Quality functions ’ use of customer feedback as activation triggers for absorptive capacity and value co-creation

Purpose – The purpose is to understand how the role of quality functions might evolve amidst digitalisation and an increased focus on services. This study focuses on customer feedback and how it can function as activation triggers for developing absorptive capacity, as well as how it relates to the value creation processes. Design/methodology/approach – Following a qualitative research design, the authors gathered primary data from interviews with quality managers at 17 UK and Swedish firms and triangulated it with secondary information from the firms ’ web pages. Findings – The findings show that customer feedback-based activation triggers can support development of absorptive capacity in the quality function if there are established processes for acting on customer feedback. This is often the case for codified feedback, which normally concerns products. However, digitalisation offers new opportunities of engaging in value co-creation, and firms need to develop digital capabilities to manage new technologies and data analytic tools. For personalised feedback (the main category of service-related feedback), established processes are missing. Originality/value – This study work contributes to knowledge about how quality functions respond to customer feedback on both products and services. It clarifies why the quality function sometimes struggles to contribute to service quality as much as to product quality. From a theory development perspective, the authors contribute to understanding customer feedback-based activation triggers, how they lead to development of absorptive capacity and their relation to value co-creation on a functional level.


Introduction
In manufacturing firms, efforts to manage quality are often performed by a well-established quality function (Sousa and Voss, 2002). As manufacturing firms continue to expand their offerings to include services (Kohtam€ aki et al., 2020;Li et al., 2020) and digital offerings , the roles and practices to support improvements in products are challenged . Customer feedback becomes even more important , as it is a vital component for service improvements (Caemmerer and Wilson, 2010). Gunasekaran et al. (2019) argue that in the Industry 4.0 era, the quality function needs to transition from a policing role to a proactive role, collaborating internally with other functions and externally with customers.
Offering both products and services increases pressure on the quality function to thoroughly understand the subjective value created for customers during product usage (Wen et al., 2020). However, recent studies show that the quality function does not fully exploit customer feedback (Elg et al., 2020;Kumar et al., 2020). As interest in services increases, the use of customer feedback, ranging from personalised to codified, increasingly challenges quality function to identify customers' feedback earlier and use it to focus on value creation Gunasekaran et al., 2019;Sj€ odin et al., 2019). This evolution in the digital era forces quality functions to not only act on passively generated customer feedback, but also actively collect and act on the customer feedback during the product usage stage (Fundin and Elg, 2006).
Organisations offering products and services face several paradoxes, including that of "organising for product and service integration vs separated service and product organisations" (Kohtam€ aki et al., 2020), that result in suboptimal behaviour due to less effective collaboration between different divisions or units. Integrating end-to-end operations, clarifying roles and responsibilities in different organisational levels and units, and sharing information about bottlenecks in the end-to-end process represent coping mechanisms used to promote organisations' effective integration of product and service units for increased value creation (Kohtam€ aki et al., 2020Rabetino et al., 2021).
As Industry 4.0 technologies aim to achieve end-to-end integration in supply chains, the role of quality function in facilitating provider-customer integration has become increasingly relevant. Building on the aforementioned coping strategies , we shifted focus in our study from firm-level to the quality function as the unit of analysis for understanding their role in achieving better integration between manufacturing and service units of the firm. The quality function faces several challenges to stay relevant in the era of Industry 4.0. Within Industry 4.0, the concept of Quality 4.0 is defined as "a customer-centric and digitally enabled approach to the integration of people with process and technology across the value chain (including vertical, horizontal, and end to end integration) for taking evidence-based decisions in collaboration with internal and external stakeholders in the value chain" (Chiarini and Kumar, 2021, p. 14).
In an attempt to transition towards Quality 4.0, the quality function needs to redefine its roles and develop new practices, including customer interactions, to better support new types of offerings Sony et al., 2020) and enhance value creation. To understand the potential of enhancing value creation, we applied Gr€ onroos and Voima's (2013) framework of the value creation process, in which value is understood to be created by customers in the customer sphere. In the provider sphere, providers can facilitate value creation by creating or assembling different types of resources. Manufacturing firms tend to focus more on the provider sphere, wherein value creation is facilitated when products are produced (Wen et al., 2020). However, that focus persists even if offerings are extended to include services (Martin et al., 2019), which potentially limits quality function in acting on customer feedback from the joint and customer spheres of value creation. Thus, the potential for the function to play a key role in provider-customer integration is not fully exploited and the joint sphere is not expanded. Provider-customer integration could help quality functions Quality functions' use of customer feedback contribute more towards value co-creation by proactively dealing with customer-generated feedback (Fundin and Elg, 2006). To fully benefit from customer feedback, focusing on the provider sphere is arguably problematic. Based on the argument above and consistent with Galbraith (2002), productbased structures for using customer feedback need to be complemented by the ability to respond to such feedback related to services. An important ingredient is the capacity to absorb and use new knowledge to be able to respond to the feedback with improvements (Lervik Olsen et al., 2014;Nagati and Rebolledo, 2012;Sony et al., 2020). That capacity is often described as absorptive capacity, or the firm's ability to "recognise the value of new, external information, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends" (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990, p. 128). Research has demonstrated that constant investment in developing absorptive capacity allows firms to keep abreast of technological opportunities (Arcidiacono et al., 2022) and changing requirements of customers, thus enhancing the likelihood of spillover between internal and external sources of knowledge (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990;Rothaermel and Alexandre, 2009).
The development of absorptive capacity is stimulated by activation triggers, defined as "events that encourage or compel a firm to respond to specific internal or external stimuli" (Zahra and George, 2002, p. 193). Many practices the quality function usesuch as conducting satisfaction surveys and managing customers' complaintscan act as activation triggers, and have been shown to positively impact the absorptive capacity of firms (Perez Arostegui et al., 2013). This shows that quality functions can act as an interface through which knowledge from external sources can be absorbed, and underscores the function's potential to contribute to value creation by responding to customer feedback-based activation triggers (CFAT). Inspired by Zahra and George (2002), CFAT are here defined as customer feedback that compels a firm to respond by developing their absorptive capacity.
With the purpose to understand how the role of quality functions might evolve amidst digitalisation and an increased focus on services, the following research questions are posed for this study: RQ1. How can different types of customer feedback function as activation triggers for developing absorptive capacity of the quality function?
RQ2. How does CFAT relate to the value creation process for manufacturing firms offering products and services?
Our work contributes to research on quality function by exploring CFAT, absorptive capacity and the value creation process. It also clarifies why the quality function sometimes struggles to contribute to service quality as much as to product quality. Contributions to the literature on absorptive capacity derive from our focus on activation triggers and the functional level, rather than the more commonly focused firm (Gluch et al., 2009) or individual (Enkel et al., 2017) levels. Whereas large, external market changes (Zahra and George, 2002) are often studied as activation triggers, we focus on CFAT. A typology of CFAT is developed and different types of customer feedback and their influence on the quality function's absorptive capacity for value creation are explored.

