Almost half of full-time, first-time undergraduate students fail to finish their course of study within four years. To increase retention and graduation rates, a greater emphasis on academic advising is in order. The positive influence of an effective advising program on student success is well documented in the literature; however, there has not before been a systematic method of identifying the key drivers of an effective advising process suitable to a given college. This study applies "Quality Function Deployment," a method widely used in industry to provide high quality goods and services according to the customers' specifications and the producers' limitations, to advising in a business department at a public university. Our methodology can easily be emulated by other colleges to improve the advising of their own students.