To serve our customers’ needs as best possible, we have industry-specific marketing and sales teams who are responsible for developing new business, expanding business relationships, and continuously analyzing markets and trends. Each Covestro business entity engages in sales and marketing activities for its own products through its own sales organization as well as through trading houses and local distributors, including for major customers with global operations, who are serviced directly by our key account managers. All activities are conducted in close cooperation between marketing, sales, and application development teams. At Covestro, marketing activities are managed by the business entities. The Covestro Solution Center consolidates all solutions and innovations.
As part of our Sustainable Future strategy and the Customer Centricity concept described there, we use the NPS to measure our customers’ willingness to recommend Covestro. To this end, we conduct an annual survey to which all customers are invited with whom there has been an active business relationship or interaction in the previous 12 months. Central to this is the question of how likely it is that customers would recommend Covestro to their employees or business partners. Covestro uses the NPS score, which ranges between –100 and +100, as a measure of customer satisfaction. An NPS of +42 was measured for fiscal 2024 (previous year: +42). According to those surveyed, the main reasons for this high willingness to recommend Covestro are the company’s customer service, product quality, and the good business relationship.
The corporate Supply Chain & Logistics function with its regional hubs in the EMLA, NA, and APAC regions is responsible for deliveries to customers and efficient order processing. Supply Chain & Logistics owns the process – from order acceptance to site logistics, and from shipping planning to invoicing and complaints handling. Via customer-oriented support within the individual regions, orders can be processed quickly and smoothly. Covestro prioritizes the use of channels such as e-commerce platforms for order entry and processing. Customers can submit and track orders online using the Order@Covestro self-service portal, which is subject to constant refinement. The Covestro Direct Store sales portal allows the company to receive offers and conduct negotiations online.
Covestro operates a global production network and produces in the EMLA, NA, and APAC regions, in particular for customers within the respective region. Our products are transported to the customer by logistics service providers with safety, environmental, and quality criteria being part of awarding the contract. In 2024, we published the Scope-3 targets we had defined and integrated these into our relationships with our suppliers. Delivery reliability is a particularly important factor. By eliminating errors in our processes, we aim to ensure a high level of customer satisfaction, which we measure regularly in a global management system by means of customer satisfaction analyses (NPS). When choosing the transport route, we pay particular attention to resource efficiency and the associated reduction in GHG emissions. Particularly in Europe, intermodal transport, which uses a combination of rail and waterway transportation, is preferred for longer-distance shipments of bulk product. The first projects, with investments by our logistics service providers in drives with alternative sources of energy and in the use of alternative fuels are now being offered and implemented. At the same time, we are driving the continuing automation and digitalization of our business processes and have introduced the first promising AI applications to improve our customer service.
In addition to the NPS and transactional surveys, we use internal metrics on compliance with our delivery promise, product availability, and process adherence to assess our performance. We agree specific performance metrics with our freight forwarders. In addition, we record complaints; in the 2024 reporting year, we had 5.4 (previous year: 5.3) complaints per 1,000 deliveries. We develop corrective actions on the basis of regularly conducted analyses and, if necessary, include discussions with our service providers in this process.