For decades, distributors have measured success using operational and financial metrics. Revenue growth, gross margins, inventory turns, order accuracy, and on-time deliveries all provide valuable insight into how a business is performing. But they leave out one measurement that is becoming increasingly important in today’s competitive environment: how much effort customers must expend to do business with you.
Customer effort is not a metric that traditionally appears on an operations dashboard, yet it influences many of the outcomes distributors care about most. It affects customer loyalty, repeat business, responsiveness, and ultimately growth. As products become more commoditized and pricing becomes increasingly competitive, the experience of doing business with a distributor is becoming just as important as what that distributor sells.
Customers Are Already Working Hard
Retailers are managing far more than placing orders. They are running stores, monitoring inventory, serving customers, receiving deliveries, scheduling employees, and coordinating with multiple suppliers throughout the day. Ordering products is just one responsibility among many.
Every unnecessary step a distributor introduces adds to that workload. Waiting on hold, logging into another portal, searching through product catalogs, following up on unanswered emails, or re-entering information may each seem like minor inconveniences. Together, they consume valuable time and mental energy that retailers would rather spend running their businesses.
The important point is that customers rarely think about these activities individually. They simply remember how easy, or how difficult, it was to get their work done.
Friction Is Rarely One Big Problem
Most distributors do not intentionally create a difficult customer experience. Friction usually develops gradually as new processes, systems, and policies are added over time. A new ordering portal improves internal efficiency. Another approval process reduces errors. A different communication channel solves a specific problem. Individually, each decision appears reasonable.
Collectively, however, they can make ordering more complicated than it needs to be. Customers rarely complain about every small frustration. Instead, they quietly gravitate toward suppliers that require less effort. They place one more order with the distributor that answers quickly, resolves issues without multiple follow-ups, and fits naturally into the way they already work. Over time, those small decisions influence where customers concentrate more of their business.
Customer Effort Is Becoming a Competitive Advantage
Many distributors compete with similar products, similar suppliers, and similar pricing. The difference increasingly lies in the overall experience they provide. The easiest distributor to work with is often the one that responds quickly, communicates clearly, and allows customers to interact in whatever way feels most natural. That simplicity creates confidence. Customers know they can rely on the distributor without unnecessary delays or administrative work.
Reducing customer effort is therefore more than a customer service initiative. It is a growth strategy. Every minute a retailer saves, every unnecessary step eliminated, and every friction point removed strengthens the relationship and increases the likelihood that future business will follow.
Measure the Experience, Not Just the Outcome
Operational metrics tell you whether an order was completed successfully. Customer effort helps explain how difficult it was to get there. Forward-thinking distributors should begin asking questions that traditional reports rarely answer. How long does it take for a customer to complete an order? How many interactions are required before an issue is resolved? Where do customers experience delays? Which parts of the process create unnecessary work for them?
These questions often reveal opportunities that are invisible when organizations focus only on internal efficiency.
The Best Businesses Remove Work Instead of Moving It
One of the biggest mistakes companies make is improving their own efficiency by transferring work to their customers. Asking customers to adapt to another portal, another process, or another workflow may simplify operations internally, but it often increases effort externally.
The strongest businesses take the opposite approach. They design their operations around reducing customer effort while maintaining internal consistency. Rather than asking customers to change how they work, they build systems that adapt to the customer. That philosophy benefits everyone. Customers enjoy a simpler experience, employees spend less time resolving avoidable issues, and the business becomes easier to scale.
Final Thought
As competition intensifies, distributors will continue investing in better products, stronger supplier relationships, and more efficient operations. Those investments will remain important.
But the distributors that separate themselves over the next decade will also focus on something many organizations have never measured: how easy it is for customers to do business with them. Customer effort may not appear on a traditional scorecard, but it influences almost every result that does. The businesses that consistently remove friction, simplify interactions, and respect their customers’ time will be the ones that earn greater loyalty, stronger relationships, and sustainable growth.
← Back to all articles