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Supplier relationships and customer experience shape the retail landscape and affect a retailer’s ability to meet customer expectations.
Understanding the connection between supplier relationships and customer experience is essential for retailers seeking growth.
Delivery schedules, product availability and returns arrangements all affect whether a retailer can deliver what it promises customers. Yet some retailers often review the agreements behind those processes for cost and commercial performance, without paying enough attention to their impact on the customer.
The UK salad shortage in February 2023 showed how supply problems affect the shopping experience. Asda limited customers to three each of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and lettuce, while Morrisons limited them to two. Tesco and Aldi also introduced restrictions. (ITV News)
Bad weather in southern Spain and North Africa disrupted supply. High energy costs and low supermarket contract prices also influenced whether UK growers could afford to heat greenhouses to produce winter crops. Customers faced empty shelves and purchase limits, and store teams had little control over the conditions causing them.
For retailers, the lesson is not that they can prevent every supply problem. Supplier agreements must account for what customers experience when deliveries are late, products are unavailable, or returns require supplier approval. That means agreeing on responsibilities, setting achievable service standards and reviewing customer outcomes alongside sales and margin.
Aligning supplier relationships and customer experience with business goals can drive strategic success.
Supplier relationships and customer experience: 3 steps for retailers
Commercial and category teams usually lead supplier relationships, but their decisions affect the customer journey. A supplier may determine when an ordered-in product arrives, what information is available about a delay or how quickly a return can be approved. The customer experiences the consequences through the retailer: a missed collection date, an unanswered query or a refund that takes longer than expected.
Bringing a CX perspective into supplier management does not mean replacing commercial priorities. It means assessing whether the arrangements support the service customers have been promised, and making the responsibilities behind that service explicit.
1. Identify where the customer journey depends on the supplier
Start with one process, such as an ordered-in product, and map it from the customer’s request through to collection. Keep the customer’s goal at the centre of the exercise, rather than simply documenting the retailer’s workflow. My customer journey mapping guide for retailers explains how to build that customer-first view using feedback and input from customer-facing teams.
A service blueprint adds the operational detail behind those interactions. Its line of visibility separates what the customer sees from the behind-the-scenes work, including supplier activity. This helps identify the supplier commitments and information needed to support each stage of the journey.
For each stage, establish:
- What the customer is promised. This could be a collection date, an update when stock arrives or a decision on a return.
- What the retailer needs to deliver that promise. Store colleagues may need a confirmed delivery date, accurate stock information, or supplier approval.
- Where the process can fail. Identify delays, missing information and handovers where responsibility is unclear.
Use customer feedback, complaints and store colleagues’ experience alongside the supplier’s account of the process. This helps distinguish a supplier delay from a retailer failure to act on information it has already received.
2. Agree responsibilities and achievable service standards
Once the dependencies are clear, document how the retailer and supplier will manage them. General commitments to good service aren’t enough; the agreement must describe what happens, who is responsible, and when action is required.
For an ordered-in product, agree when the supplier must confirm the delivery date, how it will report a delay and who within the retailer will update the customer. For a return requiring supplier approval, specify the information needed, the decision timescale and the escalation process if that timescale is missed.
Where customers deal directly with a supplier, agree who will explain the handover, provide updates and resolve a problem if the customer is passed between organisations. My episode on who owns the customer experience when another company delivers it explores the responsibilities retailers need to design into those third-party arrangements.
A supplier charter can set shared principles, but the supplier agreement should include the operational requirements. Check that each standard is achievable before making it a customer promise. A smaller supplier may not have automated reporting systems; a clear, agreed process for sharing updates may be more useful than a technical requirement it cannot meet.
3. Review customer outcomes alongside commercial performance
Include customer experience in supplier reviews alongside sales, margin and delivery performance. Choose measures that reflect the process being reviewed, rather than relying on a broad statement that service is improving.
Useful measures could include:
- The proportion of ordered-in products available by the date promised to the customer.
- The time taken to approve a return requiring a supplier decision.
- Whether delay notifications arrive early enough for the retailer to update customers before they need to chase.
Read these measures alongside customer feedback. Repeated calls for order updates, for example, may indicate that the supplier isn’t providing information or that the retailer isn’t passing it on. Make time to understand the pattern before deciding on a solution. In my episode on reflection in customer experience, I explore why feedback, colleague observations and operational information need to be considered together rather than moving straight from a dashboard to an action plan.
Use that understanding to agree on the corrective action, an owner, and a review date so the discussion leads to a process change.
Recognition can reinforce these expectations. At Jacuzzi, I organised annual dealer events that included an awards night with a customer service category, separate from sales incentives. Retailers could apply the same principle to supplier recognition, using customer feedback and service performance to recognise contributions beyond sales.
What the 2023 salad shortage reveals about supplier agreements
The shortage shows why retailers must consider availability in both supply conditions and commercial terms. Weather disrupted production, but the economics of growing and selling winter crops also affected the supply available to UK supermarkets.
Supermarkets emphasised the weather, while growers highlighted the commercial conditions. Lee Stiles of the Lea Valley Growers Association said: “It simply comes down to the price British supermarkets are prepared to pay for British salad over the winter.”
For CX professionals, the relevant question is how commercial terms affect the retailer’s ability to maintain availability when conditions change. Consider a favourable purchase price alongside whether suppliers can sustain production and respond to disruption. Customers judge the result through what they can buy, not through the savings achieved in the contract.
Climate risk makes this a longer-term consideration. The Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit found that just over a quarter of UK food imports come from the Mediterranean, including more than half of the UK’s sweet peppers and lemons. It warned that climate extremes in the region threaten that supply.
