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In all three cases, a vast majority of the customers were discovered to possess explicit, versatile, and rich knowledge of how well the focal firms succeed in delivering the current basic services. Despite the evident potential, focal firms were found to gather and make use of customer feedback only to a limited extend. All focal firms received both positive and negative feedback from customers, but the feedback was not as extensive as what could have been possible. In fact, particular focal firm interviewees in each case even remarked that they usually get little feedback from customers. On the one hand, some customer feedback was received through everyday communication in the service delivery situations and various meetings with customers. On the other hand, more systematic ways to collect

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feedback were utilized, such as a specific customer survey (SCALE), a net-promoter score (NPS) questionnaire (DEVICE), and asking and following numerical feedback in periodic meetings with customers (FLOW). Moreover, reclamations from customers were usually followed and handled as a particular form of feedback, although they are always negatively loaded.

Regardless of the applied feedback forms, the received feedback was disorganized and scant, and the focal firms’ understanding of how well they succeed in delivering the basic services was relatively narrow. The focal firm of DEVICE asked feedback from customers on a regular basis through NPS questionnaires. NPS is a specific method based on asking how likely would a customer recommend the focal firm (Reichheld, 2003). However, the results provided by the questionnaire, or a separate reclamation system, were not sufficiently precise to really help the firm in improving its services, according to a clear majority of the interviewees.

[NPS-based feedback] gives quite little. If some criticism comes (…) let’s say that repair services got a red card (…) it’s an annoying thing but from where did it get that red card? What case? What went wrong (development manager, BF6, DEVICE)?

The focal firm of FLOW directly asked feedback from its customers in the periodic meetings held monthly or a few times a year. The feedback asked was in a numerical form and customers were asked to justify the provided grade, for example, why it has decreased since the last meeting. Despite the periodically gathered feedback, some focal firm interviewees specifically remarked that it only provided an overall picture of how satisfied the customers were and that much more comprehensive feedback was available through informal discussions with customers. The focal firm of SCALE, in contrast, had recently conducted a customer survey that produced some useful insights according to some respondents.

There were many, many things (…) quite critical feedback (…) there was response time, changes in response times (…), and then another was know-how. Apparently, there had been some little-more difficult cases and probably answers to those haven’t been found out (R&D manager, AF1, SCALE).

Nevertheless, the feedback in the survey was neither gathered over time nor was it seen to provide a comprehensive picture of how well the company succeeded in the customers’ eyes. Furthermore, one focal firm interviewee explicitly stressed that they do not know for sure how customers find their services at the moment.

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In the cases of DEVICE and FLOW, many focal firm interviewees pointed out the importance of the informal feedback that is often received in various meetings and discussions with customer employees and managers. Such interactions took place either in the actual service delivery situation or through some other instances like sales negotiations. For example, the focal firms of DEVICE and especially FLOW pursued specific management-level meetings with key customers that would enable feedback-giving amongst other things. The individual remarks made by the customers in diverse informal situations were seen as extremely important by many focal firm interviewees.

Of course it would be good to get the feedback from products or services or from the related delivery processes or documentation (…) everybody should be aware of it (…) not only those lashings but also those praises (development manager, BF6, DEVICE). However, it was also remarked by some interviewees in both focal firms that systematic documentation and knowledge sharing is a major challenge. Even though some front-line employees or sales managers may receive a lot of valuable feedback, its exploitation was described to be difficult as the firms lacked systematic methods of how to document and share knowledge.

A majority of the participating customers were able to provide rather extensive and versatile feedback of the present basic services when interviewed for the study, and all customers provided at least some feedback. However, the actual degree of how much feedback was given varied between cases. In the case of DEVICE, an extensive amount of feedback in the interviews dealt with basic services, whereas in the cases of SCALE and FLOW, customer feedback was not strongly focused on basic services. In all cases, the feedback covered a broad spectrum of issues including focal firms’ operative performance, competences, responsiveness to customer needs, access to spare parts, service personnel’s skills, and service reporting.

In comparison to the views of the focal firms, interviews with customers revealed both broader and more elaborate descriptions of the focal firms’ services than what was the firms’ current understanding. In all cases, a clear majority of the customers gave feedback regarding service outcomes like quality, delivery reliability, and reporting. Many customers were also able to evaluate the focal firm’s performance from different angles, for example, by comparing focal firm’s performance to that of the competitors or by discussing it from the viewpoint of price-quality ratio.

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It is quite expensive (…) [compared to] many others that we use, for example, in machine maintenance (…) the know-how is at a good level though (development director, AC3, SCALE).

Operative action is reliable (…) those tasks are taken care of, but surely they would be taken care of with many other actors too (production line manager, CC4, FLOW). In addition, some customers made a distinction in the given feedback between different life-cycle stages and in the delivered services were product-related. Moreover, a few customers differentiated between various service/product groups of the focal firm. Thus, customers were able to provide feedback that was both versatile and based on complementary evaluation perspectives like comparing services with a focal firm’s competitors’ services.

In the cases of SCALE and DEVICE, the skills and expertise of individual service employees emerged as an important form of feedback that was not similarly pointed out on the focal firm side. A majority of customers in these cases stressed that the actual service performance depended on the particular service employees and their skills, for example, the service technician or warehouseman that was allocated for a particular task.

The first time he was over here (…) he didn’t know how to work with a key device. We have to say, you have to do this, this, this. Okay, we had that discussion with them [focal firm] but the last time they send him again (…) that guy, it's [sighs] (production manager, AC4, SCALE).

In these two cases, customers give detailed feedback about not only the organizational level performance but also the performance of the individual service employees. In the case of FLOW, the issue was not as prominent, and feedback on the individual skills of the service employees emerged with only one customer.