Knowing your customer is one of the essential principles of sales and marketing. You have to know who you’re selling to, where they live and work, what they like to buy, what services they avail, and where else they spend their money. And if you’ve already closed that sale, then you’ll have to deliver the product or item that your customer bought to the correct physical address.
You need to know the correct physical or postal address of your customer, so you can send the package promptly. If you don’t know the exact address or have the wrong one, you might send the item to the incorrect person. You can avoid this by using an address verification or validator systems like Lob and other similar systems.
The primary function of the address validator system is to clean up your list of customer addresses. It collects the information and cleans them by ensuring that all addresses on file are current, correct, accurate, and standardized. The validator does this by comparing the data in your database with other tools such as websites, call centers, and other existing customer databases.
There are now different kinds of address verification tools offered in the market:
- Type-ahead verification: This tool saves time for users. When users enter their addresses, it accurately suggests addresses. The information populates the selection box.
- Post-entry validation: Users have to enter their data manually, then a pop-up will give suggestions. The user can then choose their address from the suggestions;
- Partial verification: Users only have to supply their zip code. The tool would then automatically provide the city and state. The rest of the information has to be manually provided by the user; and
- Drop-down verification: Users of this tool click to view a drop-down menu. From the drop-down menu, they can choose their city, state, and country. It’s one of the most famous address validation tools. It’s used by 6 out of 10 e-commerce businesses in the US.
- Improve Customer Service
One way that address verification can improve business efficiency is to provide your customer service operations team with accurate and verified information. This is a crucial requisite for the improvement of customer service engagement.
Verified addresses are essential in protecting the security and privacy of users’ and customers’ accounts. They also improve data handling and analysis by minimizing errors and handling time. Many Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies and Contact Centers’ clients are required to verify the identity of callers. Among the usual verifications is the date of birth and address of the caller or customer. If they’re not confirmed, there will be a more extended set of queries.
Address verification also enables customer service teams to engage clients and users with more warmth and account familiarity. They don’t have to grope in the dark about who they’re speaking with. This way, customer accounts can be handled with more accuracy and efficiency.
- Accurate Information for Delivery Logistics
The second way that verified addresses can improve business efficiency is by ensuring that accurate information is being used for the company’s logistics and delivery platforms. Verified addresses are essential in ensuring the products and items for delivery will be sent to the correct addresses.
Especially in an e-commerce company, the addresses where the products and items will be delivered are used in many ways: identify the point of delivery, calculate the cost of shipping and freight forwarding, group adjacent or nearby destination points for efficient product handling and delivery, and calculate the freight insurance.
If the delivery address is incorrect, this error can lead to losses in many aspects. For instance, one mistake means that one more package could’ve been included in that cluster or group, saving on freight space and expense. This also means that the customer expecting that item will have to wait longer, affecting customer experience and perception. It could also mean that the correct item could’ve been mistakenly delivered to a different person.
- Enhance Accuracy of Geo-Location Analytics
Another way that verified addresses can improve business efficiency is by enhancing the accuracy of geo-location analytics. There are computer software applications now which are pinned or integrated with map applications. This enables the software to pinpoint the exact location of a user on a map based on the given address and allows the software to correlate it with other information available in the map application.
For instance, an e-commerce site might be using geo-location analytics to correlate the location of a user or customer with the locations of its nearest warehouses or shipment hubs. This information would enable it to further streamline its shipping and delivery operations and cost management. With the help of geo-location analytics, it can even partner with its allied stores and push a suggested item to the buyer based on which stores are nearest to the buyer’s verified address.
If the addresses in their database are outdated, incomplete, or, worse, incorrect, using such erroneous information in its geo-location analytics would be disastrous. They’d be giving wrong delivery routes to the freight insurance company for computation of cargo insurance premiums. It might push or suggest items of allied stores that are located hundreds of miles away.
- Improve Effectiveness of Direct Marketing Activities
The fourth way that verified addresses can improve business efficiency is by enhancing the effectiveness of direct marketing activities.
There are marketing professionals who think that direct mail marketing is a thing of the past. There may be solid direct evidence to support this belief among the younger professionals. They now prefer digital and online marketing as opposed to the other more traditional forms of marketing.
But a lot of Americans still have a thing for receiving something in the mail. They still receive a lot of critical news, university admissions letters, credit card bills, and so much more in the mail.
Having verified addresses will make for a more effective direct mail campaign. If the direct mail pamphlets are sent to the wrong address, imagine the impact of this on the customer who received letters meant for somebody else.
Address It Right
Having the correct physical and postal addresses of your customers is vital to maintain an accurate and valuable customer database. You can use the verified valid addresses to perform a lot of tasks with your database. The confirmed addresses are essential in customer service, logistics, delivery, and analytics.