Argument 156

TOPIC: ARGUMENT156 - The following is taken from an advertisement placed in a weekly business magazine by the Dickens Academy.
"We distributed a survey to senior management at International Mega-Publishing, Inc. The result of the survey clearly indicates that many employees were well prepared in business knowledge and computer skills, but lacked interpersonal skills to interact gracefully with customers. International Mega-Publishing decided to improve customer satisfaction by sending their newly hired employees to our one-day seminars. Since taking advantage of our program, International Mega-Publishing has seen a sharp increase in sales, an indication that the number of their disgruntled customers has declined significantly. Your company should hire Dickens and let us turn every employee into an ambassador for your company."

WORDS: 444 TIME: 00:30:00 DATE: 2008-4-7 21:39:01

In this argument, the speaker advocates that each company should employ Dickens Academy to train the company's staffers and will no doubt increase efficiency of crews as a result. To substantiate the culmination, the speaker chiefly cites an example of International Mega-Publishing, Inc. which has yet sent its employee to Dickens for a vocational training. However, close scrutiny of evidence unveils that this argument actually suffers from several critical blemishes, as discussed below.

To begin with, the arguer fails to provide any practical evidence to demonstrate that the result of the survey, conducted by Dickens Academy, to senior management at International Mega-Publishing, Inc. is credible and convincing. All we know from this statement is solely represented by the speaker himself or herself. Without sufficient information about methods used in that survey, the outcomes of which is lame and unconvincing. Moreover, the participants in the study are senior managers that are quite differing from newly hired employees. Therefore, even though the conclusion of the study is cogent, it should not be generalized to fresh staff, and the behavior of Mega-Publishing is ridiculous.

Secondly, a sharp increase in Mega-Publishing's sales does not necessarily imply that the number of their disgruntled customers has declined considerably. The arguer mistakenly assumes a correlation amounts to a cause-and0-effect nexus. There are a myriad of potential factors that would cause increased profits of Mega-Publishing. A possible reason is that quality of products published by Mega corporation has greatly ameliorated; thus clientele are much more inclined to purchase books of Mega than other enterprises'. Or, it is highly probable that cost of manufacturing books has been sharply decreased and a low price of books is made possible, which is the actual reason attracting people.

Thirdly, the speaker does not state any statistics of disgruntled consumers either, which further undermines the culmination suggested in this argument. Perhaps customers who are unsatisfied with products of Mega are relatively a small group. Moreover, what purchasers are malcontent with are not conspicuously alleged. Therefore the possibility that the content of books is the actual factor contributable to people's dissatisfaction does exist. Without considering and obviating those potential causal factors, the arguer is too cursory to arrive at his or her ultimateness.

In summary, this argument indeed fails to convince us in many aspects, as discussed above. To solidify the verdict, the speaker would have to demonstrate that newly hired employees of Mega-Publishing lack the basic skills of communicating with clientele, and further prove that the reason why consumers are dissatisfied is just the performance of crew who work for Mega. Consequently, we need more detailed information to better evaluate the thread of reasoning in this argument.