How to handle customers’ address errors?
Asked 4 years ago
Sometimes customers enter a wrong shipping address and the courier has to return the package because they can’t deliver it. Who should pay for it, us or the customer?
Alan Larson
Monday, March 30, 2020
We had many cases where customers entered the wrong shipping addresses. We lost quite a lot of money because of that. You want to catch these errors before shipping the order. Otherwise, you’re going to lose money too. These steps should do the trick: 1. Use an app like Address Validator to make sure addresses are valid and reduce errors. 2. Look at your data and try to identify when customers enter wrong addresses (it can be because of Shopify’s auto-complete, addresses in rural areas, addresses stored in their browsers, etc.). If you can identify a pattern, then add another verification step when it occurs. For example, you can prompt a message or send an email/SMS to ask the customer to verify the address is correct. 3. Send a confirmation email right after the customer places the order to make sure all the information is correct. ***Keep in mind that you shouldn’t add any unnecessary steps to your checkout flow, because any step can affect conversion rates. Still, errors will always occur, so here’s how to handle them: Have clear shipping and returns policy that sits well with your values. If a customer contacts you because the order hasn’t arrived, tell them to contact the postal service in their area. If the item is returned to you and the customer still wants it, you should eat the cost and re-ship it. Don’t just look if you’re losing money on this order. You should check the customer lifetime value instead of a single order.
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