Blog
September 29, 2025
Applying operational management strategies to strengthen trust and improve student success
A strong sense of connection to their institution is one of the most significant predictors of student success.
How are colleges and universities leveraging this data? They have responded by introducing first-year experience programs, promoting participation in student organizations, and enhancing academic advising to foster meaningful relationships with faculty and peers.
While these efforts are valuable, one critical factor is often overlooked: building trust in the institution itself. This blog explores how applying operational management strategies within student service areas can strengthen that trust and, in turn, improve student outcomes.
In this context, trust refers to a student’s confidence in the college or university’s ability to deliver on its commitments and meet their needs. While trust has many dimensions, its foundation lies in consistency between words and actions, saying what you’ll do and doing what you say. For example, if a university promotes its state-of-the-art facilities but students regularly experience unreliable Wi-Fi, expectations fall short, and trust begins to erode.
One of the most common ways institutions lose student trust is through operational inefficiencies in student services.
Here are two examples of how operational challenges have led to a breakdown in student trust. At a large research university, students frequently had to contact student services multiple times, often more than three, to resolve a single issue. A root cause analysis revealed several contributing factors:
- Staff were accepting documents in person and incorrectly marking them as complete when they had errors
- There was no visibility into the total number of student inquiries
- The office lacked an operational dashboard to monitor the volume of unresolved work
Similarly, an urban regional college faced long lines of students waiting to speak with financial aid staff. The delays stemmed from insufficient staffing, frequent staff errors, and a lack of tools to track and manage pending work.
In both cases, the absence of processes and tools to manage work volume and quality directly impacted the student experience and eroded trust in the institution.
Students increasingly expect personalized support. According to Salesforce’s Connected Education Report, when students were asked, “How can universities and colleges improve the overall student experience?”, the second most common response was “More personal support and one-on-one interaction”, trailing only requests for greater financial support. Institutions that fail to deliver on these expectations risk eroding student trust
Luckily, there are three often overlooked simple strategies, that can be implemented in the short term to improve efficiency.
Three strategies to improve efficiency in Higher Education
1. Implement Data and Workforce Management Techniques
Implementing volume tracking and assigning service level agreement timeframes allows teams to monitor and assign work more efficiently, preventing backlog and ensuring timely responses. This improves visibility into staff capacity and helps leadership allocate resources proactively during peak periods. Further, students have a clear understanding of when to expect the task to be completed.
Techniques, including implementing operational dashboards to monitor daily and weekly work volumes, along with alerts when service level agreement (SLA) thresholds are at risk of being breached. This real-time visibility into workload trends and potential bottlenecks allows institutions to take timely action. In response, institutions can deploy mitigation strategies such as reallocating staff resources to high-volume areas or extending hours to meet demand.
2. Build a Quality Assurance Program
Establishing a robust quality assurance (QA) program is a foundational strategy for strengthening student trust in institutional services. When students engage with university offices, whether for financial aid, registration, advising, or other support, they expect consistent, accurate, and professional assistance. A well-designed QA program ensures that staff are properly trained, service interactions meet defined quality standards, and processing errors or inconsistencies are promptly identified and addressed.
By monitoring the quality of service delivery through regular case reviews, feedback loops, and performance metrics, institutions can proactively identify areas for improvement and create action plans. This not only enhances the skills and confidence of staff but also results in more reliable and efficient service for students.
When students experience accurate, first-contact resolution and consistent information, they are more likely to perceive the institution as competent and trustworthy. Furthermore, by demonstrating a commitment to continuous improvement and service excellence, institutions reinforce a culture of accountability and care, both of which are critical to building long-term student confidence and institutional credibility. Research backs this up; one study found that service quality and student satisfaction are directly tied to loyalty and long-term confidence in the institution.
3. Create a Comprehensive Communication Plan
A well-defined communication plan is essential to delivering a responsive and student-centered service experience. By providing timely and consistent updates on the status of requests, institutions help students understand what to expect, when to expect it, and what actions, if any, they need to take next. This proactive approach not only reduces the volume of repeat inquiries but also builds student confidence in the institution’s ability to follow through on commitments, an essential driver of institutional trust.
Clear communication should include established service-level expectations, such as typical response or resolution timeframes, and transparent notices when delays occur. When timeframes are exceeded, personalized messages can reassure students that their concerns are still being addressed. In turn, students are less likely to feel ignored or uncertain, and more likely to view the institution as organized, reliable, and respectful of their time.
Building trust with students goes beyond academic offerings and campus life; it requires institutions to consistently deliver on their commitments through efficient, transparent, and student-centered operations. As this blog highlights, trust can be undermined not only by major policy decisions but by everyday service breakdowns such as delayed responses, inconsistent information, and lack of follow-through. However, by adopting simple but powerful operational management strategies, such as workforce monitoring, quality assurance, and structured communication plans, colleges and universities can significantly enhance the student experience.
These strategies demonstrate that the institution values students’ time, concerns, and success. When students feel confident that their needs will be met promptly and reliably, their connection to the institution deepens, fostering higher satisfaction, persistence, and long-term success. Operational excellence is an opportunity to earn student trust every day!
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About the Author
John Knost is a seasoned leader with over 25 years of experience in higher education student operations, compliance, and technology transformation. He has successfully held leadership positions in large-scale ERP and CRM implementations, including Workday and Salesforce, across multi-campus systems. John holds a Master of Science in Higher Education Administration and a Graduate Certificate in Enrollment Management from the University of Miami.
