X$-$com Software operates a $24-$hour helpline to answer customer questions. To control the cost of operations, the company compares the actual time required to answer customer questions with a standard time of $5$ minutes per call.

In the past six months, the number of calls has decreased from about $8,000$ calls to $7,000$ calls. And, the average time per call has decreased from $7$ minutes to $4\mathrm{.}98$ minutes. However, a software magazine has recently given the company a poor evaluation in an article that reviewed the support provided software companies to customers.

Questions:

Does the favorable variance for response time indicate good performance?

What might account for the improvement in performance related to time per call and the poor rating of customer support?