Corporation had experienced three straight years of declining market share before its CEO decided to restructure the company. The customer service department was reorganized and given a larger budget and a new management team was brought in to increase the customer experience. After a year under the new structure, Telex’s market share has begun to increase, vindicating the CEO’s decision.

In order to evaluate whether the increase in market share was due to the CEO’s decision, it would be most useful to know which of the following:

A. What portion of the mobile phone market is now controlled by Telex Corporation?
B. Have Telex’s competitors restructured their companies as well?
C. Was the decision to bring in a new management team part of the CEO’s plan?
D. Do surveys of Telex’s former customers show that most of them were dissatisfied with the service they received?
E. Has Telex launched an advertising campaign promoting its new customer service department?

wadhwakaran · Answer

Premise:  TMPC's market share was declining for 3 straight years and CEO decided to restructure the company. Service department was reorganized and a new management team was brought in to increase the customer experience.

Conclusion:  TMPC's share has begun to increase

What if the previous customer base was not satisfied with the services they were getting. Then the reorganization of company will make their experience better as the services were improved. Thus, it accounts for increase in customer share. The argument stands
What if the previous customer base was satisfied with the services they were getting. Then the reorganization will not make the customer experience better and it does not account for increase in customer base. The argument breaks

A. What portion of the mobile phone market is now controlled by Telex Corporation? Incorrect it does not affect the argument
B. Have Telex’s competitors restructured their companies as well? Incorrect it does not affect the argument
C. Was the decision to bring in a new management team part of the CEO’s plan? Incorrect as answer to this does not affect the argument
D. Do surveys of Telex’s former customers show that most of them were dissatisfied with the service they received? Correct
E. Has Telex launched an advertising campaign promoting its new customer service department? Incorrect

winterschool · Answer

A. What portion of the mobile phone market is now controlled by Telex Corporation?

not helpful to identify how CEO's decision leads to increase market share

B. Have Telex’s competitors restructured their companies as well?

irrelevant

C. Was the decision to bring in a new management team part of the CEO’s plan?

already know about it from argument

D. Do surveys of Telex’s former customers show that most of them were dissatisfied with the service they received?

how past customers experience helpful to identify the increase of market share

E. Has Telex launched an advertising campaign promoting its new customer service department?

yes, if this is true we can say market share increase is not for restructure customer service department. it is for advertisement

sony1000 · Answer

Nothing is said about current customer's satisfaction regarding statement on answer D.

venkateshradiant · Answer

option A seems to affect the argument in my opinion, what if the total market for the mobile phones decreased in the last year and there is no change in the market share of telex. this would lead to increase in the market share.

gaurikhanna17 · Answer

Bunuel  can you please provide the correct explanation for this question :
Telex Mobile Phone Corporation had experienced three straight years of declining market share before its CEO decided to restructure the company. The customer service department was reorganized and given a larger budget and a new management team was brought in to increase the customer experience. After a year under the new structure, Telex’s market share has begun to increase, vindicating the CEO’s decision.

In order to evaluate whether the increase in market share was due to the CEO’s decision, it would be most useful to know which of the following:

A. What portion of the mobile phone market is now controlled by Telex Corporation?
B. Have Telex’s competitors restructured their companies as well?
C. Was the decision to bring in a new management team part of the CEO’s plan?
D. Do surveys of Telex’s former customers show that most of them were dissatisfied with the service they received?
E. Has Telex launched an advertising campaign promoting its new customer service department?

Thank you

guddo · Answer

Telex Mobile Phone Corporation had experienced three straight years of declining market share before its CEO decided to restructure the company. The customer service department was reorganized and given a larger budget and a new management team was brought in to increase the customer experience. After a year under the new structure, Telex’s market share has begun to increase, vindicating the CEO’s decision. 
 
In order to evaluate whether the increase in market share was due to the CEO’s decision, it would be most useful to know which of the following:

The argument says Telex changed its customer-service structure, and then its market share increased.  The key question  is whether the earlier market-share decline was actually connected to poor customer service. If customers were leaving because of bad service, then the CEO’s decision is a much stronger explanation for the  increase .

(A) What portion of the mobile phone market is now controlled by Telex Corporation?