Theoretical background
As manufacturing firms continue expanding their product offerings to include services and digital offerings Kohtam€ aki et al., 2020), how customer feedback reaches quality functions have changed  and opportunities for interacting with customers have increased (Brax and Jonsson, 2009;Gr€ onroos and Ravald, 2011). In turn, those changes have enhanced opportunities for quality function to contribute to value creation Eriksson et al., 2016;Sony et al., 2020) for example, by pinpointing the need to absorb new knowledge to enhance value creation (Sony et al., 2020).
Absorptive capacity and customer feedback-based activation triggers Absorptive capacity describes a firm's capacity to recognise new external knowledge and exploit it in a value-adding way (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990). Zahra and George (2002) have divided absorptive capacity into four capabilities: two concern potential absorptive capacity, or the ability to capture new knowledge, and two concern realised absorptive capacity, or applying knowledge to create more value or enhance competitiveness. Potential absorptive capacity represents two capabilities: acquisition and assimilation (Zahra and George, 2002). Acquisition concerns the ability to identify and capture new knowledge external to the firm, whereas assimilation refers to the practices through which new knowledge is processed and analysed. Further, realised absorptive capacity is based on two capabilities: transformation and exploitation. Transformation refers to the firm's ability to combine new knowledge with existing practices and routines into new schemata, whereas exploitation means to refine and/or extend existing practices or to create new ones owing to new knowledge.
For firms to truly benefit from new knowledge their activities for generating potential absorptive capacity need to be followed by activities for generating realised absorptive capacity (Camis on and For es, 2010). Learning skills is crucial for realised absorptive capacity, especially amongst individuals operating as boundary persons, defined as actors who interact with a firm's customers or suppliers (Kohtam€ aki and Partanen, 2016), for example, customer-facing service employees who receive the most customer feedback (Wirtz et al., 2010) and employees in the quality function with competencies in managing customers' needs (Ponsignon et al., 2019). The information they gather from customers requires integration into collective action to transform that information into knowledge (Nonaka, 2007). The result of both potential and realised absorptive capacity constitutes a source of value creation and can be used to turn organisational resources into a competitive advantage (Fink et al., 2017).
Along with research on firms' overall absorptive capacity, another stream of research focusing on individuals' absorptive capacity (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990;Enkel et al., 2017;Ter Wal et al., 2017) underscored the importance of individuals in making organisations innovative by increasing their absorption of knowledge from the environment (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990;Enkel et al., 2017;Ter Wal et al., 2017). By contrast, our research peered beyond organisations and individuals to showcase absorptive capacity of quality functions. In that light, this paper contributes to the rather limited literature on absorptive capacity at the functional level (Table 1).
Researchers have called for more empirical studies within operations management that employ absorptive capacity (Walker et al., 2015) to focus on the "content and mechanisms of knowledge transfer" in the interactions between manufacturing firms and customers (Nagati and Rebolledo, 2012, p. 625), as well as antecedents for absorptive capacity at various organisational levels (Volberda et al., 2010). One such mechanism or antecedent is activation triggers (Zahra and George, 2002). Although the studies in Table 1 addressed the functionallevel, they did not probe how activation triggers support the development of absorptive capacity. This paper addresses the research gap on absorptive capacity at a functional level, and on activation triggers, by positioning customer feedback as a potential activation trigger arising in customer-firm interactions with the potential to inform the quality function that new external knowledge needs to be absorbed. Hence, we focus on antecedents of potential absorptive capacity in terms of CFAT.

