GMAT Reading Comprehension
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Source: OG11th
Level: 3
Seeking a competitive advantage, some professional service firms (for example, firms providing advertising accounting, or health care services) have considered offering unconditional guarantees of satisfaction. Such guarantees specify what clients can expect and what the firm will do if it fails to fullfill these expectations. Particularly with first-time clients, an unconditional guarantee can be an effective marketing tool if the client is very cautious, the firms fees are high, the negative consequences of bad service are grave, or business is difficult to obtain through referrals and word-of-mouth.
However, an unconditional guarantee can sometimes hinder marketing efforts. With its implication that failure is possible, the guarantee may, paradoxically, cause clients to doubt the service firm's ability to deliver the promised level of service. It may conflict with a firm's desire to appear sophisticated, or may even suggest that a firm is begging for business. In legal and health care services, it may mislead clients by suggesting that lawsuits or medical procedures will have guaranteed outcomes.Indeed, professional service firms with outstanding reputations and performance to match have little to gain from offering unconditional guarantees. And any firm that e commitment to quality of service is merely employing a potentially costly implements an unconditional guarantee without undertaking a commensurate implements an unconditional guarantee without undertaking a commensurate commitment to quality of service is merely employing a potentially costly marketing gimmick.
The passage's description of the issue raised by unconditional guarantees for health care or legal services most clearly implies that which of the following is true?
- A The legal and medical professions have standards of practice that would be violated by attempts to fulfill such unconditional guarantees.
- B The result of a lawsuit or medical procedure cannot necessarily be determined in advance by the professionals handling a client's case.
- C The dignity of the legal and medical professions is undermined by any attempts at marketing of professional services, including unconditional guarantees.
- D Clients whose lawsuits or medical procedures have unsatisfactory outcomes cannot be adequately compensated by financial settlements alone.
- E Predicting the monetary cost of legal or health care services is more difficult than predicting the monetary cost of other types of professional services.