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Four ways clean customer data can help retailers prosper as the pandemic abates
Barley Laing, UK and Ireland managing director at data quality and ID verification business Melissa, outlines how accurate customer data can improve the shopping experience and reduce costs BARLEY LAING UK and Ireland managing director, Melissa www.melissa.com
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he 2020 economic outlook for Ireland is challenging, with the European Commission recently predicting that the Irish economy will contract 8% this year. This is a worry for grocery retailers who might have had mixed fortunes during the lockdown, and particularly for those who do not yet offer a standout online shopping and delivery service. Convenience chains and supermarkets have been forced into selling online or improving their online offering during the lockdown. This is out of necessity to drive purchases, as they need to make the most of increasing demand for online grocery shopping as the pandemic abates. As the grocery sector experiences huge demand for online sales and delivery, it has become clear that having clean and accurate customer data is crucial to their success. If retailers are serious about standing out from the competition, they must tap into better data to improve the customer experience, reduce costs and drive growth.
1. Timely delivery of goods and communications
When customers are shopping online, “autocomplete reduces the number of keystrokes required when typing an address by up to 70%, accelerating checkout and increasing the likelihood of a completed purchase,” writes Barley Laing
Customer data – collected at the onboarding stage and through ongoing communications - is one of retailers’ most valuable assets. Only data that is clean, contemporary, and verified ensures sales-driven customer communications, and importantly, enables products ordered to be efficiently delivered. This is vital in providing a standout customer experience in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Retailers need to remember that without routine data quality processes, customer data degrades at 2% each month and as much as 25% annually. Also, with customers increasingly providing data via their mobile devices, mistyping contact details on a small screen has become a problem. It’s why approximately 20% of addresses entered online contain errors such as spelling mistakes, wrong house numbers, and inaccurate Eircodes. Fortunately, data that is simply incorrect, such as a customer name, address, email, or telephone number, can be easily rectified if retailers put some simple procedures in place. Straightforward and cost-effective, these practices involve cleansing and standardising existing customer data as a basic business practice. Currently held records can be updated in batch form and, moving forward, updated in real-time as new data is collected and becomes the critical driver of a seamless customer onboarding experience.
2. Speed up checkout and reduce cart abandonment Address autocomplete tools are a good place to start with the collection of accurate address data, correcting information at the customer onboarding stage. These tools automatically reveal a suggested correct version of the address as the customer completes an online contact form, enabling them to select one ShelfLife July 2020 | www.shelflife.ie
that is not only accurate but easily recognised, and properly formatted. Autocomplete also reduces the number of keystrokes required when typing an address by up to 70%, accelerating checkout and increasing the likelihood of a completed purchase.
3. Save money and improve the customer experience Removing duplicate data reduces costs and protects the retailer’s reputation. For instance, when customers receive two mailings in their name, with one spelled incorrectly, this not only wastes marketing resources and opportunities, it also demonstrates to your customer a lack of understanding as to their identity and needs. By merging and purging the most difficult records with an advanced fuzzy matching tool, retailers save money with targeted customer communications and enhance the customer experience.
4. Improve logistics and reduce shipping costs Use accurate Eircodes. They ensure retailers can precisely locate individual addresses or premises, and are critical to providing better logistics, planning and faster deliveries. While Eircodes specify an address, use geocodes — which deliver latitude and longitude coordinates — in order to gain pinpoint (rooftop) accuracy. Geocoding helps retailers avoid costly return-to-sender scenarios, and also makes it possible to accurately determine the shopper’s distance from the distribution point and therefore generate real-time calculation of shipping costs. Retailers can then offer a range of delivery options and prices depending on how fast the customer wants to receive their goods. Geocoding can also power efficient retail store location and local search lookups. This drives footfall and enriches the shopping experience, increasing customer satisfaction. Customer experience can also be enhanced with geolocational offers that target audiences based on their whereabouts, and the nearest outlet or distribution point to them.
Clean data powers success Online grocery sales are set to surge in 2020 in large part because of the pandemic. With Covid-19 still in circulation, shoppers continue to worry about the safety of the high street and have come to appreciate the convenience of a simple click for home delivery. In the UK, recent research by Mintel reveals the online grocery sector is set to grow by 33% and reach £16.8 billion in 2020, up from £12.7 billion in 2019, with an increase in shoppers across all age groups from digitally savvy millennials to the over 65s. Grocery retailers simply must be prepared to compete in this new landscape. Data is the key, and if they have not already, grocery retailers need to ramp up their access to accurate, quality customer data as a new driving force in their online and overall business success. n