This is not very useful. The exact current market share does not tell us whether the increase was caused by the CEO’s restructuring.

(B) Have Telex’s competitors restructured their companies as well?

This is only weakly relevant. Competitors’ restructuring does not directly tell us why Telex’s market share increased.

(C) Was the decision to bring in a new management team part of the CEO’s plan?

This is not central. The passage already presents the new management team as part of the new structure. The main issue is whether the changes caused the market-share increase.

(D) Do surveys of Telex’s former customers show that most of them were dissatisfied with the service they received?

This is correct. If many former customers were dissatisfied with Telex’s service, then improving customer service could plausibly explain why market share began to recover. If former customers were not dissatisfied with service, then the CEO’s customer-service changes are less likely to explain the increase.

(E) Has Telex launched an advertising campaign promoting its new customer service department?

This may matter somewhat, but it is not as direct as (D). Advertising could help explain the increase, but the deeper question is whether customer service was the problem the CEO needed to fix.

Answer: (D)

AllisonBell · Answer

Hi!

Wanted to chime in to respond to a couple of the questions and comments.

Regarding answer choice (A), I agree that it would be helpful to know if the total market decreased over the past year. If Telex Mobile’s sales simply remained stable during that decrease, it would provide a competing explanation to the conclusion.

But choice (A) doesn’t really provide information about the total market changes over the past year. It just asks what portion of the market is now controlled by Telex Mobile. If we were to answer this question, we’d get a number like “30% of the market is controlled by Telex” or “10% of the market,” but we wouldn’t know anything about market size.

Regarding choice (D), I agree — it would be even more helpful to know if customer satisfaction improved. But the correct answer here only has to be the  most helpful  in evaluating –  it doesn’t have to provide every possible piece of information necessary to determine whether the conclusion is true.  Knowing whether customers were previously dissatisfied is an important piece of the puzzle.

To see why this choice works, it’s helpful to u se the opposite answers test for Evaluate questions. If I answer this question in opposite ways, would it have different impacts on the conclusion?

If we say no, surveys do not show old customers were dissatisfied with service, that weakens the argument that the CEO’s changes, which were focused on customer service, had a positive impact on the company’s growth, since they were addressing a problem that didn’t exist.

If we say yes, surveys do show customers were dissatisfied with service, that makes it more likely that the CEO’s changes hit the spot and made a difference.

For more CR practice problems and explanations, check out ManhattanPrep’s  Free GMAT Starter Kit & QBank .

Best,

egmat · Answer

Hi gaurikhanna17,

Happy to lay this out cleanly. The key is to first pin down what kind of claim the argument is making.

The conclusion is a  cause-and-effect  claim: the market share went up  because of  the CEO's decision to overhaul customer service. So to  evaluate  it, the most useful question is one that tests whether that specific cause is really what drove the rebound.

Why D is the one

The whole restructuring was aimed at one thing - fixing the  customer experience / service . So the real question is:  was bad service actually the reason customers were leaving in the first place?

- If former customers say they  were dissatisfied with the service  - then fixing service plausibly explains the recovery. The argument holds.
- If they left for some  other  reason (price, coverage, phone quality) - then improving service wasn't the cause, and the CEO's decision doesn't get the credit.

Either answer to D swings the conclusion one way or the other. That is exactly what an "evaluate" question wants - information whose  yes/no  changes your judgment of the causal link.

Why the ones people debated fall short

-  A (current market portion):  As one poster wondered, this just tells us  how much  share Telex has now, not  why  it rose. The size of the slice doesn't explain the cause. Not useful.
-  E (advertising campaign):  Tempting, but the ad campaign is  promoting the new service department  - it's part of the  same  restructuring effort, not a clean rival cause. It doesn't isolate an alternative explanation the way D isolates whether service was ever the problem.

A quick way to feel the D logic: imagine a shop owner repaints the walls and then sales rise, and concludes the paint did it. The sharpest evaluating question is:  "Were customers ever staying away because of the old walls?"  If yes, paint helped; if they left over high prices, the paint is irrelevant. That's the exact move D makes here.

So the answer is  D .

Answer: D

Telex Mobile Phone Corporation had experienced three straight years of

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Telex Mobile Phone Corporation had experienced three straight years of

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