a little arguement isn`t that bad

The following appeared in a letter from the owner of the Sunnyside Towers apartment building to its manager.

“One month ago, all the showerheads on the first five floors of Sunnyside Towere modified to restrict the water flow to approximately 1/3 of its original force. Although actual readings of water usage before and after the adjustment are not yet available, the change will obviously result in a considerable savings for Sunnyside Corporation, since the corporation must pay for water each month. Except for a few complaints about low water pressure, no problems with showers have been reported since the adjustment. Clearly, restricting water flow throughout all the 20 floors of Sunnyside Towers will increase our profits further.”….

I SAY The thought of the owner that restricting the flow of water to increase saving and profit of the tower is not entirely logically convincing. First the argument assumes customer satisfaction can be fully measured by number complaints; in a world people sometimes prefer silence over complain… Second the argument never considered decreasing other costs of the company such as electricity, amendment costs etc..,. Finally the argument omits the importance of understanding baseline in the process of seeking change. Actually anyone who would want change must start from a point where he cannot accept the present situation and what is the present situation in this case? The writer doesn’t say.

Ultimately the argument might have been strengthened if it focused on minimizing other elemnets of the companies cost, and ways to increase its savings. It would also have been more appealing if it employed other tools for measuring customer satisfaction rather than simply accepting number of complaints reported as an index.