Only reducing the number of customers at the Fairhaven branch of the

Question

Only reducing the number of customers at the Fairhaven branch of the Tax Center by 15 percent will allow the center to reduce the significant waiting time that many of their clients experience. The Tax Center in Brookerton, 30 miles away, would—if expanded—provide an attractive alternative for 30 percent of the customers currently using the Fairhaven Tax Center. Nevertheless, the Tax Center CEO has rejected the proposal to expand the Brookerton branch, claiming that it will not end the long wait times at the Fairhaven branch.

Which of the following, if true, most helps to justify the CEO's position?

A. Sending more customers to Brookerton would increase traffic along the roads to that city, making the driving time longer.

B. The Olivera branch, close to the Fairhaven branch, would be a closer option than Brookerton for 35 percent of customers who now use the Fairhaven branch.

C. Brookerton is a small town in which numerous other local businesses would benefit from increased business at the Brookerton Tax Center.

D. Customers who have stood in line for more than five minutes are likely to spend significantly less money on services than those who do not have to wait.

E. Sixty-five percent of Fairhaven customers cite the dedicated staff as the primary reason for returning to that Tax Center.

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pappal · Answer

IMO E
the liked dedication of the staff of Fairhaven center by customers will drive them to return to the same.

Bunuel · Answer

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION

Answer = (E).  With all other factors equal, it would make sense that 30 percent of customers could transfer from Fairhaven to Brookerton, the situation put to the CEO. The CEO does not think that this will work, so we need to find a reason why customers wouldn’t want to leave Fairhaven for Brookerton. (E) makes sense; customers who are happy with the service provided by their advisors at the Fairhaven branch might not want to move their accounts to a new branch. The average time that they have spent with their advisors suggests that this may be the case.

(A)  It’s not the CEO’s business if traffic increases (A), nor do we know if the driving time would become long enough to outweigh the benefits of a shorter wait time in line. There isn’t enough information in this statement for it to be a good justification for the CEO’s position.

B)  Even if the Olivera branch is a closer choice for some Fairhaven customers (B), this isn’t sufficient justification for the CEO’s belief that there will still be long wait times at Fairhaven. If anything, a nearby branch would suggest that the Fairhaven wait times would decrease if customers were diverted, not remain the same.

C)  While it’s nice that other businesses in Brookerton would benefit (C), this isn’t a compelling justification for the CEO’s belief that wait times would remain long in Fairhaven. Surely nobody would hate Brookerton businesses so much that they deliberately would avoid the Brookerton Tax Center branch.

D)  The fact that customers who spend a long time in line are less likely to spend more money (D) is a compelling reason for the CEO to try to cut wait times at Fairhaven. He doesn’t think this will happen by diverting customers to Brookerton, though, and this doesn’t provide sufficient justification for why that might be the case.

FAQ:  How can answer choice (E) be the right answer? If 65% of the customers aren’t willing to switch to a new branch, then 35% are willing to do so. That’s more than the 15% we need – so this doesn’t seem to justify the CEO’s position.

The paragraph tells us that the goal is to reduce the number of customers in the Fairhaven branch by 15%. One potential way to do this is to expand the tax center Brookertown. We know that this would be a convenient alternative for 30% of the Fairhaven customers. In other words, if the Brookertown center is expanded, 30% of the Fairhaven customers might go to Brookertown instead. That's great news, because 30% is much more than the 15% reduction that we're looking for! Answer E says:

Sixty-five percent of Fairhaven customers cite the dedicated staff as the primary reason for returning to that Tax Center.

So more than half of the Fairhaven customers really like the staff at Fairhaven. These customers would most likely NOT decide to move to Brookertown, where the staff is different. So more than half of the Fairhaven customers would probably not want to move to Brookertown.

Now, the passage suggests that only 30% of the Fairhaven customers would consider moving to Brookertown based on the location. This 30% is a subgroup of the entire group of Fairhaven customers.

According to choice E, more than half (i.e. 65%) of the entire group of customers like the staff at Fairhaven. It's very likely that this is also true of the 30% of customers who would consider moving to Brookertown based on the location. That is, of this "30% subgroup," it's likely that 65% like the staff at Fairhaven, and would therefore not want to move. If this is the case, less than half of the 30% of customers for which Brookertown is close enough would choose to go there. Less than half of 30% means less than 15%. So it's unlikely that the Fairhaven tax center would get the 15% reduction in customers that it's looking for! Therefore, this justifies the CEO's position.

Since the other statements are all less helpful than this one (or completely irrelevant) in supporting the position, answer (E) works best here. It's often easy to think of "what if..." scenarios in these questions in which we can discount answers, but just keep in mind that we're looking for the answer that most helps justify the argument, not the perfect support for it that discounts anything else.

VerbalBot · Answer

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Only reducing the number of customers at the Fairhaven branch of the

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