Supplier satisfaction survey: 12 questions your vendors answer about you
Twelve questions for the person who handles your account at a supplier, on how you look as a customer.
- 12questions
- 3 minto complete
- Your supplieranswers it
- Yearlyor before a renewal
The 12 supplier satisfaction survey questions
A supplier satisfaction survey asks the person who handles your account at a supplier or vendor to rate you as a customer: how clearly you brief, how realistic your lead times are, whether you pay on time and where your orders sit in their queue. These twelve questions open in the survey form builder, ready for your company name.
Who is answering
Two short cuts, so you can split the results by role and by tenure.
- Which of these is closest to your role on our account?finance and operations contacts meet different parts of your company.
- How long has your company been supplying us?a first-year supplier is describing your onboarding.
How we ask for the work
What you asked for, by when, and at what price.
- Our requirements are clear enough to quote against without coming back to us for the basics.a low answer points at your brief or specification.
- The lead times we ask for are realistic for the work involved.low from every supplier means your planning cycle sets dates late.
- The prices we agree leave your business a workable margin on this account.the one rating a supplier may skip.
How we pay
The part of the relationship the supplier's finance team feels.
- We pay on the terms we agreed.compare the answer with your own payment ledger.
- When your team queries an invoice, they get an answer from us.
How we behave when it matters
Needing a decision from you, and an order going wrong.
- You know who on our side can make a decision when one is needed.a low answer names a bottleneck on your side.
- When something goes wrong on an order, we take part in putting it right.set it beside your complaint log.
Where we stand with you
Your place in the supplier's queue, then the headline rating.
- If your capacity were tight next quarter, our orders would be near the front of the queue.set it beside how much you spend with them.
- Overall, we are a good customer to supply.track it per supplier, never as one average.
In their words
One open answer to close.
- What is the one thing we could change that would make us easier to supply?
How to use this supplier satisfaction survey
Send it to one named person per supplier, the account manager your buyers email, once a year or ahead of a contract renewal. Send it from procurement instead of the buyer who places the orders. Suppliers answer by name, so say in the invitation who will read the answers.
Read each rating as the share of suppliers who picked 4 or 5. A rating that is low across your suppliers is a form, a policy or a payment run of yours, and you fix it once. A rating that is low for one supplier goes on the agenda of that account's next review. If the lead-time rating is low among the suppliers who ship you goods, the logistics survey questions measures the deliveries themselves.
Supplier satisfaction survey FAQ
Is a vendor satisfaction survey the same thing?
Yes, when the vendor is the one answering. These twelve questions suit a vendor, a contractor or an agency without a word changed. When your own buyers rate a vendor's tool instead, the software evaluation survey template gives you a scored result.
How is this different from a procurement satisfaction survey?
A procurement satisfaction survey asks the colleagues who raise purchase requests how well buying served them. A supplier satisfaction survey asks the supplier at the far end. For the internal view, the process improvement survey asks employees where a process slows them down.
Should you share the results with your suppliers?
Yes. Tell each supplier which answers you will act on and what will change. Promise it in the invitation too: in a Cochrane review, offering the survey results raised the odds of an electronic questionnaire being answered by a third.[1]
Michael Hodge, survey methodology · Updated 2 October 2026 · How templates are reviewed
Sources (1)
- Edwards PJ, Roberts I, Clarke MJ, DiGuiseppi C, Wentz R, Kwan I, Cooper R, Felix LM, Pratap S. Methods to increase response to postal and electronic questionnaires. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2009. DOI 10.1002/14651858.MR000008.pub4. europepmc.org
See your company from the supplier side of the order
Twelve questions, three minutes, eleven ratings. Put your company name in and send it to the account manager at each supplier.
Use this template