Quality functions' use of customer feedback
As displayed in Table 1, all but one of the included studies use a survey methodology to establish causal links between the function's absorptive capacity and performance (e.g. Difrancesco et al., 2022;Lin et al., 2016) or to evaluate how external information availability impacts a function's absorptive capacity (e.g. Bogers and Lhuillery, 2011;Patrucco et al., 2017;Difrancesco et al., 2022). The studies in Table 1 neglected the role of activation triggers, and in the cases where customers were considered, it was the customers' knowledge that was positioned as the external knowledge to be absorbed. Hence, the antecedents of absorptive capacity in terms of CFAT were neglected (Volberda et al., 2010). In line with this, Arcidiacono et al. (2022) state that research on absorptive capacity fall short in explaining how external environment antecedents (such as CFAT) impact the development of absorptive capacity in the firms.

Customer feedback
Customer feedback can reach the quality function in various forms, including measurements of satisfaction (Hallencreutz and Parmler, 2021), experiments or tests (Fundin and Elg, 2006), or complaints (Bosch and Enr ıquez, 2005). For example, customer feedback gathered from complaints submitted to customer-facing employees is a common channel generating activation triggers for providers. However, that channel risks ceasing to disseminate throughout the firm (Wirtz et al., 2010). A firm's ability to identify and act on customer feedback-based activation triggers can be augmented by using sensors in products. Generating big data for informed decision-making is an area prioritised by Quality 4.0 (Sony et al., 2020), which has consequently supported the development of big data analytics tools (Marshall et al., 2015). Such development is further enhanced by the increase in digital products and services in which customer feedback has emerged as a potential goldmine Rabetino et al., 2021;Schroeder et al., 2020).
In operationalising customer feedback, Fundin and Elg (2006) outlined a classification based on two dimensions: codified-personalised feedback and active-passive feedback. Codified feedback is data acquired and transmitted digitally, as in a formal database, whereas personalised feedback is generated and transmitted between people. Beyond types of data, another dimension concerns whether providers actively solicit feedback, referred to as active feedback, or initiated by customers, referred to as passive feedback .
When manufacturing firms extend their service businesses, direct customer-provider interaction possibilities expand (Gr€ onroos and Ravald, 2011;Kohtam€ aki et al., 2021). The emergence of digitally connected products and services has further impacted the development and delivery of firms' offerings, as well as customer interactions and feedback Birch-Jensen et al., 2020;Elg et al., 2020;Kohtam€ aki et al., 2021). However, insights into the customer sphere and customers' processes are crucial for value creation through service offerings (Kohtam€ aki and Partanen, 2016). When a manufacturing firm begins offering services, it arguably expands the provider-customer interaction and creates new opportunities to identify and act upon customer feedback. However, studies on customer feedback have often focused on the firm as the unit of analysis; for instance, to explicate the processes for using customer satisfaction information (Lervik Olsen et al., 2014) and identify drivers of customer satisfaction (Hallencreutz and Parmler, 2021). By contrast, we focused on CFAT and the quality function.
Value creation process Both direct and indirect interactions are important throughout the value creation process (Gr€ onroos and Voima, 2013) because through those interactions customer feedback is conveyed Eriksson et al., 2016;Valentina and Passiante, 2009).
Customers create value as products and services are used, and this can be understood according to three spheres of value creation: the provider, joint and customer spheres (Gr€ onroos and Voima, 2013). The provider sphere, where providers offer resources that can facilitate customers' value-in-use, includes all areas that involve only providers. Potential customer value is created in the provider sphere, and no customer-provider interaction occurs. Direct customer-provider interaction occurring in the joint sphere can involve customers in providers' production processes as co-producers or providers in customers' value creation as value co-creators (Gr€ onroos and Voima, 2013). There is no direct customerprovider interaction in the customer sphere, and value is created as value-in-use. However, despite the lack of direct interaction, providers need to clearly understand the processes in the customer sphere to be able to understand customers' needs (Brax and Jonsson, 2009).
Becoming co-creators of value and engaging in customers' value creation can be challenging for manufacturing firms if focusing primarily on the provider sphere. To cocreate value with customers in the context of services and digital offerings, manufacturing firms need to manage the increased complexity of their offerings and pay attention to customer-generated activation triggers (Bolton et al., 2018;Kohtam€ aki et al., 2021). As feedback collected in the joint sphere becomes increasingly important (Caemmerer and Wilson, 2010), new demands on quality function arise regarding identifying, capturing and using customer feedback. As creators of value, customers are key stakeholders (Gr€ onroos and Voima, 2013) and provider-customer interactions like customer feedback processes are forms of stakeholder pressure that can act as activation triggers for absorptive capacity development by the quality function.

Research method
To fulfil the purpose we adopted a qualitative research design given its usefulness in studying phenomena that remain poorly understood (Meredith, 1998;Yin, 2014), including challenges for quality functions in manufacturing firms that offer services and digital offerings. Qualitative designs are also suitable when adding elements to the literature (Meredith, 1998;Yin, 2014)in our case, combining absorptive capacity (e.g. Zahra and George, 2002) with empirical insights into CFAT, and analysing this combination through the theoretical lens of the value creation process (Gr€ onroos and Voima, 2013). Our overall approach was abductive, meaning that we iteratively combined our empirical findings with the literature to continuously inform our analysis (Dubois and Gadde, 2002).

Sampling
Empirical data were collected from 17 UK and Swedish manufacturing firms, sampled based on three criteria: (1) Being a manufacturing firm; (2) Offering services and solutions, including digital, maintenance, after-sales or educational services; and (3) Having an established organisational unit for quality (i.e. a quality function).
Although operating in different industries, all 17 firms have a manufacturing background, including medical devices, packaging and construction equipment. Second, the firms have all started to offer services, which enabled our exploration of how customer feedback about both products and services reaches quality function. Third, in having an established quality function with practices originally developed to support product quality, the firms could be expected to have added service offerings that influence their quality-oriented practices.

