Create Trust in e-Commerce with Verified Contact Information
Verified contact information creates trust between e-commerce businesses and their customers. Why? In short, because it prevents mistakes. The less mistakes a business makes, the more successful it will be.
Have you ever heard the quote, “It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it?” This rings true in personal relationships as well as business ones. It’s unfortunate that, try as you might to do everything right, the things that go wrong leave the biggest impression.
E-commerce businesses rely almost entirely on the accuracy of contact information. Without face-to-face interactions, all communication must take place online, whether it’s marketing, order fulfillment, or problem resolution. And that communication only works if contact data is correct and usable.
Here, we’ll explain what that means and how verified contact information can help enhance trust between e-commerce businesses and their customers.
What is Verified Contact Information?
Verified contact information refers to contact details provided to a business that have been confirmed to be accurate and legitimate. This can include addresses, phone numbers, emails, and even names.
Any time a consumer provides a business with any combination of these details, it’s imperative that the data gets verified. Otherwise, when a business needs to use the data, mistakes can be costly.
Mistakes are common. They’re in our nature. Information gets misspelled or mistyped on webforms. Fields get overlooked. And sometimes, fake or outdated information gets intentionally submitted.
But it isn’t enough that the data is correct. It must also be usable. An email address with a misspelled domain isn’t correct or usable. However, an email address can be correctly formatted but fake or abandoned. This information isn’t usable because any communication sent to it will not be received. So it doesn’t help the business. What’s worse is that it can actually hurt the business by affecting the sending reputation of its own email account.
Correct and usable phone numbers are also important. A 9-digit phone number is incorrect and unusable. But a 10-digit number that is fake, unassigned, or assigned to someone other than the customer him or herself is unusable. It’s worthless if it can’t be used to facilitate the business relationship.
Data that is verified, however, is usable. This is because fields are flagged, corrected, and appended before the data is used. In this way, e-commerce businesses can be sure that they only utilize valid, accurate data to market to and communicate with their customers. This not only improves outreach but also helps prevent costly mistakes and therefore facilitates customer trust in the business.
5 Ways Verified Contact Information Builds Trust in e-Commerce
Verified contact information promotes trust between e-commerce businesses and their customers by enhancing credibility, accessibility, accuracy, and commitment to customer satisfaction. It helps establish a strong and positive relationship, which is essential for long-term success in e-commerce. Here’s how:
Credibility
Verified contact information establishes credibility by avoiding mistakes and establishing a positive reputation. When a business makes a mistake, it’s hard to regain a customer’s trust. Too many mistakes, and you find yourself drowning in a sea of negative reviews that affect your ability to gain new customers.
Mistakes can be as simple as addressing an email to the wrong name or as detrimental as failing to deliver product to the right address. Either way, getting it right goes a long way in positioning your business as credible and worthy of customer trust and loyalty.
Safety, Security, and Privacy
Verified contact information helps confirm the identity of customers, ensuring that they are who they claim to be. This is especially important for preventing fraudulent activities such as identity theft or unauthorized access to accounts.
Online security is a growing concern among consumers, and it’s clear when a business takes it seriously. The little time and effort it takes to implement data verification is well worth it when you consider the safety and security it offers.
Personalization
Marketing campaigns are so much more effective when they’re personalized. Personalization can go further than simply addressing emails by name. With verified phone numbers and addresses, you can personalize campaigns by geographic region or even just strategically send communications during the most active times of the day.
Personalized messages and ads resonate more with consumers than generic ones. They show your customers that you’ve done your homework and know what they need and want. This level of dedication increases customer trust in your business and practices.
Order Fulfillment
Having verified contact information allows e-commerce businesses to communicate important updates such as order confirmations, shipping notifications, and customer support inquiries. This ensures that customers stay informed throughout the purchasing process which enhances their overall shopping experience.
Most importantly, it ensures that orders make it to the correct destinations. An e-commerce business doesn’t work without speedy, accurate delivery.
Problem Resolution
In the event of order discrepancies, delivery delays, or product issues, verified contact information enables swift resolution of customer concerns. This proactive approach to customer service helps to build trust and loyalty by showing customers that their satisfaction is a top priority for the business.
How to Get Verified Contact Information
So, now you know why verified contact information is important. But how do you get it? Fortunately there are a number of data verification tools available to you that aggregate information from public records and proprietary sources so that you have the most accurate, up-to-date customer data.
Phone Number Verification
A phone verification API can check the status of a phone number and identify its line type (landline or mobile).
It allows you to find out if a phone number has been disconnected and if it’s on the Federal or State Do Not Call (DNC) lists or has been involved in TCPA litigation. This is all good information to have so that you know which numbers are safe to use and whether or not they can receive SMS messages.
Email Address Verification
An email address verification API eliminates invalid email addresses, reduces email bounce rates, prevents form spam, and creates clean databases. It identifies invalid, spamtrap, abuse, toxic, and disposable email addresses. Weeding these harmful addresses out before they enter your database improves your sending reputation by ensuring that your messages make it to legitimate inboxes and don’t get flagged as spam, allowing you to communicate reliably with your customers.
Data Append
Verifying data at the point of entry is great for maintaining accurate, usable data. But it only stays accurate if you verify it regularly. Customer contact information changes all the time as people move, get new phone numbers, abandon old email accounts, etc. With data append, you can keep up with this ever-changing, valuable data.
Data append allows you to upload an entire list of contact data to add, or append, missing personal contact information for your consumer or business customer records. Use it to find names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses for your contacts. This do it yourself data append tool makes it quick and easy to update your list of database records, identifying mistakes and filling in the blanks.
Conclusion
Verified contact information is important to creating customer trust in e-commerce businesses. It fosters effective communication, enhances order fulfillment, enables personalized service, and facilitates prompt resolution of issues, all of which contribute to a positive shopping experience and long-term customer loyalty. With Searchbug APIs, it’s never been easier to maintain a verified, accurate database. The extra step is worth it for establishing and retaining customer trust between e-commerce businesses and their customers. Try it today!