Whether someone’s excitedly entering their details, or relying on their browser to autofill their address, there’s always a chance they make a mistake. That’s great that you’ve still made a sale, but these makes can be sneaky as they don’t reveal themselves until someone spots it later on or - in the worst case - the package goes missing.
We’re going to show you a proactive solution for how to fix an invalid destination address well before a product gets into the hands of a courier. Let’s see what causes this common mistake and how you can stay on top of it.
The most common reason for an invalid destination address is simple human error. Maybe your customer lives on a street with a long and complex name, or maybe they’ve recently moved and can’t remember if they live on a street, lane or road.
Either way, when a customer makes an error it can lead to an invalid destination address that’s tough to fix, especially for new customers you haven’t shipped to before so you can’t cross reference old orders.
Address autocomplete systems can also sometimes play an issue. Lots of browsers these days offer autofill features for your personal details, but if they’re saved in the wrong format or saved incorrectly it can also cause issues.
One of the most frustrating problems with an invalid address is how long it can take to identify that something is wrong. If the issue isn’t solved at the checkout, a customer might not know there’s been a mistake until their order fails to arrive. Naturally, this is going to lead to unhappy customers.
According to Firstlogic, failing to deliver a package to a customer can cost your business in a few different ways:
Outside of the costs to your customer relationships, invalid shipping addresses and failed orders have other costs such as:
While you could manually correct addresses as they come in, this is a time consuming process that can impact your ability to ship orders efficiently. Plus, this option isn’t foolproof either as it’s subject to the same chance of human error. If only there was a better way…
Starshipit comes with a free address verification tool to help you detect problem addresses early. These are indicated in the new orders screen by a red cross next to the entry that needs attention. Check out our video guide to see how you can automatically correct invalid addresses.
With this feature, you have a few options for making these changes and ensuring orders are going to the right place.
With UI 2.0 in Starshipit, these include:
The main benefit here is having correct addresses every time you ship orders, which saves you time and money and results in satisfied customers. Oh and did we mention it works the same way even if you use multiple couriers?
So now you know how to fix an invalid destination address, and why staying on top of these errors can really affect how smoothly your business operates. The more time you spend fixing small mistakes, the less time you have to work on more rewarding parts of your business.
Partnering with a shipping fulfillment platform like Starshipit can help you in a number of ways, from fixing invalid shipping addresses to simplifying the management of multiple carriers.
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