Customer ESG questionnaire
Received an ESG questionnaire from a customer? Start here.
A practical first-response guide for suppliers that need to understand the request before answering it.
Quick answer
Start with the request, not the spreadsheet.
Do not start by filling in every field. First confirm what the customer is asking for, which legal entity or site is in scope, which reporting period applies and whether supporting evidence is required.
Most information is usually already somewhere inside the company. The work is to map each answer to the right owner, source and evidence, then leave real gaps visible for internal review.
Check scope first.
Confirm the legal entity, sites or facilities, reporting period, deadline and required submission format.
Group the questions.
Sort the request into energy, emissions, workforce, health and safety, policies, compliance, supply chain and evidence.
Find data owners.
Finance, HR, Quality, EHS, Operations, Procurement and Management may each own part of the answer.
Do not hide gaps.
Missing data, missing evidence and unclear questions should be marked as such. A gap can be closed; it should not be rewritten as history.
First: do not answer field by field.
A customer ESG questionnaire can look like a long administrative task. In practice, the first risk is answering too quickly. If the scope is unclear, even a technically correct data point can become the wrong answer.
Before you open the spreadsheet or portal, capture the basic control information: who asked, why they asked, which company entity is expected to answer, which sites are included, which year is requested, what the deadline is and whether documents need to be uploaded.
- Customer name and contact person
- Legal entity or group scope
- Sites, facilities or business units included
- Reporting period
- Submission format: spreadsheet, PDF, portal or email
- Required supporting evidence
- Mandatory fields and customer-specific instructions
The first deliverable is not an answer. It is a clear reading of the request.
The information is usually distributed across the business.
Supplier ESG requests rarely belong to one department. Finance may hold energy invoices, HR may hold workforce data, Quality may hold certificates, EHS may hold safety and environmental records, and Management may need to confirm policies or responsibilities.
Treat each question as an internal routing task. The person who can provide a source is not always the same person who can approve the final company statement.
Finance
Energy invoices, fuel costs, financial company information and sometimes waste or water cost records.
HR
Headcount, FTE, training, workforce structure, health and safety records and HR policies.
Quality / EHS
Management system certificates, audits, environmental procedures, safety records and operating controls.
Management
Formal policies, responsibilities, company commitments, targets and final confirmation of company statements.
Build a simple answer map.
An answer map prevents the questionnaire from becoming a collection of unsupported statements. For each question, record the requested information, internal owner, source document, evidence, status and reviewer.
This does not need to be complicated. The important point is that the final response can be traced back to the underlying company information.
- Question or field
- Requested information or KPI
- Internal data owner
- Source document or system
- Supporting evidence
- Status: available, calculate, confirm, missing or unclear
- Internal reviewer or approver
Evidence logic
Statement - source - evidence.
Prepare answers and supporting evidence together.
Many customer questionnaires ask for a yes/no answer, a number and a document. If the document is collected only at the end, inconsistencies are easy to miss.
A policy, certificate, invoice, calculation or report should support the specific answer being given. It should also match the company scope and reporting period where those details matter.
- A certificate may support a certified management system, but not every activity under that topic.
- A group policy may not automatically cover every subsidiary or site.
- A current policy does not prove that the same policy existed in a previous year.
- A calculation should keep activity data, emission factor, CO2e result and assumptions traceable.
Treat missing information as a real status.
A missing policy, missing KPI or missing source document is not unusual. It should be shown clearly so the company can decide whether to close the gap, explain it, or mark the answer as not currently available.
Do not turn a newly written document into historical evidence. If a policy is drafted today, it can become a current approved policy after proper internal review. It should not be presented as proof that the same policy existed in an earlier reporting period.
A gap can be closed. It should not be rewritten as though it never existed.
Use internal confirmation before submission.
The final response is a company statement. It should be checked by the people who own the facts and by the person responsible for releasing the answer to the customer.
The review should look for scope mismatches, old documents, unsupported yes/no answers, inconsistent figures, missing assumptions and answers that overstate what the company can evidence.
- Does the answer match the requested legal entity or site?
- Does the period match the customer request?
- Is the supporting evidence current and relevant?
- Are calculated figures traceable?
- Are gaps and assumptions visible?
- Has the responsible person confirmed the final answer?
A practical order for the first 24 hours.
If the deadline is close, do not try to build a full ESG system before you know what the customer needs. Triage the request, assign owners and decide which answers can be prepared from existing sources.
Then prepare the response package: answer map, documents, calculations, unresolved questions and items that need management confirmation.
- Save the original customer request and attachments.
- Confirm scope, period, deadline and format.
- Sort questions by topic and owner.
- Mark fields that require evidence or calculation.
- Request source documents from internal owners.
- Identify real data gaps and evidence gaps.
- Review the final response before it is submitted.
From request to response
Your customer has already sent the questionnaire?
Send us the original request. We can map the questions, identify required data and evidence, prepare calculations where needed and structure the response for your internal confirmation.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Should we answer the questionnaire immediately?
Not before checking the scope, deadline, reporting period, required evidence and internal owners. Quick answers are risky when the customer is asking about a specific legal entity, site or year.
What if we do not have all ESG data yet?
Mark the missing information as a data gap or evidence gap. The company can then decide whether to collect data, prepare a current document, explain the limitation or answer that the information is not currently available.
Can evipace submit the answer for us?
Evipace can prepare the information, evidence mapping and draft response. The final company facts and any platform submission remain under the company's control.