Why partnership is key to coatings & adhesives innovation
Achieving the best results for customers is about more than simply providing high-quality products – it’s about an open and collaborative partnership. In this interview, Thomas Römer, our EVP Head of Coatings & Adhesives, explains how we put customer needs and feedback at the core of our innovation.
How we drive Status Next solutions by putting our partners at the heart of all we do
1. What are customers’ key demands in the chemical industry, and what’s the context shaping these?
Many coating markets are growing very rapidly – so the main demand is for innovation. Our customers need to keep up with evolving demands while building a competitive edge through more efficient processes and higher-quality products.
Within this overarching need for innovation comes a strong drive towards more sustainable materials to reduce waste, comply with regulations, and meet end-consumer demand. But more sustainable materials also need to be integrated into existing processes as smoothly as possible to be cost-effective. As a result, we made both these needs central to our product development with, for example, our lower-emissions and near-drop-in CQ and Ultra product lines.
“Our customers are facing rapid change, so they need a partner that doesn’t just provide products but ultimately helps them meet their challenges head-on.”
Thomas Römer
EVP Head of Coatings and Adhesives, Covestro
2. How do you gather and process feedback from customers?
We have a global network of multidisciplinary teams with specialized experts, and we can leverage this to meet our customers’ varying needs.
From logistics and supply chain to processing, marketing and sales, we have a range of dedicated specialists working to improve these particular areas. Increasingly, we also compare feedback across these teams. That way, we’re able to better respond to the needs of all our customers, whatever their specialty.
One of many tools and processes that we use to proactively gather this feedback is our yearly Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey. This survey allows us to view responses and analyze these on a regular basis. Plus, personal conversations with individuals help us to better incorporate this feedback into our solutions and to ‘close the NPS loop’ openly and collaboratively.
3. Why is support beyond products so important?
Our customers are facing rapid change, so they need a partner that does more than provide products and instead helps them meet their challenges head-on. We achieve this in several ways. Our broad portfolio of flexible and tailored solutions means a customer can come to us for one need and discover we can help them in many additional ways, for instance.
Transparency and information sharing are also crucial. If prospective customers need more information about our products, we put those insights at their fingertips through, for example, detailed technical data sheets and are also working on increasing transparency on, for example, product carbon footprints.
We also collaborate not just with our direct customers, but with stakeholders across the value chain, so that we can better understand the needs and challenges across industries and implement them into our product design.
In the end, feedback is the key to a strong partnership. By listening to customers and other stakeholders, we can bake their needs into our products from the very beginning, improve our services to make their lives easier and build the trust that’s essential for a long-lasting and fruitful collaboration.
Feedback is key to an improved offering
Feedback is key to an improved offering
Feedback helps us address customers’ needs from the very beginning of our development process.
Support from specialized experts
Support from specialized experts
Our global network of multidisciplinary teams with specialized experts helps us to meet our customers’ varying needs.
Digitalization meets personalization
Digitalization meets personalization
We offer a range of digital tools to make our customers’ lives easier – but we combine this with personalized support for these tools, as well as regular customer visits.