Quality functions' use of customer feedback
To ensure that all participating firms met the criteria, we used purposive sampling (Miles et al., 2020).

Data collection
The unit of analysis was the use of customer feedback by the firms' quality function.
Although customer feedback can be acquired by multiple functions, including customer service, marketing and quality, we focused on the quality function and data collection focused on managers therein. The respondents at the firms were sampled because they held senior managerial positions related to quality, with titles that varied slightly depending on the focus of the firm's quality function. Table 2 lists all respondents and their industry, title, country and identifier (i.e. QM1-QM17). The use of semi-structured interviews, lasting 40-90 min, afforded us rich, contextual insights and the flexibility to adjust some questions to capture respondents' perceptions and experiences (Rowley, 2012). Interview questions included "How do you receive customer feedback about your products and/or services?" and "What triggers the flow of that information to you?" The interviews were recorded and transcribed with the respondents' permission.
Interviews were complemented with data from secondary sources, predominantly digital customer-provider interfaces (e.g. firms' websites), with a focus on identifying customer feedback channels. To use firms' websites as sources of secondary data (e.g. Rouquet et al., 2017), we visited each firm's website and identified channels and interfaces for customer feedback therein.

Data analysis
Two co-authors first read the interview transcripts to identify mentions of customer feedback during data analysis. This first step was focused on getting an overview of the data and  Table 2.
Overview of respondents identifying as many instances as possible, resembling a first-order analysis (Gioia et al., 2013). Second, using NVivo 12, we conducted a thematic analysis of the primary and secondary data (Boyatzis, 1998), focusing on customer feedback in relation to activation triggers, absorptive capacity (Zahra and George, 2002) and the value creation process (Gr€ onroos and Voima, 2013). Thus, it was a second-order analysis that moved into the theoretical realm (Gioia et al., 2013). To aid analysis, we developed Table 3 to support a consistent view on the central concepts throughout coding. Table 3 was developed to describe how the key theoretical concepts were used in our study and to clearly state the inclusion and exclusion criteria to be used in the coding (Boyatzis, 1998). In line with the abductive approach, the first round of the thematic analysis was followed by a second round of coding of all transcripts to get an indication of how common various types of customer feedback were used as an input to the quality function. Third, we analysed the identified types of customer feedback (Fundin and Elg, 2006) to develop a typology of activation triggers. The transcripts were analysed with a focus on elucidating the relationships between customer feedback types and absorptive capacity.

Research quality
We triangulated our data to enhance research quality and trustworthiness (Yin, 2014). First, combing primary data collected through interviews and secondary data from firms' websites allowed triangulation of data sources and a more holistic picture of the phenomenon (Calantone and Vickery, 2009). It also provided external corroboration of respondents' internal accounts of customer feedback channels. Although secondary data made available by firms are criticised as potentially biased and lack non-biased auditing (Ellram and Tate, 2016), data about channels for customer feedback that are publicly available can be assumed To strengthen trustworthiness, two co-authors jointly analysed the interview data (Meredith, 1998) and frequently discussed definitions and codes. In those discussions, Table 3 served to ensure consistent coding and well-grounded discussions when drawing conclusions from the analysis. Moreover, one of the co-authors did not participate in data collection and was free to act as an external investigator, this served to enhance the trustworthiness of the analysis (Eisenhardt, 1989).

Findings
The findings are presented with a focus on the different types of customer feedback and their potential to serve as CFAT for developing quality function's absorptive capacity. These first two parts of the findings relate to RQ1. To address RQ2 the last part of the findings focus on the activation triggers' relation to value creation. Table 4 presents different types of customer feedback, the firms where this type of feedback is identified, exemplary quotes, the focal type of offering, entry point to the quality function and the value creation sphere from which the feedback emanates.

