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Location intelligence is a powerful tool for providing an excellent customer experience. When you know where your customers are, you can serve them better.
And while address validation services like Predictive API are an effective way to quickly obtain your customer’s address, that’s only the start of what this technology can do.
Converting an address into a geocode turns it from a street name to an actual physical location, enabling you to visualise it on a map. Having access to this visual information enables you to make more accurate decisions, and opens up many ways to provide better services to your customers.
But first, what is geocoding?
Geocoding turns a street address into an actual physical location – a latitude and longitude. You can pin that location on a map and start to gain more insight into your customers’ location and how you can provide them with better services.
Why not use postcodes?
Many companies use postcodes to group their customers or determine how to service them. Postcodes are easily accessible, but they’re not as accurate as a geocoded location.
Postcodes typically cover a large area and can be quite disconnected. For that reason, it’s difficult and misleading to draw conclusions about the area. That, in turn, makes it hard to optimise your services. Making broad assumptions based on postcodes can lead you to misclassify where people are and what services they need.
Postcodes also have hard borders, so it can be misleading about where your customer is physically located. This could lead you to make wrong assumptions about things like nearby services.
For example, two customers could live on opposite sides of the same street, but be in different postcodes. One may be closer to the services in the neighbouring postcode than their own. Using geocodes enables you to make more accurate decisions.
Advantages of geocoding for your business
Being able to show your customers’ locations on a map means you can better see their distribution and make more informed logistical decisions. You can use that location intelligence to optimise your business services.
Optimise your workflow
The more detailed your data is in business, the better the decisions you can make. Seeing the distribution of your customers gives you the power to improve your business, based on the locations you service. For example, if you deliver goods, seeing the spread of your customers may mean you change from distributing your products using expensive trucks to electric bikes.
Geocoding locations means you can optimise your workflow to better address your customers’ needs. A more efficient business can lead to real, tangible savings.
Do more with less money
Optimising your services based on your customers’ geocodes can help you do more with a smaller budget. This can be useful in places with a fixed budget, like government services. Knowing where your customers are located lets you optimise what you can do with the money you have available.
Deliver better services
Making decisions based on your customers’ location can help you deliver better services to the community. You may be able to identify areas to invest in new facilities or infrastructure, or develop new ways to better serve your existing community.
Geocoding can improve your business
Using address verification Predictive API and Addresses API to geocode your customers’ addresses and map their locations means you can provide them with improved services, while improving your workflow and decision-making capabilities.
Want to find out how geocoding can help your business? Sign up to our developer portal to access our location data APIs and participate in our Beta Program. Create an account.
