The
purpose of this study was to gain an in-depth understanding of college
students’ perceptions of campus customer service quality levels and to ascertain
whether college students’ motivation and persistence were impacted by their
perceptions of campus customer service quality levels. Motivation was defined
as self-reported feelings of enthusiasm, drive, ambition, and enjoyment during
and after campus customer service experiences. Persistence was defined as
students’ willingness to remain at the institution until graduation. The
conceptual framework for this study was The Gap Model of Service Quality
detailing five major satisfaction gaps: Knowledge Gap, Policy Gap, Delivery
Gap, Communication Gap, and Customer Gap. The population of this study were
college students from two selected institutions of higher learning. Using a
qualitative design, the results from the study showed that perceptions regarding
the quality of customer service negatively affected student motivation levels
but did not impact their persistence to graduation. Although students were not
satisfied with the quality of customer service on campus, they chose to “tough
it out” rather than risk losing credits by transferring to another institution.
The study recommended the implementation of mandatory quality improvement
measures such as quarterly customer service training for employees as well as
increased attention to orientating students to the policies, procedures and
protocols of their campus during new student orientation sessions.
