Omar Aramburu

February 12th, 2015

Case: Bellboy [CN #4]
There are many issues with the survey Southwestern Bell Telephone company sent out to
see if there was interest for the Bellboy product. To begin, the company chose to interview
individuals in charge of the communication division of businesses. The problem with
interviewing these people is that they are not a good representative sample for those who might
use the Bellboy. Because the people they interviewed are the individuals in charge of
communication needs, they would not require the Bellboy and might not know of employees
who might use it. This is especially the case for the people who did not know what the Bellboy
service was. Even though it is explained to them, they might not realize the applications it could
have to their business and for their employees and not show interest towards the service. This
might provide inaccurate responses to the survey to see if there is an interest in the Bellboy
service and downplay the need for it among businesses.
Furthermore, during the interview, the interviewee asked if the monthly rate was
"reasonable" from the interviewer's standpoint. This is a problem because asking whether the
price was reasonable would vary from business to business and person to person as everyone has
a different definition of reasonable. Although it does ask from their standpoint, asking a big
business and a small business could create a great range of answers and so asking if the monthly
fee were affordable for the company would be a better way to approach the question, or asking
them how much they think the business would pay for the monthly rate. Another issue is asking
how many employees have jobs that would benefit from Bellboy. The problems with this
question are 1) It would be difficult to give an accurate number, or even an estimate of how
many people would benefit from Bellboy as they would not know the specific needs of those
employees 2) the number would vary depending on how large the company was. For example, a

company with 100 employees might say 20 while a company with 10 might say 2, thus skewing
results.
Similarly, the questions asking how many employees would be possible users of the
service falls into the same trap. The person being asked might not know how many employees
would use Bellboy, and depending on the size of the company, the results will vary and be
skewed. The survey does ask how many employees are at the company, but the tables and results
do not reflect an accurate representation. Instead of creating a table with "one employee, two
employees" etc., tables showing a percentage of employees that would benefit over total
employees would have been a better way to show the results of the survey. This way, the
company would be able to compare the percentage of employees who would use the service and
it would be more accurate to compare these results.
Another issue the survey has is, as stated in the memorandum, the three prices asked
during the survey could potentially not even be offered. Thus, using the data from this survey
will be inaccurate if the company issues a higher/lower price for Bellboy and also create
inaccurate forecasts for Bellboy. Although the company does state this survey is only to see if
business were interested in the Bellboy service, it might mislead some businesses to think that
the service will be offered in one of those ranges, so if the price is higher, they might be less
willing to purchase the service.