Tell us how you felt when your order, which you eagerly waited for a long time, got delivered to the wrong address. Pathetic, right?
Your customers also feel the same.
If you're in the logistics, supply chain, or e-commerce business, you should prioritize address verification over other operations. But the big issue is that you have other priority tasks too. Especially all your core tasks. So, choosing the right address verification vendor is your only solution here.
This blog can help you find an efficient address verifier that you can trust. Let's check how!
Purpose of address verification
Getting the orders delivered to the right address is specifically important for businesses. An order gets channelized through a lot of processes (including various touchpoints) before it reaches the original destination. It's an elaborate process that involves cost factors. Therefore, a faulty or unverified address can incur unnecessary costs plus customer frustration. That's why you should always prefer address verification if your business involves order deliveries.
But wait, there are a lot of other reasons, too, to verify addresses.
Shockingly, more than 30 million people move at least once every 12 months in the USA. This number indicates the population of 9% of the total US population.
People change their addresses for many reasons, like
- Jobs
- Education
- Economic shift
- Health
- Better lifestyle
- Environment
Hence, keeping the same address data in your CRM is nothing but merely blocking the space. Rather, you need to update your CRM with verified data of your existing customers.
Besides relocation or address change, some mistakes while entering the address data can create trouble later. These mistakes can happen from both ends: your executives while recording data, and your customers due to mistyping. However, address verification is the single process that can correct their mistake. It guarantees to check whether the address data is correct or not.
Can software help?
A vast range of software is on the market, verifying addresses across the globe. Many companies use them to get their customer' addresses verified at lower costs. These applications are good until the area of your operations is limited. When you expand your limit, the software-backed support will no longer help you. At that point, having a manual process (semi-automated) is your savior to get verified addresses in bulk.
Best approaches to get the right address verification vendor
Getting the address verified firsthand can reduce the wrong order deliveries. That, in turn, can significantly reduce the cost of resending orders. When you delegate your tasks to a vendor, you'll get updated customer data with their verified addresses. To find the right vendor for your address verification work, you can check the following things about your selected vendor.
Work with high-quality data sources
Check the background of the vendor before you completely trust them for your work. During this course, you have to check the range of work your vendor has done so far. Working with high-quality data sources can provide them with the power to get accurate address data.
USPS is the address database where you can find everything related to addresses for the United States. For that, you need authorization. The right company you select must have the authorization to access USPS to validate your customer addresses. Many address verification software companies' promises to validate addresses through USPS, but they cannot do so. It's because a company has to follow all the protocols and procedures to use the USPS database. So, choose a genuine company (that does not make false promises) when it comes to accessing high-quality data sources.
Capacity to integrate
If you've decided to go with a software, then you have to confirm whether it is capable of integration or not. The software you choose must integrate with your CRM and ERP systems. If not, you have to look for some other options. In that case, you can go with a manual data verification system that can help you with verifying customer addresses with the help of human-assisted verifiers. They can digitally and remotely verify all the addresses using database support.
Client testimonials
Like all other support in the service vertical, client testimonials act as a pillar to build a strong sales backbone. Testimonials reflect the authenticity of the services, so always consider that. Read all testimonials well before making any final decision. Sometimes companies post generic testimonials that add no value. You should always ignore them if you ever find them. Thinking from the end users' point is an absolute necessity when you put investment in address verification work.
Data matching level
A majority of the mistakes happen at the data entry level. Either your customers or your team make mistakes while recording the address data into the system. They can make very basic mistakes due to human limitations. Mostly, they swap two letters, miss some words, or make typos. Therefore, the address verification companies first fix those mistakes and then initiate the accurate measures to verify the addresses.
At the end, you must choose a genuine address verification vendor to get accurate support. Ensure better delivery of your order and reduce frictions in the order delivery process.
