Today, retail success hinges on having accurate customer data, in particular customer address data. In a long list of challenges retailers face, many stem from incorrect customer addresses – whether it’s failed deliveries or ineffective marketing, with communications going awry.
Investing in address accuracy isn’t just about fixing errors, but in building a business that runs efficiently and cares about what keeps customers coming back. It’s an important focus when customer data changes and decays rapidly, at around 20 per cent a year on customer databases, with about six million people moving home every year in England and Wales.
The value of accurate address data
The value for retailers in having address accuracy – ensuring only valid billing and shipping addresses are captured and used – is that it ensures fast, smooth deliveries, thereby supporting a positive customer experience, while also avoiding costly returns and redeliveries. This is important when according to research by Ipsos 85 per cent of online shoppers said a poor delivery experience would prevent them from ordering from that retailer again.
Having accurate address data helps to provide valuable customer insight by informing a single customer view (SCV). This supports retailers to deliver effective personalised sales and marketing activity – such as direct mail campaigns – driving customer satisfaction, loyalty and spend, while improving overall operational efficiency.
Address accuracy assists retailers in meeting sustainability targets, by being able to identify the fastest and most efficient delivery routes, while also driving cost efficiencies in fulfilment. This has the additional benefit of improving customer and wider public perception of the business.
Furthermore, having a consistently accurate, standardised address is typically recognised as the cornerstone of contact data quality, which also plays a role in helping to prevent fraud. It’s because having access to up-to-date customer addresses makes it much easier to match and verify identities across multiple sources. This aids retailers in meeting know your customer (KYC) regulations and in avoiding the potential for costly fraud, and the associated reputational damage.
How to deliver address accuracy that builds stronger customer relationships
The best starting point to deliver accurate customer address data is by having access to address lookup or autocomplete tools. These services provide correct address data in real-time by delivering a properly formatted, correct address when the user starts to input theirs. This approach also cuts the number of keystrokes required by up to 81 per cent when entering an address, speeding up the onboarding process; improving the whole experience, making it much more likely that the user will complete a purchase.
Similar technology can be used to deliver first point of contact verification across email and phone, so these vital contact datasets can also be verified in real-time. This is the foundation of delivering strong customer relationship management (CRM).
Undertake data cleansing or suppression activity to highlight those who have moved or are no longer at the address on file. Along with removing incorrect addresses these services can deliver deceased flagging to prevent the delivery of mail and other communications to those who have passed away – causing anguish to their friends and relatives – which has both a reputational and monetary cost. Additionally, run the National Change of Address (NCOA) database against held customer data, because it highlights those who have moved or passed away. By having quick access to the new addresses of customers who have changed residence retailers will be able to maintain a consistent positive customer experience while improving operational efficiency.
Consider using a software as a service (SaaS) data quality platform to cost-effectively collect accurate addresses and wider customer contact data in real-time at the customer onboarding stage, as well as cleaning held data in batch. Because they are available as a SaaS they can be easily accessed and don’t require coding, integration, or training to use. This technology can cleanse and correct names, addresses, email addresses, and telephone numbers in the UK, and also worldwide.
The importance of geocoding
Once you have an accurate customer address add geocodes to further speed up and improve the fulfilment process, and therefore the customer experience. This approach is vital because location and address aren’t always the same thing. For instance, some properties may share an address, such as a plot of land or the street edge of a driveway. Geocoding technology provides latitude and longitude (rooftop level) coordinates, which ensures faster, more accurate deliveries, and at the same time improves retailers’ efforts in sustainability, with the quickest routes for delivery rounds from distribution points identified.
With different conventions for address formats around the world, geocoding is particularly important when it comes to global deliveries. For example, the UK uses city, street and house number, but in Japan buildings are referenced by the number of the block they belong to, and within each block buildings are numbered as well. Sometimes it’s done by order of construction, so the numbers don’t necessarily follow each other.
Delivery delays and returned packages are costly, but losing customer trust is even worse. Retailers that commit to obtaining accurate customer address data, as well as wider customer contact data quality, are better equipped to provide a frictionless shopping experience, strengthen customer relationships and thrive in an increasingly competitive retail marketplace.
Barley Laing, the UK Managing Director at Melissa
As Managing Director, with 27 years of technology and data industry experience, Barley’s role is focused on meeting the data quality and ID/compliance needs for organisations in the UK and worldwide.
The team that he heads up provides data consultancy, sales and technical support across their wide range of market leading web services, apps, SaaS and on-premise software solutions. These help organisations to deliver efficient multichannel customer engagement; onboarding; build customer loyalty; optimise organisational efficiency; and deliver data management and ID verification to meet Know your Customer (KYC), Know your Business (KYB) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) requirements.
Having helped over 20,000 organisations in the UK and globally to unlock accurate customer data, Melissa works with retailers including: ASOS, Dufry, HUF, Mars, Wiggle, Mephisto, Kohl’s, Nordstrom, The Home Depot, Melitta and Walmart.