Different types of customer feedback
In summary, eight firms report that quality functions work with personalised passive customer feedback, five with personalised active, 16 with codified passive and six with codified active. Further, Table 4 shows that respondents from quality functions mostly work with codified feedback and that this type of feedback concerns products. A type of feedback that enters the quality functions in all but two firms is complaints logged in a formal complaint system. The second most reported type of customer feedback comes from aftersales employees conveying feedback to the quality functions, often through a formal internal process. In the following, each of the four types of customer feedback will be further elaborated on and illustrated by additional quotes.
Personalised passive customer feedback was identified both regarding products and services. Although most of the service-related feedback was personalised passive, little service-related feedback of that type was conveyed to the quality function. One reported example was customers' posts on social media: "[Our process] is very manual. It's nothing automatic. We have colleagues [in another function] just scouting those groups [on Facebook] and trying to read what's happening. . . . They email us directly when something begins to brew somewhere. But those processes are not formalised at all. It's panic mode every time" [QM12]. That example captures the quality function's reliance on colleagues to report issues with service quality.
Unlike passive feedback, which reaches the quality function in an unplanned manner, personalised active customer feedback is a provider-initiated collection of customer feedback that can still be open and personal. Some respondents highlighted the disparity between products and services and the need for more personalised active customer feedback to capture service experiences. In one example a customer provided feedback directly to the quality function: "I can just describe how it went when I visited a customer [. . .], they expressed that they had some smaller product related claims, but the biggest issue that they experienced was the actual assembly of the product. [ we've got a problem with the water system, we can guess what that might be, we might need to repair a water pump, we might need to repair a water filter. But, if we get there and we find that actually it is the hydraulic system that is broken, then we did not have enough information and we did not have the right parts to do a first-time fix. That's frustrating for us and it's frustrating for the customer, they did not get a repair, and we've got to make a second visit. So, it depends very heavily on that first conversation with the customer. We need to make sure we're talking to somebody who's close to the machine, not somebody in a remote office, and who has some knowledge about how the machine works and obviously how it does not more importantly" [QM4] Product Customer Joint sphere (continued ) In further contrast, codified passive customer feedback is mostly related to products and can be exemplified by customer portals that several firms maintain on their websites. Such portals allow customers to initiate warranty claims at any time by describing who they are, what their problem is, how they discovered it, etc. The portals' focus is on issues with product quality. Recent enhancements to the portals have also afforded digital functionality that enables customers to add photos and/or videos to visually show damages. Naturally, this feedback cannot be planned for in advance; thus, forums to react on the feedback are needed, e.g. "a weekly quality meeting, or complaints meeting, [. . .], which is based around all the issues weve had from the customer that are outstanding. And then well try and get people to come to the meeting and assign tasks [to relevant functions]" [QM3].
Last, codified active customer feedback related to both products and services in the firms. In one example, such feedback was transmitted via sensors: "We are connected to a number of customers through lots of sensors on the machines, which we can follow in real-time in our performance centres [. . .] and we can stop the machines and send out our service technicians before anything breaks" [QM14]. In another example, customer surveys on services were gathered after every transaction or at a certain time each year and analysed quarterly or yearly. Because digitalisation increases the number of ways that customers can provide feedback, it affects both products and services. Feedback driven by digitalisation is mostly codified in the firms studied and can arrive as sensor data (e.g. QM1, QM4, QM13, QM14) and data from digitised processes (e.g. using an app to log quality errors).

