The growth of a supplier is restricted when buyers have unmet expectations and thus frustrating experiences during the dyadic (between two parties) interactions. Hence the establishment of buyer-supplier relationships is limited. The organisational challenges of a supplier have a negative impact on the conveyed service quality. Customer orientation can create superior value for the customer and thus the service quality.

This graduation thesis approaches the challenge from the underexposed perspective of the supplier. The assignment aims to design a framework for supply organisations to enhance and implement customer orientation in buyer-supplier dyads. More specifically, it analyses and designs how the conversion phase of a Dutch service supplier, Pezy Group, can be more customer-oriented. In the context of the case study, customer orientation is the extent to which the supplier prioritises the customer’s expectations and applies its knowledge of the customer in the organisation to create a positive experience. The conversion phase is defined as the process of translating the buyer’s development request into a proposal for executing the project. The proposal concerns the service Pezy Group offers, in this case, integral product development projects.

From the analysis, it becomes apparent that different customers and their intended interaction result in various expectations and requires the supplier to organise their processes accordingly. A design goal is formed based on the defined and selected buyer-interaction archetype Structured Sophie. A framework is developed utilising participatory design methods, resulting in archetype specific customer journey of the conversion phase and an implementation roadmap for Pezy Group. Multiple validation sessions were organised to measure the expected impact of the future scenario on the customer orientation and thus service quality. Internal and external participants were selected (n=12) to evaluate the customer journey of the conversion phase using Likert scales.

The results showed that the proposed design changes of the customer journey contribute to Pezy Group’s enhancement of customer orientation in buyer-supplier dyads. Archetype Structured Sophie has a product development request focused on conceptualising, gathering insights, and intending a transactional relationship for the execution phase. The results of the validated design indicate that for Pezy Group to enhance and implement customer orientation, the following organisational changes must occur. This thesis concludes that a change of roles, in which the operational support is empowered to establish and manage the Sophie buyer-interaction archetype, will enhance the experienced customer orientation. This change is enabled by the support of the account responsible and the usage of standardised proposals during the process.

The delivered archetype specific framework concludes that the conceptual customer journey and implementation roadmap, once executed, increases the service quality of the buyer-supplier interactions, supports the conversion phase related activities, and may indirectly contribute to the degree of profitability of Pezy Group. Implementing the proposed changes by change management methodologies is recommended, as indicated in the roadmap. Since this graduation thesis is based on one case study, future research is required to investigate the generalisation of the recovered insights and the designed framework.