Incorrect Postcodes Cost Online Businesses £146m Per Year:

6-Jan-2012 SimplyPostcode™

Manual data entry can take up a considerable amount of time within any office environment, and inevitably results in errors which need to be corrected. One guaranteed way of overcoming this issue when it comes to customer information is to incorporate the use of the latest Postcode software.

In doing this, the one simple question ‘What’s your postcode?’ can be asked without the need to expand. Being able to use a customer’s postcode to obtain their necessary address data will reduce call lengths and dramatically improve data accuracy.

Mistyped Data

A mistyped piece of data can cause an enormous chain of problems - we’ve all been there. A postcode is mistyped by one letter which leads to a failed delivery, which eventually leads to a formal complaint and so on and so forth. The customer remains oblivious to the mistake but ultimately you will be responsible for covering costs regarding redelivering the goods, and the customer’s wrath will most certainly be heading your way. The conclusion? This customer will not be returning, and all because of a minuscule typing error.

The Costs

A survey conducted by the Interactive Media in Retail Group has revealed that inaccurate address entry, specifically via missing postcodes, costs the e-retail industry approximately £146 million every year. The survey mostly looked at the impact of address accuracy and data management, the costs of late or attempted and failed delivery combined with the environmental cost and impact. Two thirds of those involved in this survey have reported a reduction of items lost in the post after introducing address auto-filling software.

Until recently, the average cost of failed deliveries (from £4.25 for each late delivery to £91.34 for the loss of an individual customer) was previously overlooked by businesses prior to the implementation of address capture technology. However, more than 70% of respondents involved in this survey have agreed that address auto-fill technology reduced incidents relating to shopping cart abandonments. This in turn improved conversion rates by 9%. 67% of all the participants agreed that address auto-fill technology brought them a significant return on their investment.

Increases in Online Shopping

It is estimated that the UK online retail industry now serves 26.9 million active online shoppers living in the UK, with an even greater number from international markets. This number is expected to hit a staggering 30 million by 2013. By applying 6 different ‘delivery failure scenarios’ the survey calculated that cost of inefficient delivery to the three main stakeholders groups to be between £790 million and £1 billion every year.

These astounding figures indicate quite simply that companies need to modify their data entry processes, and quickly. Auto-address technology will return the customer/client’s full address, postcode, country, mail sort code, PO Box number and a range of other pieces of valuable address data. The postcode software only takes a few minutes to install and can be successfully used either on Windows Desktop or via a website, depending on your requirements.

It appears that the demand for this time-saving data entry software will only increase as more prospective customers start ordering products and services online.

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