Merchants that wish to avoid lost sales and unhappy customers must have the most up-to-date information for the final steps of delivery. Inaccurate addresses, in particular, can be a huge strain, resulting in failed deliveries, inefficient operations and poor communication with customers.
There are plenty of compelling reasons for merchants to get customers’ addresses right from the get-go. One survey revealed 84 percent of customers will not shop with a retailer after a single failed delivery attempt, for example, and large retailers report that annual charges can run into the millions when carriers must fix addresses to complete deliveries. One solution is geocoding, which converts addresses into latitude and longitude coordinates. Geocoding technologies can ease last-mile 
delivery by giving drivers accurate directions with pinpoint accuracy, ensuring that orders reach their intended recipients on time.
The January edition of the Digital Customer Onboarding Tracker® explores how the use of geocoding and address verification tools can help merchants collect the most accurate information from customers to ensure streamlined deliveries.
Developments From The Digital Customer Onboarding Space
Accurate address data is key to onboarding and delivery, and it also has implications for fraud protection. But while 80 percent of apps ask for and are typically granted access to users’ geolocation data, most mobile banking applications do not. GeoGuard CEO David Briggs told PYMNTS during a recent interview that two-thirds of all banking apps fail to ask consumers whether they wish to share their location information during onboarding, for example. He said that the growth of online banking and the need to protect personal data makes the banking sector’s failure to use geolocation information almost inexplicable.
Other research has revealed that data onboarding, which entails moving customer information from one software system to another, has become increasingly troublesome for companies. One recent report — which surveyed more than 100 companies and 5,000 customers, engineers, product managers and designers — found that data onboarding was a common complaint among all respondents. The data-related challenges appear to be manifold: 76 percent of respondents reported data formatting issues and 69 percent had problems with data validation during onboarding.
Sixty percent of the nation’s banks closed branches or reduced their hours during the pandemic, but many financial institutions have used digital channels to reach out to consumers. A new survey found that more than one-third of account openings were completed digitally in 2020, while 23 percent of financial institutions (FIs) tapped remote identification and 18 percent leveraged contactless payments. It also found that challenger banks were more likely than other FIs to implement these new digital trends, with 27 percent of these banks offered bill-splitting options, compared to just 2 percent of traditional banks.
For more on these stories and other digital onboarding headlines, download this month’s Tracker.
Cargomatic On Making The Case For Geocoding To Fulfill Deliveries
Consumers’ dramatic shifts from brick-and-mortar to online channels since the pandemic began have resulted in a massive reconfiguration of supply chain logistics, including last-mile infrastructure and resources to ensure successful deliveries. In this month’s Feature Story, Sunil Sharma, chief product and technology officer at Los Angeles-based logistics company Cargomatic, explains how geocoding can help shippers and carriers connect to track freight in real time and boost
last-mile efficiency.
Deep Dive: How Geocoding Can Help Merchants Stave Off Cart Abandonment, Lost Sales
Cart abandonment costs merchants as much as $4 trillion annually, with consumers ditching their purchases for various reasons. Many blame surprise shipping charges added at checkout, too few payment options and too many checkout steps, but inaccurate addresses represent one of the biggest potential contributors to customer frustration and lost sales. This month’s Deep Dive explores how ensuring address accuracy begins during onboarding and can ultimately help merchants avoid last-mile delivery hurdles. It also explains how geocoding can help retailers sidestep these issues by giving drivers unparalleled accuracy.
About The Tracker
The monthly Digital Customer Onboarding Tracker®, a Melissa collaboration, offers coverage of the most recent news and trends in the onboarding ecosystem.
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