| Course | MT221 Customer Service |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 2 |
| Paper type | Service encounter analysis |
| Length | About 860 words, 6 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | BS in Business Administration |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for MT221 Unit 2
Eight Days for One Windshield: A Unit 2 Service Encounter Analysis of Nine Contacts
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
MT221: Customer Service
Unit 2 Service Encounter Analysis
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Northline Auto Glass, the customer and every contact are composite and illustrative; the sources cited are real.
The Case
On a Monday morning in February, Denise Harmon, a composite nurse who commutes forty minutes each way, called Northline Auto Glass about a crack spreading across her windshield. Her car, a three-year-old crossover, has a rain sensor and a lane-keeping camera mounted behind the glass. She needed the work done at the hospital parking lot during a shift, since she could not take a day off. The glass was finally replaced eight days later, and the camera was recalibrated the following week at a dealer.
The Nine Contacts
Contact one was the booking call on Monday, six minutes long. The scheduler took her name, address, the car's make, model and year and booked a Wednesday window from 10 to 2 at the hospital lot. The scheduler's script did not ask for the vehicle identification number or whether the car had a camera or sensor behind the glass. The contact felt fine to the customer, but it failed in design, because the parts desk ordered the base windshield for that model.
Contact two was an automated text on Tuesday confirming the window. It succeeded.
Contact three was the arrival on Wednesday. The technician arrived at 2:40, forty minutes past the window, with no call or text. Denise had left her unit twice to check the lot. The contact failed, and the cause was the dispatch board, which showed the technician running late at 12:30 but sent no alert to anyone who could call the customer.
Contact four came minutes later. The technician compared the glass with the car and saw the camera bracket was missing. He could not install it. He apologized and said the office would call. He was permitted to do nothing else, so the contact failed through no fault of his.
Contact five was the office call on Thursday. A scheduler said the correct glass was on order but could give no arrival date, because the parts desk had not entered one. The contact failed: Denise left the call knowing nothing new.
Contact six was Denise's own call on Monday of the following week, asking for an update. A different scheduler found the glass had arrived Friday and booked a Tuesday window. It succeeded, but only because the customer chased it.
Contact seven was a reminder text Monday evening. It succeeded.
Contact eight was the second visit on Tuesday. The technician arrived on time, installed the correct windshield and explained that the lane camera needed calibration, which Northline's van could not do for this model. Denise was told to visit a dealer. The install succeeded; the handoff left her with another errand.
Contact nine was an automated survey on Wednesday asking her to rate the technician. She gave the technician five stars and the company one.
She rated the man who fixed her car five stars and the company that sent him one.
Where the Failures Live
Bitner et al. (2008) recommend tracing service failures to the design of the process rather than to individual employees, and the four failures here each sit in a designed step. The booking script did not capture the vehicle identification number or features, which led directly to the wrong glass. The dispatch board knew the technician was late but had no rule for alerting a scheduler. The parts desk had no requirement to give the office an arrival date. And the calibration gap existed because the company had not equipped its vans for this model's camera, nor arranged a partner to do it.
None of the people Denise spoke with did anything wrong by their own instructions. Shostack (1984) argued that services should be designed with the same care as products, and that the steps a customer never sees often decide the result. Northline's failures were almost all in steps Denise never saw.
What It Cost
The company made two van trips for one job, lost a customer who now tells colleagues about it, and paid nothing extra only because Denise did not ask. Denise lost two partial shifts of attention, made two calls and still faced a dealer visit. Smith et al. (1999) found that customers weigh losses of time and effort heavily when judging a service failure, and Denise's survey response reflects that.
Recommendations
Northline should add the vehicle identification number and a question about cameras and sensors to the booking script, set an automatic alert to the scheduler when the board shows a technician thirty minutes behind, require the parts desk to record an expected arrival date on every reorder, and arrange calibration with a partner shop so that customers are not sent away with an errand. The survey should also ask about the whole job, not only the last technician, so that a failure spread across several contacts shows up in the company's own data instead of only in public reviews.
References
Bitner, M. J., Ostrom, A. L., & Morgan, F. N. (2008). Service blueprinting: A practical technique for service innovation. California Management Review, 50(3), 66-94. https://doi.org/10.2307/41166446
Shostack, G. L. (1984). Designing services that deliver. Harvard Business Review, 62(1), 133-139.
