Piping Rock brings undeliverable packages down to 1% with the help of Loqate’s global location data

Goals

• Deliver a fast and seamless online checkout for global customers
• Improve the quality of address, phone and email data entering their databases
• Contact the right customers during the customs clearance process

Solutions

• Piping Rock uses Loqate’s Capture API on their website for faster entry of shipping addresses during checkout
• Piping Rock uses Loqate’s Email Verification API on their website to ensure an email address exists and can accept incoming mail
• Piping Rock uses Loqate’s Phone Verification API on their website to ensure a phone number exists and can receive calls or texts
• Before implementation, Piping Rock used Loqate’s Verify API to conduct a batch cleanse of their customer addresses database

Results achieved with Loqate

• Optimized the checkout address entry process with Loqate’s Address Capture solution
• “Insufficient Address” codes decreased from 6.6% of total undeliverables down to 1%
• Customers choose the type-ahead automated address suggestions up to 58% of the time

An online experience tailored for every customer

With customers across 160 countries, Piping Rock’s global brand is growing rapidly. Their commitment to satisfying their customers’ evolving needs and demands is demonstrated by their focus on providing a seamless online checkout and delivery experience.

“Most of our customers are between 25 and 34. We also have a significant section of customers over the age of 45,” says Steve Garofalo, Digital Product Owner at Piping Rock. “They all care about their health but typically fall into one of two buckets. They either have a goal but don’t know how to get there, or they’re very health-savvy, do their research and know exactly what they’re looking for.”

The large variety of customer needs encouraged Piping Rock to create an easy, fast and personalized customer experience that would satisfy every person who came to their site. After researching the market and comparing different products, Piping Rock decided to implement Loqate’s address, email and phone verification solutions.

We found that the data quality was the highest with Loqate, and in many cases, your data sets were powering the competition. So, we thought we’d cut out the middleman and go straight to the source.

Steve Garofalo, Digital Product Owner at Piping Rock

Supporting health and beauty across the globe

For a company that ships worldwide, getting the correct customer contact data is vital. However, with variations in address formatting, language barriers and data decay at play, accurately locating and connecting with Piping Rock’s global customers was complex.

“Our past address verification was only domestic, so we wanted to expand that address verification functionality with Loqate and add phone and email because they’re an essential part of the global purchasing experience. Being able to reach the customer is half the battle, especially when dealing with duties, customs and all the taxes that can change depending on what country you’re buying from or shipping to,” says Steve.

Loqate’s type-ahead predictive technology made it easy for users to search and populate their physical address, phone, or email address details into the necessary form fields. By correcting errors in real-time, Piping Rock lowered failed and missing deliveries and reduced global customer frustration.

Having a direct line to the customer

Customer relationships are built on trust. Knowing that one inaccurate address, wrong email, or invalid phone number could shatter customer loyalty, Piping Rock ensured they had the right tools to prevent failure.

“We were getting dozens of emails daily from our carriers to verify whether we have contact information for specific customers. We would try to reach out and get no response. That led to customs delays and returns. In the worst-case scenario, they would destroy everything at customs because they didn’t offer returns. Then we lose the product, we lose the customer, and we lose our cost of shipping it there.” says Steve.

Loqate’s Email Validation allow Piping Rock to verify whether an email is input correctly, if it exists, and if it can receive incoming mail. Phone validation seamlessly checks the validity of phone numbers for every country in the world in minutes.

“With email validation, we prevent packages from getting held in customs without customers being aware that they’re available for pick up. Phone validation is important to us for two reasons. One is the customs clearance process, and two, the ability to validate that it’s a real working phone number, and also which type of phone number it is so that we can start amassing a list for SMS marketing.”

There’s a lot at stake with being able to reach the customer. We wanted to stop the relationships with new and returning customers from being ruined.

- Steve Garofalo, Digital Product Owner at Piping Rock

Results

Utilizing Loqate’s address, phone number and email address verification tools was the most effective way to ensure that only correctly formatted addresses, quality phone numbers and valid email addresses entered Piping Rocks databases. This improved the digital experience for their customers and their employees.

“When Loqate verified something, whether that was the phone, email, or address, it saved a lot of the troubleshooting steps for customer service and let them get to a resolution with the customer that much quicker. That was something immediate that we saw improve,” said Steve.

Having verified and reliable contact information also positively impacted their shipping and fulfillment success.

“Depending on the country, customers choose the automated address suggestions up to 58% of the time. We get reports and data from our carriers on reasons why things may be undeliverable, insufficient address being one of them. Since implementing Loqate’s solution, our “Insufficient Address” codes went from 6.6% of total undeliverables down to 1%, a great reduction!”

One of our main plans for the future is to get a little more dynamic with how we handle address verification by using a combination of both the Capture type-ahead API and the Verify API to ensure we can get an even higher utilization rate.

- Steve Garofalo, Digital Product Owner at Piping Rock