Customers of ZQX financial services often call their financial

Question

Customers of ZQX financial services often call their financial advisers at ZQX for help in understanding the quarterly personal financial statements ZQX sends to customers. For years, there have been consistent complaints about the difficulty of understanding the statements. Despite this, and despite a new company initiative to improve customer service, ZQX has no plans to alter its statements.

Which of the following, if true, would best explain ZQX's reluctance to alter its statements?

A. A well respected industry survey consistently ranks ZQX as of the the best financial services companies in the nation.

B. ZQX's financial advisers are very effective at answering customers questions about their financial statements.

C. Customers who have regular contact with their financial advisers are tend to be willing to invest more money with those advisers.

D. Investors find the quarterly financial statements issued by other financial services companies less confusing that those issued by ZQX.

E. The company initiative to improve was prompted by complaints regarding certain advisers mishandling of customers fund.

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C

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AnkurGMAT20 · Answer

Why option c is correct here and not b? Is C saying that since customers are investing more that means they are able to understand the statements?

sachi-in · Answer

The first step would be to reduce the overly complex test and summarize :

Customers are fed complex reports by Company. Complex reports need Company's service to interpret those reports. 
Company is improving other aspect of services but not making report easier to interpret.

Why ? Ofcouse it means they are aware of the complexity and it serves some purpose so they want to keep it that way !

We have to find the option that gives us the purpose.

a) A well respected industry survey consistently ranks ZQX as of the the best financial services companies in the nation.
  Maybe it is so the best company but does it say why the report has to be made complex ? No

b) ZQX's financial advisers are very effective at answering customers questions about their financial statements.
  Maybe they have great service but does it say why the report has to be made complex ? No 
We may assume that it is a strategy by the company to make customers avail their service and show off their excellent efficiency, but that's lame because the task of financial advisers is not to interpret reports, they may be better utilized in something else. 
Kept this option in mind but C gives a upfront reason with no much assumptions required.

c) Customers who have regular contact with their financial advisers are tend to be willing to invest more money with those advisers.
  Maybe it is true does it say why the report has to be made complex ? Yes!

d) Investors find the quarterly financial statements issued by other financial services companies less confusing that those issued by ZQX.
  Maybe it is other companies keep it simple but does it say why the report has to be made complex ? No

e) The company initiative to improve was prompted by complaints regarding certain advisers mishandling of customers fund.
  This is just out of context

AnkurGMAT20

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

Customers of ZQX financial services often call their financial advisers at ZQX for help in understanding the quarterly personal financial statements ZQX sends to customers. For years, there have been consistent complaints about the difficulty of understanding the statements. Despite this, and despite a new company initiative to improve customer service, ZQX has no plans to alter its statements.

Which of the following, if true, would best explain ZQX's reluctance to alter its statements?

a) A well respected industry survey consistently ranks ZQX as of the the best financial services companies in the nation.

b) ZQX's financial advisers are very effective at answering customers questions about their financial statements.

c) Customers who have regular contact with their financial advisers are tend to be willing to invest more money with those advisers.

d) Investors find the quarterly financial statements issued by other financial services companies less confusing that those issued by ZQX.

e) The company initiative to improve was prompted by complaints regarding certain advisers mishandling of customers fund.

The passage starts off with a company that provides hard-to-understand personal financial statements to its customers. There have been complaints for years but even though the company is on a customer service improvement drive, it has no intention to change these statements.

We're asked to look for why the company wants to keep these hard-to-understand statements.

(C) is the answer. If something increases the chances of a company making more money, the company is probably going to continue doing it. Ironically, these hard-to-understand statements bring more money in because they result in clients contacting their financial advisers more (to understand the statements), a byproduct of more contact being that the clients "tend" to invest more with these advisers.

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fuucckk · Answer

Looks like a bad question. "regular contact" and call do not mean the same thing. B) is a better choice

guddo · Answer

I’d say the distinction is fair, but it does not make (B) better.

(B) explains why ZQX can handle the complaints: advisers answer questions well. But it does not explain why ZQX has  no plans to alter  the confusing statements.

(C) gives ZQX a business reason to keep them: confusing statements lead customers to contact advisers, and repeated contact can become  regular contact  that increases investment.

So “call” and “regular contact” are not identical, but (C) still explains the reluctance better than (B).

SageGMATtutor · Answer

Customers of ZQX financial services often call their financial advisers at ZQX for help in understanding the quarterly personal financial statements ZQX sends to customers. For years, there have been consistent complaints about the difficulty of understanding the statements. Despite this, and despite a new company initiative to improve customer service, ZQX has no plans to alter its statements.

Which of the following, if true, would best explain ZQX's reluctance to alter its statements?

A. A well respected industry survey consistently ranks ZQX as of the the best financial services companies in the nation.

B. ZQX's financial advisers are very effective at answering customers questions about their financial statements.

C. Customers who have regular contact with their financial advisers are tend to be willing to invest more money with those advisers.

D. Investors find the quarterly financial statements issued by other financial services companies less confusing that those issued by ZQX.

E. The company initiative to improve was prompted by complaints regarding certain advisers mishandling of customers fund.

This CR problem is an "explain" problem, meaning that we need to find an explanation for a surprising fact. Note that, unlike most CR problems, this problem does not contain an argument - it's not providing evidence to support a conclusion. Use this knowledge to help yourself analyze the passage: find the surprise: what would we expect to happen? And what actually happened? Before even looking at the answer choices, I recommend clarifying what the correct answer must do:

We would expect ZQY to alter its financial statements. After all, it's trying to improve its customer service, and its financial statements have been criticised for being hard to understand. The surprise is: why didn't ZQX make its financial statements easier to understand?

It's important to be open-minded here, as there are many possible explanations. If we're reading in an active and engaged way, then some possible explanations may occur to us, such as something to do with regulations, or something to do with costs. However, it's important to be open-minded here, as there are many possible explanations and we don't know which direction the correct answer will take. Narrowing down to one line of thinking too early is a common mistake in solving CR problems.

As you eliminate answers, repeat what the correct answer must do. I find this a really effective way of keeping focused. Repeat: I'm looking for a reason why they didn't change their financial statements, even though they're trying to improve customer service.

A They want to improve their customer service. It doesn't matter if they're ranked high or low at the moment.

B This is a very tempting answer: it suggests that there's not really a problem at all, as the financial advisors can explain things. However, keep in mind that the company wants to improve its customer service. Just because the financial advisors can answer the complaints doesn't help this.

C (correct answer) This provides the necessary reason: they actually don't want to improve customer service in this particular area, because they make money from having confusing financial statements. There's another motive at play: profit. Companies sometimes do apparently illogical things because it increases their profit. This is the kind of common sense background knowledge that we're expected to use to solve CR problems, and there are many other CR problems that involve similar reasoning.

D This comparison is irrelevant, because we're looking for a reason why company ZQX wants to improve its customer service, i.e. relative to its own customer service, not relative to other companies.

E This is an irrelevant detail and doesn't relate to the company's decision not to change its financial statements.

For every problem that you solve and review, try to find some useful takeaway. Perhaps it's the way that "explain" probelms work; perhaps it's the move of clarifying what the correct answer must do (and then repeating that to yourself) before reading the answer choices; perhaps it's the importance of considering profit and cost when analyzing business behaviour; perhaps it's awareness of the common answer trap of making irrelevant comparisons.

Customers of ZQX financial services often call their financial

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Customers of ZQX financial services often call their financial

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