Total Quality Service and the Business College

Abstract

Moving a business college to commit to a total quality service approach is much more difficult than the literature suggests. The commitment to customer satisfaction is the essential focus of total quality service. It is unlikely to occur in business colleges. While small incremental change is readily possible, the values and culture of the faculty and administration prevent the requisite acceptance by the faculty of students as their customers, and acceptance of the faculty as customers of the academic administrators.The payoff for achieving high quality service in businesses and business colleges is the loyalty and gratitude from customers, resulting in ever higher demand for the service. Having students begging to be admitted to the college, having large numbers of students trying to take business courses would put the business college in an enviable position within the university. The grateful alumni could, in turn, help with employment opportunities and with major gifts to the college.