Nobody wants to work with a difficult customer. It's one of those obvious truths that somehow gets forgotten when procurement teams are under pressure to extract the last penny from every supplier negotiation.

But there's a growing recognition that being a "customer of choice" actually matters. The best suppliers—the ones with capacity, innovation, and reliability—can pick who they work with. And increasingly, they're choosing not to work with companies that treat them poorly.

One manufacturing company learned this lesson the hard way, and then did something about it.

The Warning Signs

Company Z had a reputation problem. Not with their customers—they were well-regarded in their market—but with their suppliers. Word had spread through the industry that they were, to put it politely, challenging to deal with.

The symptoms were everywhere once you looked. Tender response rates had fallen by 30% over three years. Suppliers who did bid were padding their prices with a "Company Z premium" to account for the hassle. Key suppliers were increasingly slow to respond to requests, and some had quietly stopped prioritising their orders.

The breaking point came when a critical packaging supplier declined to bid on a renewal contract. When pushed for a reason, their sales director was blunt: "Your payment terms are punitive, your purchasing team is aggressive, and frankly, we make better margins with less stress elsewhere."

That conversation landed on the CPO's desk with a thud. Something had to change.

Understanding the Problem

The procurement team conducted an uncomfortable exercise: they surveyed their supply base about what it was actually like to work with Company Z. The responses were anonymous, which meant they were honest. Brutally so.

Payment was the biggest issue. The company had extended payment terms to 90 days and was notorious for finding reasons to delay further. Suppliers reported waiting 120 days or more for invoices to be settled. For smaller suppliers, this created genuine cash flow problems.

Communication was the second complaint. Suppliers never knew where they stood. Queries went unanswered for weeks. Changes to specifications arrived at the last minute. When problems arose, the first response was always blame rather than collaboration.

The onboarding process came third. New suppliers described it as Byzantine—endless forms, duplicate requests for information, and no single point of contact. One supplier estimated they'd spent 40 hours of administrative time just getting set up, before they'd even won any business.

The Improvement Programme

Company Z launched what they called their "Supplier Experience" programme. The name was deliberately chosen to mirror the customer experience thinking that had transformed their own sales approach.

The first change was payment visibility. They implemented a supplier portal where vendors could track invoice status in real-time—when it was received, when it was approved, when payment was scheduled. No more chasing, no more uncertainty. They also created a fast-track payment option for suppliers who needed it, in exchange for a modest discount.

The second change was communication standards. Every supplier query now had a guaranteed response time. Critical issues within 24 hours, routine matters within 72. They assigned relationship managers to their top 50 suppliers, giving them a named contact who understood their business.

The third change was onboarding simplification. They reduced the new supplier questionnaire from 47 pages to 12, focusing on what actually mattered for risk assessment. They pre-populated forms with publicly available data so suppliers weren't retyping their company registration number for the twentieth time. The average onboarding time dropped from six weeks to eight days.

Measuring the Shift

They began tracking supplier satisfaction systematically, running quarterly pulse surveys with a simple Net Promoter Score question: "How likely are you to recommend working with Company Z to another supplier?"

The initial score was brutal: -23. More suppliers would actively discourage others from working with them than would recommend it. But it gave them a baseline, and more importantly, it gave them a target.

After 12 months of focused improvement, the score had climbed to +18. Not world-class, but a 41-point improvement that reflected genuine change in how suppliers experienced the relationship.

The Business Impact

The cynics in the organisation had questioned whether any of this mattered. Weren't suppliers just there to be squeezed? The results answered that question decisively.

Tender response rates increased by 65%. More suppliers bidding meant more competition, which—ironically—drove better pricing than the aggressive tactics ever had. You cannot negotiate effectively when you only have one bidder.

Quality issues from suppliers dropped by 22%. It turns out that suppliers who feel valued put more effort into getting things right. Who knew.

Innovation contributions increased markedly. Suppliers started sharing ideas for product improvements and cost reductions—something they'd previously kept for their preferred customers. One suggestion from a packaging supplier saved £180,000 annually.

The most telling metric was supplier retention. The company had been losing an average of eight key suppliers per year to competitors. In the year after the programme launched, they lost two.

The Broader Lesson

Company Z's transformation illustrates a fundamental shift in supply chain thinking. In a world of constrained capacity, supply chain disruption, and increasing complexity, your suppliers are not adversaries to be beaten—they're partners to be cultivated.

The companies that will thrive are those that suppliers want to work with. When capacity is tight, they'll prioritise your orders. When innovation emerges, they'll share it with you first. When problems arise, they'll go the extra mile to fix them.

None of this means being soft in negotiations or accepting poor performance. It means being fair, being transparent, and treating suppliers as the businesses they are rather than interchangeable commodities.

The supplier satisfaction programme at Company Z didn't cost millions. It cost attention, process improvement, and a willingness to hear uncomfortable truths. The return on that investment has been substantial—not just in hard savings, but in a supply base that actually wants to help the company succeed.

For procurement teams still operating in adversarial mode, it's worth asking: what would your suppliers say about you? And is that reputation helping or hurting your business?