Smith, A. K., Bolton, R. N., & Wagner, J. (1999). A model of customer satisfaction with service encounters involving failure and recovery. Journal of Marketing Research, 36(3), 356-372. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224379903600305
The Purdue Global MT221 Unit 2 instructions
Unit 2 commonly asks you to analyze one service experience contact by contact, often one you had as a customer. Most prompts expect each contact listed in order with its time, who the customer dealt with, what happened and whether it succeeded, followed by an analysis of why the failures occurred. The course's idea of moments of truth supports treating every contact separately, even small ones like a confirmation text. The strongest analyses ask what each employee was permitted to decide, since many failures come from process design rather than from the person on the phone. Receipts, texts and call logs help recover details. Close with recommendations aimed at the causes found. Expect about four pages, often built around a timeline in your own version, citing service design sources in APA 7.
Inside the MT221 Unit 2 example
The analysis introduces the customer, her car's camera and sensor and her need for a workplace install. Nine contacts follow in order, each with its outcome. The booking call looks fine but omits the identification number; the arrival comes late with no call because the board's alert reaches no one; the technician can do nothing, which a margin note highlights; the parts update gives no date; the customer chases the second booking; the install succeeds but sends her to a dealer; and the survey splits her rating. The highlighted line records five stars for the technician and one for the company. A section places each failure in a designed step, citing Bitner and colleagues and Shostack. Smith and colleagues explain the weight of lost time, and recommendations target the script, the board, the parts desk, calibration and the survey, with a second note.
Where the points sit in the MT221 Unit 2 rubric
Encounter analyses are usually graded on completeness, accuracy and the depth of the causal analysis. Listing every contact in order earns base credit, and graders look for small contacts that are easy to skip, such as automated texts. Recording what each employee could decide shows the writer understands that service failures often sit in processes. Tracing each failure to a specific designed step demonstrates analysis rather than complaint. The cost of the failure to both the customer and the company should be stated. Recommendations earn credit when each targets a cause found in the analysis. The blueprinting article, Shostack's paper and the recovery study by Smith and colleagues each need a full entry, and times should be marked as recalled or recorded.
MT221 Unit 2 help: mistakes that cost points
Encounter analyses most often fall short by blaming the employee the customer happened to speak with. Another frequent issue is skipping small contacts, which can hide where an early omission began. Some papers describe the frustration at length without explaining its cause. Others recommend friendlier staff when the failures were in scripts or systems. Costs to the company are often ignored. Recommendations sometimes fix the last failure and leave the first one in place. If you analyze an encounter from your own job, describe it from the customer's side as well. A writer can take the encounter you remember and any texts or receipts you kept and help rebuild the timeline and trace each failure to its source.
Get an MT221 Unit 2 example written to your instructions
An encounter you lived through works best, especially one whose times can be rebuilt from texts, emails or receipts. Pass it on with the Unit 2 instructions and rubric. Within 24-48h the first custom sample arrives free, contacts in order and each failure traced to its step, with the business and its staff left unnamed. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
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MT221 Unit 2 questions, answered
Can the encounter be one I had as a customer?
Many Unit 2 prompts expect exactly that. A first-hand encounter gives the paper times and details no secondhand account can, and receipts, texts and call logs recover the ones memory has lost. If you work in service and would rather analyze an encounter from behind the counter, check the prompt first; some sections allow it and others want the customer's view.
What is a moment of truth?
The phrase comes from Jan Carlzon, who ran Scandinavian Airlines in the 1980s and argued that each brief contact between a customer and an employee decides how the whole company is judged. In an encounter analysis it justifies treating every contact on its own, small ones like a confirmation text included, because customers form judgments at each point, not just when the job closes.
How many steps should the analysis cover?
Enough to reach the cause. An encounter that went wrong at a counter may need only four or five steps, while one stretched across a week, like the repair in this example, needs every contact to show how an early omission produced later failures. Cutting steps to save space often removes the one that explains the rest, so trim prose instead of rows.
Where can I find a free MT221 Unit 2 sample paper?
This page holds a full MT221 Unit 2 service encounter analysis of a windshield replacement that took eight days. It follows nine contacts, marks four failures, traces each to a process step and includes three sources and margin notes.
Why does the sample say the technician was not at fault?
He arrived with the glass the parts desk had ordered and had no authority to promise a date or a credit. The wrong glass came from a booking script that never asked for the vehicle identification number.