Customer feedback as activation triggers for absorptive capacity
Based on the different types of customer feedback, four types of CFAT were identified: nonactive, designed activation triggers (DATs), designed and connected activation triggers (DCATs), and designed, connected, and resourced activation triggers (DCRATs) ( Table 5).
First, personalised passive customer feedbacknon-active activation triggernormally ended up informally in the quality or other function. It did not trigger collection of more data and thus did not activate the development of absorptive capacity. One example of how a firm dealt with personalised passive feedback is by individual employees responding to individual customers and solving the reported problem without documentation. In these cases, because a customer's problem seemed to require urgent attention, the feedback did not prompt any structured analysis and thus represents a non-active activation trigger. The results being a (hopefully) happy customer; but if a firm "lose one of those people, you just lose 50% of everything we know. [. . .] It's in the emails, it's in the laptops, and it's in their head" [QM12]. Another challenge is that it is difficult to evaluate which feedback requires action as Passive Active Personalised Non-active activation triggers Designed activation triggers (DATs) Codified Designed and connected activation triggers (DCATs) Designed, connected and resourced activation triggers (DCRATs) One example is prioritisation tools for improvement initiatives, which are used for both products and services. However, those aspects are difficult to relate to personalised passive customer feedback, where magnitudes of problems, cost related to the problem, etc., are unknown: "We also have a third priority and that's basically described as everything else, so it's not safety, it's not high cost, it's not high occurrence, it's priority three. And priority three might never get looked at" [QM4]. Several quality managers highlighted a lack of understanding about how to assess personalised passive service-related feedback with standardised prioritisation tools, which limits the possibility for this feedback to function as CFAT. Second, actively collected personalised customer feedback is referred to as designed activation triggers (DATs). The DATs examples in our studied firms were not used to develop potential absorptive capacity. Our findings indicate a struggle to understand how to collect and act on personalised feedback. The example of customer experience interviews described in the previous section was exceptional in that the firm actively sought personalised feedback in a systematic way. However, for DATin this case collected from customer experience interviewsthere is no connected, formalised process to act on the feedback, e.g. by triggering acquisition of new knowledge: Third, designed and connected activation triggers (DCATs) represent codified customer feedback that is collected passively and designed to prompt acquisition of new knowledge via a process for continuously handling feedback. An example of such feedback is claims reported by customers through a website, through dealers or other intermediaries. Compared to DATs, this feedback is connected to a formalised process. As described by one firm: Warranty and claims are automatic, they go through a database, [. . .], so then we [quality function] get the information. And that depends on how serious it is, who gets involved. Normally the local sales quality takes care of the regular flow, but if there is something more critical then it gets escalated to me [quality manager] through the system; there's a setup for that [QM8].
There is a process and designated responsibilities to act on DCAT, for example the firm acquiring new knowledge to judge the severity and using the database to analyse whether the issue is reoccurring. Thus, it has the potential to influence the development of realised absorptive capacity in this firm if this new knowledge is transformed and exploited. However, DCAT is not related to active feedback, but enters the firm irregularly and unplanned. Thus, the firms are still challenged by having resources in place to not only address the specific claim but also take time to exploit the new knowledge into improvements.
Fourth, customer feedback codified in nature and collected actively is termed designed, connected and resourced activation triggers (DCRATs). For these triggers there is not only a process with planned activities and responsibilities connected, but it is also planned in time, meaning that the firm can also set aside resources to analyse and act on DCRATs. In one firm the product-related DCRATs are based on combination sensor data from equipment connected to a performance database with real time monitoring. In a planned activity to establish priorities for proactive improvement work this sensor data is combined with other knowledge from a problem database (historical data) and knowledge about cost of poor quality. Thus, in response to DCRAT the firm "used different bases to establish the priority for developments, to help prioritise actions that improve the [reported] problems" [QM14]. DCRAT has potential in supporting both potential and realised absorptive capacity, by ensuring access to needed resources for analysis and, if needed, acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation of new knowledge. In summary, Figure 1 illustrates the four types of CFAT and their relation to the development of the quality functions' absorptive capacity.
Customer feedback-based activation triggers and the value creation process Our results reveal that CFAT can emanate from all value creation spheres and have different implications for the development of absorptive capacity and consequently the value creation process. Non-active triggers occur due to an incapacity to identify customer feedback as triggers and act in response. At the same time, this type of feedback is desired to advance quality work: "it would be very useful for us to have more information about how people are actually using devices. Like via complaints you get one story, but it might not be the correct story, not the full story" [QM16]. Also, when offering services, employees visiting the customers are central to collect feedback. However, in the firms studied, customer feedback seldom reaches the quality function directly, but instead through intermediaries such as the sales function. Such circuitousness complicates designing the format of customer feedback and can result in the filtering of information, which can limit the possibility of responding adequately to the feedback and have a negative impact on value co-creation. Indeed, several studied firms have third-party actors (e.g. dealers) between themselves and end customers. Such actors sometimes control the information conveyed to the provider: There are dealers who want to do their own repairs. [. . .] Large dealers in the USA have their own service stations, and they just want manuals on how to repair our products and say: "let's just agree on a 5% failure rate", and if it goes up to 6%, then they start shouting. But it's not at the level I want. I want details on each product [QM12].
DATs are strongly associated with customer-provider interaction and thus likely to emanate from the joint sphere. One respondent reported that digitalisation had enriched their firm's When we want to demonstrate for our customers how our solutions will look, you cannot always provide them with a mock-up of how the physical furniture will look in their office. So these design tools help us visualise how it will look. [. . .] with these design tools, it's much easier to clarify and hopefully exceed the needs and demands of the customer [QM9].
Thus, feedback provided in such demonstrations gravitates towards personalised active feedback that can act as DATs. As such, the different types of parameters guiding the collection of feedback can be designed to support the identification of new knowledge that needs to be acquired. In that way, feedback collection is designed to contribute to knowledge acquisition and potential absorptive capacity.
In the firms studied, DCATs were primarily related to products and found in either the provider sphere or the joint sphere. In the provider sphere, they can arise through the interactionor lack thereofbetween the quality function and other internal functions: "Our sellers are supposed to put all of this type of feedback into the customer-relationshipmanagement system. Unfortunately, it's mostly used by our sales organization towards our customers. Internally, the customer-relationship-management system isn't used as it could have" [QM9]. In the joint sphere, by contrast, DCATs stemmed from customer-provider interactions. Although such feedback can be related to servicesfor example, by a customer calling a firm's aftersales functionseveral respondents highlighted challenges due to the increased focus on digitalisation, which can direct the quality function to focus on codified feedback on products: "Sometimes, for us, it's stepping back from all of the technical complexity, because engineers sometimes just analyse and analyse and analyse. Just get lost in it" [QM7].
Value creation through DCRATs was demonstrated in QM1, where the use of sensors and predictive maintenance allowed remote monitoring to optimise the performance of the asset by either advising customers or sending engineers from the provider for actions. The digital platform and dedicated resources allowed QM1 to bring the provider and customer sphere very close. It also implies that DCRATs could prove effective in the era of digitalisation to enhance value co-creation between providers and customers.

