Vendor Satisfaction Survey Template

What Questions Are in This Vendor Satisfaction Survey Template?

This vendor satisfaction survey template asks six questions that go beyond operational metrics to measure the relationship itself. Where a supplier feedback questionnaire measures your procurement process and a vendor evaluation scores vendor performance, this survey asks the strategic question: "Are our vendors satisfied enough to stay?"

• "What's your name?" — Identifies the individual responding. Vendor satisfaction varies by contact person — the account manager might be thrilled while the delivery team is frustrated. Knowing who's responding lets you address issues at the right level.
• "What's the business name?" — Links the response to the vendor entity. Combined with the name field, this gives you both the individual and organizational perspective on the partnership. Tag against your vendor database for segmented analysis.
• "How is the vendor partnership working for you?" (open-ended or rating) — The big-picture question. This isn't about response times or documentation — that's operational. This asks whether the partnership itself is healthy, productive, and worth the vendor's investment. A vendor who rates the operational details highly but rates the partnership poorly is signaling a strategic misalignment — maybe they feel undervalued, underpaid, or excluded from decisions that affect their work.
• "What are your goals for the vendor partnership?" (open-ended) — The most unusual question in the template — and the most revealing. Most organizations never ask their vendors what they want from the relationship. The answers tell you whether your vendors see this as a transactional arrangement or a strategic partnership. Vendors who have goals for the partnership invest more in it. Vendors who say "just pay us on time" have already emotionally checked out.
• "How do you think we could help you achieve that?" (open-ended) — This closes the loop on the goals question. Now the vendor isn't just telling you what they want — they're telling you what you can do. These responses are gold for vendor relationship management. A vendor who says "include us in product planning meetings" is asking for a deeper relationship. One who says "just process invoices faster" is asking for basic operational hygiene.
• Thank you / close screen — The survey ends with appreciation. If you've enabled CX automation, this is where you can trigger a follow-up: route low-satisfaction responses to vendor relationship managers for a personal check-in call within 48 hours.

Pro tip: The open-ended questions in this survey are the point, not an afterthought. Don't be tempted to replace them with rating scales for easier analysis. Vendor satisfaction is qualitative — a vendor who writes "we feel like a number, not a partner" is giving you more signal than a 3/5 rating ever could. Run responses through AI feedback analytics to detect themes at scale.

Who Should Receive This Vendor Satisfaction Survey?

Not all vendors need the same level of relationship management. Target the survey strategically:

• Strategic vendors (top 10-20% by spend or criticality) — these vendors are irreplaceable or expensive to replace. Their satisfaction directly affects your operational continuity. Survey them semi-annually at minimum, with a personal follow-up call after every survey.
• Growth-potential vendors — vendors you want to expand the relationship with. If you're planning to give them more work, understanding their satisfaction now prevents scaling a broken relationship. Their survey responses tell you whether they have capacity, interest, and enthusiasm for a bigger role.
• At-risk vendors — vendors who've recently shown signs of disengagement: slower response times, declining quality, or pushback on renewal terms. These symptoms often mean they're unsatisfied but haven't said so. The vendor satisfaction survey gives them the channel to express what the business relationship doesn't.
• New vendors (after 6 months) — enough time to form a real opinion, not so long that early frustrations have calcified. First-impression satisfaction data is some of the most actionable feedback you'll get — it captures onboarding friction, expectation mismatches, and relationship dynamics before they become patterns.

Don't send this to every vendor in your database. Tail-spend vendors with transactional, commodity relationships don't need a satisfaction survey — they need reliable purchase orders and timely payments. Save the relationship investment for vendors where the relationship matters.

What Mistakes Undermine Vendor Satisfaction Surveys?

Vendor satisfaction programs fail not because the survey is wrong, but because the follow-through is:

• Assuming vendor silence means vendor satisfaction — the vendors who don't respond to your survey aren't happy. They're indifferent — or they've already decided to deprioritize your account. Low response rates on a vendor satisfaction survey aren't a data collection problem. They're a relationship signal.
• Running the survey but never acting on the results — a vendor who shares their goals and frustrations and then sees no change will never respond again. Worse, they'll tell other vendors in your space that your organization doesn't listen. Close the feedback loop within 30 days of collecting responses — share what you learned and what you're changing.
• Treating vendor satisfaction as a procurement metric instead of a business metric — vendor satisfaction belongs in business reviews, not buried in a procurement report. Your best vendors are business partners, and their satisfaction directly affects your cost structure, delivery reliability, and innovation access. The CFO and COO should care about this number.
• Surveying too frequently — vendor satisfaction doesn't change month-to-month the way customer satisfaction does. Semi-annual surveys are the right cadence. More frequent than that and you're creating survey fatigue in a relationship where trust is built slowly.

Beyond Satisfaction — Using This Survey for Vendor Retention

Vendor satisfaction data isn't just a health check — it's a retention tool. Here's how to extend its use:

• Build a vendor retention risk model — vendors who score the partnership as "poor" or "not working" AND have goals you're not meeting are at highest churn risk. Prioritize personal outreach to these vendors. A 30-minute call from a VP costs less than sourcing, vetting, and onboarding a replacement.
• Use goals data for vendor development — if three strategic vendors say their goal is "joint product development," that's a market signal. Your vendors see opportunities you might not. The goals question turns a satisfaction survey into a strategic intelligence tool.
• Segment your vendor management approach by satisfaction tier — satisfied vendors (partnership working well, clear goals, aligned support) get streamlined processes and faster payments. Dissatisfied vendors get intervention. Disengaged vendors (no response, minimal goals) get a frank conversation about whether the relationship has a future.
• Track satisfaction trends against vendor performance — cross-reference satisfaction scores with the vendor evaluation questionnaire scores. A vendor whose satisfaction is dropping but whose performance holds is compensating — for now. Eventually, declining satisfaction leads to declining performance. The satisfaction signal arrives first, giving you time to act.