By Barley Laing, the UK Managing Director at Melissa
For those in eCommerce, the delivery stage is fast becoming one of the most important customer experience frontlines. This is because consumers expect fast and seamless deliveries.
This is backed up by research from the US that finds shipping service and reliability of delivery are important for customers who shop online. Sixty-one per cent and 74% of respondents said that quality of shipping service and reliability of delivery, respectively, impacted where they shopped online.
During the frenetic festive trading season, it’s more important than ever to meet the delivery needs of customers to encourage them to repeat purchase throughout the rest of the year.
Key to getting this right is one of the most critical yet challenging aspects of logistics – last mile delivery – the final leg of a package’s journey from a distribution hub to the customer’s doorstep.
In today’s competitive ecommerce landscape, next-day and same-day delivery have become the norm as customers increasingly expect such a service. This heightened expectation puts immense pressure on eCommerce companies to optimise their last mile delivery networks.
However, it’s not a straightforward process. There’s a number of challenges that retailers face that impact on its efficiency.
Growth in traffic congestion
Congestion in urban areas is a big issue for last mile fulfilment, with traffic volumes on the increase, particularly over the festive season, as delivery trucks and vans navigate busy streets, narrow alleys and limited parking spaces.
Delivery to remote locations
While in rural areas distance is the issue. Delivering to properties in remote locations often requires long routes to sparsely populated locations leading to increased fuel and labour costs. Often there are poor road conditions and postcodes covering a number of widely dispersed properties which can also complicate delivery. Sometimes ecommerce companies rely on third-party couriers to manage these ‘out of town’ deliveries, which can create inconsistencies in service quality and reliability.
Meeting sustainability and scalability objectives
A critical factor for those in eCommerce is meeting their sustainability and environmental targets when it comes to last mile delivery, particularly at a time when consumers are increasingly eco-conscious. The use of delivery trucks contributes to traffic congestion and emissions, which can tarnish a brand’s reputation if not managed carefully.
Finally, there’s the challenge of scalability. As eCommerce businesses grow, so do the complexities of scaling last mile delivery operations.
The solutions to these challenges are largely to be found in address accuracy and verification, as well as geocoding.
Address verification is key
Ensuring that delivery addresses are accurate and complete is a common but often overlooked issue. By not undertaking address verification to ensure an efficient last mile delivery retailers are exposed to unnecessary risks. Incorrect addresses lead to delivery delays, failed deliveries, or even lost packages, creating frustration for customers and increased operational costs for eCommerce companies, with customer support interaction, redelivery costs and possible customer compensation.
Address autocomplete
The best way to deliver accurate addresses is via using technologies like address autocomplete or lookup. These services deliver accurate address data in real-time by providing a properly formatted, correct address at the onboarding stage, when the user starts to input theirs.
Tools such as these are very important because around 20 per cent of addresses entered online contain errors; these include spelling mistakes, wrong house numbers, and incorrect postcodes, as well as incorrect email addresses and phone numbers, typically due to errors when typing contact information.
Another benefit of the service is the number of keystrokes required when entering an address is cut by up to 81 per cent. This speeds up the onboarding process and improves the whole experience.
In some cases, geocoding is available as part of an address autocomplete or lookup tool, so always check in advance.
Retailers can also start to deliver first point of contact verification across email and phone, so these important contact datasets can also be verified in real-time.
Embracing software-as-a-service (SaaS)
Using a scalable approach to data cleaning can be valuable for maintaining address accuracy and overall data quality in real-time across existing customer databases. SaaS are useful in that they can be easily accessed and don’t require coding, integration, or training to use.
Look to access a SaaS platform that can cleanse and correct names, addresses, email addresses, and telephone numbers not only in the UK, but also worldwide. One that can match records, ensuring no duplication, and offers data profiling to help identify issues for further action.
Single, intuitive interfaces offer the opportunity for data standardisation, validation, and enrichment, ensuring high-quality contact information across multiple databases. Such platforms can deliver this with held data in batch and as new data is being gathered. As well as SaaS, such service capabilities can alternatively be accessed via cloud-based API (application programming interface), Microsoft SQL Server or deployed on-premises.
The value of geocoding
Once you have a verified address you can use geocoding to enhance the delivery accuracy and efficiency of last mile fulfilment. By converting addresses into precise latitude and longitude coordinates, geocoding allows organisations to pinpoint delivery locations at ‘rooftop level’, reducing errors in address interpretation, ensuring packages are sent to the right location quickly.
Geocoding provides the opportunity to optimise and streamline delivery routes in real-time. With geospatial data retailers can generate real-time route adjustments based on traffic and location, making same-day delivery more feasible, cost-effective and quicker.
Address verification and geocoding technology can also play a critical factor in facilitating scalability, by ensuring address accuracy at scale as businesses expand into new regions.
Using address verification that standardises and verifies addresses globally ensures that deliveries remain efficient and accurate regardless of the delivery location. Additionally, geocoding supports the scaling of route optimisation globally, by allowing retailers to manage larger delivery volumes without sacrificing speed or accuracy. Something which also has a beneficial impact on meeting their sustainability targets.
Retailers can use geocoding with advanced address parsing and matching algorithms built in. These can correct spelling errors and complete addresses with missing or invalid components, to deliver even more precise results. They should have access to global data from multiple sources, including address databases, spatial data, street maps and navigational data, and census data to ensure they deliver the most precise coordinates.
Without address verification and geocoding it becomes increasingly difficult for retailers to scale up while maintaining the same level of service – a fast and efficient last mile delivery process. Something that’s vital during the critical Christmas trading period, or in fact at any time of year.
For those in eCommerce, solving challenges in last mile delivery is not just a logistical necessity, it’s a crucial component of business success, now and in the future.
Learn more at: https://www.melissa.com/uk/
Published 26/11/2024