Discussion
Previous research has highlighted that the quality functions are in a position to become more relevant and strategic as a consequence of digitalisation (Chiarini and Kumar, 2021) and expanded service offerings (Caemmerer and Wilson, 2010;Kohtam€ aki et al., 2021;Rabetino et al., 2021). To support improvements of both products and services, the firm's quality functions need to adopt new practices (Zhang et al., 2012). Our study shows that personalised feedback (non-active activation triggers or DATs), do not lead to the development of absorptive capacity in the studied firms, but for codified feedback (DCATs and DCRATs), established processes are in place to analyse the customer feedback and, if needed, to begin acquiring and assimilating new knowledge (i.e. develop potential absorptive capacity). Moreover, the potential absorptive capacity needs to be linked to realised absorptive capacity (Zahra and George, 2002) to support action that transforms and exploits the knowledge into value-in-use (Nonaka, 2007). However, to convert as much newly absorbed knowledge as possible into enhanced value creation (Fink et al., 2017), the actively collected feedback generated through combined DATs and DCRATs appears to support realised absorptive capacity and hence value co-creation better. This actively collected feedback is both personalised and codified, and for DCRAT, resources to acquire and absorb new knowledge (potential absorptive capacity) are available. Eventually, the quality function is thus enabled to transform and exploit the new knowledge (realised absorptive capacity) to enhance value co-creation via improved products and/or services.
Proposition 1. For CFAT to lead to development of absorptive capacity, the quality function needs to have established processes for feedback.
In most of the firms studied, customer feedback mainly concerns products and the small amount of feedback related to services represents non-active activation triggers. In other words, they are not connected to established processes that support the development of the quality functions' absorptive capacity. However, developing support only for CFAT related to codified feedback cannot sufficiently contribute to service quality as services are relational and most service-related feedback is personalised. Our study has shown that quality function potential CFAT is seldom positioned in the customer or joint spheres, where these relations take place. If new practices related to collecting personalised feedback are developed, as one studied firm did with customer experience interviews, then those can also be connected to processes that develop absorptive capacity, as is the case for codified feedback.
Proposition 2. Established processes for collecting personalised feedback are needed to develop absorptive capacity for services.
Having discussed that services are relational and these relations take place in the customer and joint spheres, this traditional focus on product and on the provider sphere needs to be expanded because the interaction is central for a value co-creation perspective (Gr€ onroos and Ravald, 2011). This observation aligns with Chen et al.'s (2022) view of applying novel combinations of resources at hand to resolve problems, while at the same time updating the firm's current resource base to tackle resource constraint issues that impede servitisation. This paper, through focus on CFAT and absorptive capacity, lends further evidence to Chen et al.'s (2022) findings by explaining how combining different CFAT in all three spheres can help organisations develop absorptive capacity for enhancing value creation and improving products and services. In Quality 4.0, the quality function is envisioned as an integrator between providers and customers (Chiarini and Kumar, 2021); however, that envisioned role is slowly exhibited by the quality functions we studied. In fact, our findings indicate limited proficiency in responding to customer feedback by knowledge absorption, with CFAT having limited impact on the development of absorptive capacity. Our findings confirm that the work within quality functions often remains product-based instead of customer-focused (Galbraith, 2002).
Proposition 3. CFAT should be placed in all three spheres of the value creation process to improve development of absorptive capacity.
Previous research shows that quality functions still focus mainly on internal processes (Elg et al., 2020;Martin et al., 2019;Watkins, 2006) in the provider sphere and most of the firms studied are still learning how to expand their joint spheres. As manufacturing firms expand their service businesses, their quality functions need to be more closely integrated with customers to exploit the opportunities that the services entail for becoming co-creators of value (Sony et al., 2020;Chiarini and Kumar, 2021) and consequently expanding the joint sphere (i.e. through better management of DATs, DCATs and DCRATs). This is further corroborated by a recent publication by Cho et al. (2022) that equally argues the importance of shared responsibilities and cooperation between customers and providers, and how it can result in greater efficiency and high quality of service. The typology of CFAT (Table 5) further extends the findings of Cho et al. (2022) by explaining how shared responsibilities could be enhanced to help firms to act upon CFAT and to improve their potential absorptive capacity. For example, if sensor alarms installed in products reach the quality function, processes are in place to respond to those alerts Quality functions' use of customer feedback (e.g. QM1). If the feedback becomes a DCRAT, the feedback is actively collected at a specific time so that resources are set aside to analyse and act on the feedback. However, the small amount of feedback related to services limits the firms' realisation of the potential to exploit increased customer-provider interactions when services are offered (Brax and Jonsson, 2009;Gr€ onroos and Ravald, 2011).
Proposition 4. Expanding the joint sphere of value creation will lead to an increased exploitation of customer feedback.
A prerequisite for CFAT to influence the development of the quality function's absorptive capacity is that it reaches the function. Indirect customer interactions can take place via sales functions or third-party actors. Many quality functions hold regular cross-functional meetings with other functions to obtain information, which can serve as CFAT. A mentioned challenge, however, is the lack of control over which information is relayed during crossfunctional meetings, in which feedback that does not directly relate to product quality tends to not reach the quality function (e.g. Kumar et al., 2020). There is a risk to rely on individual relations through which customer feedback reaches the quality function. Despite the criticality of individuals' contributions to absorptive capacity (Enkel et al., 2017;Ter Wal et al., 2017), this risk negatively impacts development of absorptive capacity in cases with high staff turnover (Lin et al., 2016).
Proposition 5. For as much customer feedback as possible to reach the quality function the number of intermediaries should be as few as possible.
If information is transmitted directly to the quality function, then the reported challenge of intermediaries between customers and providers can be circumvented. Real-time activation triggers combined with data analytics tools have been highlighted as enabling firms to quickly transform external information into improvements (Marshall et al., 2015;Sony et al., 2020;Chiarini and Kumar, 2021;Arcidiacono et al., 2022). Handling codified feedback directly from the customers is identified as the chief opportunity, as well as challenge, of adapting to Industry 4.0 by developing Quality 4.0 (Sony et al., 2020). Meanwhile, services and digital offerings establish continuous connections and potential interactions between customers and providers (Lenka et al., 2017;Li et al., 2020;Kohtam€ aki et al., 2021). The increased potential for probing deeper into the joint and customer spheres drives the development of codified feedback; that is, DCATs and DCRATs. Therefore, activation triggers for product quality, which are fairly easy to codify, often benefit from digitalisation and the transition into Quality 4.0 (Gunasekaran et al., 2019), whereas DATs based on personalised feedback, often related to services, are reported by the studied firms to be overlooked.
Proposition 6. Digitalisation leads to increased opportunities of CFAT in the joint and customer spheres that can support codified feedback in reaching the quality function without intermediaries.
Moreover, developing quality function's digital capabilities is required as offerings increasingly consist of solutions (Bolton et al., 2018;Kohtam€ aki et al., 2020Kohtam€ aki et al., , 2021Kopalle et al., 2020;Sony et al., 2020). For example, new practices are needed for analysing and acting on big data (Chiarini and Kumar, 2021;Gunasekaran et al., 2019;Sony et al., 2020), as evidenced in the case of QM1, QM4, QM7, QM8, QM13 and QM14. Further, Srinivasan et al. (2020) highlighted how employees' roles might change in the era of Industry 4.0 as they will be expected to respond quickly to external stimuli from digitally connected devices. Similarly, Arcidiacono et al. (2022) stated that the adoption of smart manufacturing technologies is dependent upon the absorptive capacity of managers to absorb smart manufacturing-related knowledge. This implies that quality functions will need to become more externally oriented and customer-centric in the era of Quality 4.0 (Chiarini and Kumar, 2021), meaning that they will need to manage new and different types of CFAT. For example, if connected products at multiple customer sites signal changed user behaviour (e.g. as evidenced in QM1 and QM14), practices need to be in place that support development of absorptive capacity by swiftly scanning for new knowledge that could ultimately be exploited for an improved product or service.
Proposition 7. Digitalisation requires new practices for managers and employees to identify and act upon CFAT.

