The purpose of this thesis was to study customer satisfaction in the field of car maintenance service. The client company was Auto Oy Vesa-Matti which is a car sales company and also offers car maintenance service activities for the brand it is representing. In order to find out more about Auto Oy Vesa-Matti’s customers and their opinions a telephone survey was conducted. The purpose of the telephone survey was to interview customers with short questions in order to dispatch their experiences and expectations concerning both the customer and the maintenance service. Additional function of the survey was also to clarify customers’ opinions about the customer satisfaction survey which they receive regularly from the car manufacturer.

The theoretical section was collected by using marketing books, business literature and extracts of thesis made by Auto Oy Vesa-Matti’s chief of the maintenance service. Books handling research and especially qualitative research were valuable and used when conducting the empirical part of the thesis. In addition to actual book sources the text contains information gathered during the writer’s working in Auto Oy Vesa-Matti as well the information received from the collegians.

The actual empirical part consisted of telephone survey and interviews of Auto Oy Vesa-Matti’s staff. In the whole thesis and especially the empirical part was done with qualitative methods. The decision to use qualitative methods was clear from the beginning due to the nature of the thesis topic and it was the most suitable resaercgh method when the empirical part included telephone survey with rather small number of customers. This ensured the validity of the results.

The thesis does not give straight answer but rather guidelines and tries to reveal the complexity and factors behind it. Qualitative research focuses on exploring people’s behaviour and feelings which they base their decisions therefore the thesis is more or less focusing on understanding why customers act how they do and how the service provider’s decisions and behaviour affect customers. The most important recommen-dation for the client company is to advise them to keep the service promises which they give to customers and also follow the rules and common strategy company has and that is the key in avoiding misunderstanding when serving customers and naturally that leads the way towards satisfied customers.