It is now widely recognized that innovators in rural areas (farmers, rural entrepreneurs, farmers' organisations) need diversified, efficient, phased and timely support services to help them during their innovation journey. We build on the recent concept of innovation support services (ISS) to cover the diversified nature of ISS. However, the quality of ISS has been poorly explored, apart from usual evaluation criteria commonly used for R&D project evaluation. To make sure ISS meet innovators and practitioners' expectations, we state that the diversity and matching of quality criteria formulated by these 2 types of actors should be better acknowledged and aligned. We used 6 innovation case studies in Madagascar to screen the ISS provided and quality criteria expressed by farmers and ISS providers. Our results show that farmers have a multifaceted perception about the quality of ISS. We highlight areas of mismatching about the quality of services, which most of the time reveals spaces of negotiation between them. Finally, we propose a new framework to assess the quality of ISS provision. Such comprehensive assessment advocates for more professionalized services provision toward innovation and to better connect ISS providers in order to address possible gaps in ISS provision at AKIS level.