Conclusions and implications
To understand how the role of quality functions might evolve amidst digitalisation and an increased focus on services, we address the call on more empirical research on absorptive capacity within operations management (Walker et al., 2015) by posing the two research questions. To answer RQ1, a typology of CFAT (non-active, DATs, DCATs and DCRATs) was presented ( Table 5) that provided and elaborated on the terms of their impact on absorptive capacity (Figure 1). To address RQ2, the typology was discussed based on the value creation process (Gr€ onroos and Voima, 2013). The discussion of the findings resulted in a number of propositions from which theoretical and managerial implications will be derived.

Theoretical implications
Our results extend research on absorptive capacity and activation triggers (Zahra and George, 2002) making five key theoretical contributions. The first three contributions are linked to RQ1, whereas the fourth and fifth are connected to RQ2. First, by focusing on absorptive capacity on a functional level (i.e. quality functions) we add to the more commonly focused firm (Gluch et al., 2009) or individual (Enkel et al., 2017) levels. The focus on the functional level points to the necessity of established practices and processes for supporting CFAT. Second, we contribute with knowledge on how antecedents (CFAT) impact the development of absorptive capacity, something often neglected in previous research (Volberda et al., 2010;Arcidiacono et al., 2022). In addition, the results show how customers not only can be a source of external knowledge to be absorbed (Bogers and Lhuillery, 2011;Setia and Patel, 2013), but that their feedback can also act as a trigger to spur development of absorptive capacity (Nagati and Rebolledo, 2012), making firms realise the need to search for, and absorb, new external knowledge.
Third, this study responds to a need to further the understanding of what is required to move from potential to realised absorptive capacity (Volberda et al., 2010). Focusing on the functional level and customer feedback, the results underscore the need to deliberately design activation triggers and to connect them to established processes to support both potential and realised absorptive capacity.
Fourth, by adding the perspective of the value creation process (Gr€ onroos and Voima, 2013) we address the call for more research on the interactions between manufacturing firms and customers (Nagati and Rebolledo, 2012). As manufacturing firms expand their service business, it becomes increasingly important for the quality function to engage in value co-creation and take advantage of new types of customer feedback. By including the value creation spheres in our analysis, we recognised how the quality function could use CFAT to engage in value co-creation. However, our results also reveal that customer feedback about services often represents non-active activation triggers that do not develop absorptive Quality functions' use of customer feedback capacity, which clarifies why the quality function sometimes struggles to contribute to service quality as much as to product quality. Finally, the ability of the quality function to use the new knowledge requires further skills and capabilities for transforming that knowledge into actions linked to improvements and value creation, as identified in our study and previous research (Chiarini and Kumar, 2021;Sony et al., 2020;Valentina and Passiante, 2009). We agree that digitalisation provides an opportunity to expand the joint sphere, allowing the provider to interact with customers to co-create value. Our findings suggest that CFAT in customer or joint spheres are indeed critical, but the subsequent steps where the quality function actually engages in acquiring new knowledge and taking new knowledge into actions is a key differentiator for developing absorptive capacity.

Managerial implications
The study finds a general lack of CFAT initiating the acquisition of new knowledge supporting service quality, thereby explaining the quality function's struggles to support service improvements. A typology of CFAT can aid in the analysis of processes needed to support full use of value-creation potential inherent in customer feedback. The typology highlights that moving from passive to active customer feedback can influence the quality function's absorptive capacity. The collection of personalised active feedback, especially linked to services, is important in the digital age as it provides information that could be missed if relying solely on codified feedback.
Further, the boundary between firms' product and service units may blur as firms embrace digitalisation to enhance integration between functions. The boundary also has implications for the roles of quality function as different parts of the business become integrated. Real-time information sharing via digital tools requires more coordination and collaboration between functions to make joint decisions, which may consequently impact both job roles and processes. Achieving more vertical and end-to-end integration within supply chains may also blur the boundaries of the provider and customer, which requires the quality function to adapt practices and processes, thereby enhancing their customer interactions.
Limitations and future research Among the limitations inherent in our study's design, we focused on the quality functions and their absorptive capacity. Other organisational functions, including product and/or service development functions, also benefit from CFAT. Future research could study challenges in such functions by adopting a similar focus. The relationship between CFAT on a functional level and a market-level could be interesting to explore; for example, how market-level shifts towards increased digitalisation or a focus on sustainable development impacts customers' interactions with providers and the type of feedback they deliver.