Distribution Strategy Group
Customer experience has become the wholesale channel’s defining competitive battleground — and most distributors are losing ground without knowing it.
Distribution Strategy Group’s State of Distributor Customer Experience 2026 draws on two complementary data sets: a survey of distributor executives on how they manage and measure customer experience, and a benchmark of more than 30,000 customer responses across more than 50 distributors. Together, they reveal a striking conclusion: for distributors who sell the same brands at similar prices as their competitors, customer experience is the product.
The research maps 18 capabilities and touchpoints — from inventory availability and pricing to billing, returns, and technical expertise — and scores them by customer importance and satisfaction. It classifies distributors into three groups (CX Leaders, CX Passives, and CX Laggards) and finds that the defining difference between leaders and the rest is not effort, but measurement discipline. Companies that consistently track and act on customer feedback report higher satisfaction, stronger retention, and greater wallet share.
The report also surfaces a critical blind spot: across every capability measured, customers rate distributors more favorably than distributors rate themselves — meaning companies risk investing in the wrong fixes. It further shows that customer priorities vary significantly by industry, making a one-size-fits-all CX strategy unlikely to succeed for distributors serving multiple end markets.
This report is essential reading for distribution executives looking to understand where their customer experience stands, where the gaps are, and why closing them is no longer optional.