Supplier reviews should therefore consider risks to supply continuity, as well as current performance, including how the retailer will manage alternatives and communicate disruptions to customers.
Retailers should understand how supplier relationships and customer experience directly influence customer loyalty and retention.
Wilko and Poundland: how supplier confidence affects availability
A retailer’s financial position can affect customer experience before customers understand what is happening to the business. When suppliers become concerned about payment, changes to credit terms or supply can leave stores unable to offer the range customers expect.
In 2023, credit insurers withdrew cover on Wilko, and many suppliers requested upfront payment. Retail Gazette reported that this left Wilko “with huge gaps on its shelves” and led many shoppers to stop using it. The retailer traded with half-empty shelves for much of 2023 before entering administration that August.
Poundland provides another example of the connection between supplier confidence and product availability. In July 2025, The Times reported, and Stevens & Bolton discussed, difficulty filling shelves as suppliers worried about the sale of the business. In September 2026, insurers stopped new cover for some Poundland suppliers, and managers met suppliers in the UK and Shanghai to reassure them.
These examples show that supplier relationships and customer experience are connected through financial confidence and day-to-day service arrangements. If suppliers are unwilling to extend credit or continue supplying, customers see the effect in missing products and a less dependable range.
Store teams cannot resolve underlying financial issues. They can, however, help customers understand what is available and identify suitable alternatives. Retailers need to equip colleagues with accurate information, including what remains uncertain, rather than leaving them to explain shelf gaps without guidance.
Distinguish supplier issues from store-level stock problems
Not every empty shelf signals a supplier failure. Identifying where the problem begins is essential before changing contracts or challenging supplier performance.
Gruen, Corsten and Bharadwaj’s worldwide study and Fernie and Grant’s study of a UK grocer identified store-level processes as major causes of out-of-stocks. These included late ordering, stock not being moved from the warehouse or stockroom to the shop floor, and inaccurate stock records.
Supplier arrangements still affect how easily stores can maintain availability or recover when stock runs out:
- Minimum order quantities influence the range a store can carry. If the minimum exceeds what a small store can reasonably sell, it may be unable to stock the product, even where some customers want it.
- Delivery frequency affects replenishment. A product that sells out shortly after a weekly delivery may remain unavailable until the next scheduled delivery.
- Range reviews determine whether customers can continue buying familiar products. Removing a line may improve commercial performance, but it can also leave regular customers without a suitable replacement.
Retailers need to balance cost, stock levels and customer needs when making these decisions. Before changing the range or delivery arrangements, check which customers will be affected, whether alternatives meet their needs and how long they may have to wait for a product.
Determine whether the cause lies in the store, distribution, or supplier arrangements, then address the relevant process. Before delisting a product, assess the affected customers rather than judging its value solely by sales volume. Consider what they will need to do instead: choose a substitute, visit another store or change their plans. My episode on the customer impact of retail decisions offers five questions to help assess those consequences before a decision is signed off.
Supplier relationships and customer experience in practice
Supplier collaboration can improve customer experience when it addresses a defined need. The following examples illustrate three different contributions: a more informed range, accessible product information and greater confidence in future supply.
Use supplier insight to inform range decisions
At Iceland, where I worked some years ago, a few suppliers acted as category captains. Birds Eye led fish fingers, bringing its own shopper research and contributing to displays and range decisions across the category, rather than only its own products.
This arrangement allowed us to use supplier insight to better understand what shoppers need from a category. Retailers should retain oversight of the recommendations and assess them against customer needs, commercial objectives and the rules governing supplier relationships.
Supplier research is only useful if it reaches the teams making range, merchandising and service decisions. The same applies to customer feedback the retailer collects: commercial and category teams need access to findings that could change their supplier priorities. My episode on sharing customer insight across teams explores why research often stays with the team that commissioned it, and how to make it useful elsewhere in the business.
Make product information accessible
Kellogg’s worked with the RNIB to add NaviLens codes to cereal packs. A phone can detect the codes and read product information aloud for blind and partially sighted shoppers. Co-op hosted the first trial in 2020, and UK supermarkets made the codes permanent from 2022.
This addresses a specific customer need: accessing product information that would otherwise depend on reading the packaging. It also illustrates why experience design cannot stop at the retailer’s own systems. Suppliers control important parts of the shopping experience, including the information presented on products.
Support investment in reliable supply
In September 2026, Asda agreed a ten-year, £250 million deal with Lancashire grower Len Wright Salads for own-label bagged salads. Asda said the agreement gives the supplier confidence to invest and customers “a reliable supply of high-quality produce”.
The deal illustrates how a longer-term commercial commitment can support investment intended to maintain availability. It doesn’t prove disruption will never occur, but it makes continuity of supply an explicit objective of the relationship rather than treating price as the only consideration.
Key takeaways: make customer outcomes part of supplier management
Improving supplier relationships and customer experience requires more than asking suppliers to provide better service. Retailers need to define how supplier activity affects the customer journey, agree how the process will work and review whether it delivers the intended outcome.
- Map the dependencies. Follow one process, such as an ordered-in product or a return, and identify where the retailer needs supplier information or action to fulfil its customer promise.
- Agree responsibilities and achievable standards. Document confirmation dates, delay notifications, approval timescales and escalation routes. Make clear who will keep the customer informed.
- Review outcomes and act on the findings. Assess delivery and returns performance alongside customer feedback. Separate supplier failures from internal process problems, then agree an owner and timescale for each improvement.
Start with one recurring issue that customers or store colleagues already raise. Reviewing that process with the supplier gives the discussion a clear purpose: making a specific part of the customer journey more dependable.
Where does your customer journey depend on a supplier? I’d love to hear which process you would review first, and what customers need from it
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