TOPIC: ARGUMENT121- The following is a memo from the president of Cyberell Computer Company.
"All of ourcustomer-service employees recently attended a two-day retreat during whichthey received retraining in effective customer service. Subsequently, Cyberell'semployee-performance study showed that the retreat benefited newemployees-those who have worked with Cyberell for less than two years-far morethan it did experienced employees. According to the study, after the retreatnew employees were able to handle an average of ten percent more calls perhour, and the total number of customer complaints about new employees ecreased, but experienced employees showed little improvement in these areas.Therefore, Cyberell should send only new employees to future retreats andshould use the resulting savings to double the length of the retreats so thatthe retreats will be more likely to yield optimum employee performance."
WORDS: 481 TIME: 0:30:00 DATE: 2007-3-18
In this statement, the speaker recommends that only fresh employees should be sent to receive retreat and the company should use the saving money to double the length of retreat to new personnel. To validate this conclusion, the author cites asurvey about the effect on certain fields of different employees after attending the retreat and assumes that these fields are crucial to the firm's development. Apparent reasonable and credible, none of them lend invulnerable support to the assertion.
To begin with, the speaker fails to rule out the reason why abilities on calling receiving efficiency or decrease in customer complaints are the most important factor tothe future of Cyber Computer Company (CCC). There are other alternatives as the computer company may badly need their stuffs manage skills in designing advanced devices and putting them into manufacture. In other words, service aspects which may include taking customers' telephone calls are not of significance tothe core value of CCC. In this sense, lessons on new technologies about computer hardware production might be main parts of the retreat and anyone working onthese fields is required to receive this program in order to keep pace with the progress of science advancement and eventually, improve efficiency in daily working time. Finally, the speaker has to illustrate the content of the retreat to prove his claim founded.
Even assuming that this retreat only teaches employees how to tackle with problems in daily communication or supplying common service, the recommendation that doubling retreat time certainly double optimum influence is lack of support. Employees attending on the retreat may learn several shortcuts to talk to their customers who may be in temper. However, to largely enhance the ability to deal with those problems may lie in other aspects like practice or even failure experience which do not included in the retreat. Thus, the previous period ofthe retreat might be pretty enough to illustrate such skills and doubling time would only decrease time in experience.
Furthermore, the survey in the statement is not sufficient evidence to support the claim. Those new employees taking the survey may be more willing to receive those lessons in order to quickly adapt to new circumstance while older ones may be satisfied with their situation and are negative to attend retraining program. Also, It is entirely possible that fewer experience ones working in those fields in thesurvey, and thus they may show little upgrading after retreating because theyare of weak capability in those jobs. Finally, the speaker's claim are not trustful unless the investigation proved to be enough scientific.
In sum, more evidence is needed to figure out the details of the retreat and thus one could decide whether a longer time would be beneficial to employee's performance. Additional, a series of investigations are required to definitely reveal theeffect on different groups of people after taking retraining programs.