What3Words integration to improve delivery location accuracy/routing

Ideas & feature requests
1

Hello
Many of our customers are remote, or have very specific requirements for parking or site access. The coordinates on google maps are in most cases not accurate enough. Many of our customers have detailed delivery instructions written into the Delivery Notes section the customer page to make sure deliveries can be made a quickly as possible, without the risk of tickets and fines etc

Would it be possible to allow the customers address to have a field for a What 3 Words reference. This would make the navigation much more accurate if the W3W could be used instead of the coordinates generated by the normal address.

W3W is accurate to within 3 metres which would allow for extremely precise navigation, useful both in dense, complicated urban environments or remote rural locations.

We currently add a What 3 Words code into the delivery notes, but it would be great if they could be used to navigate on the app. Some examples of where what 3 words is useful/superior to normal navigation:

  1. A regular trade customer is on a busy high street, the address co ordinates take you to the front door. However access to thier rear yard is via an un-signposted alleyway 100 metres or more further up the street. W3W allows you to navigate to exactly where this unmarked alleyway is without difficulty.
  2. A retail customer lives in a remote location at the end of a long farm track, their house in amongst several other buildings and signage is poor. W3W allows you to navigate to front door of the property in question, bypassing the other properties on site.
  3. A Sportsclub customerā€™s address, when navigated to normally takes you to the rear of the property several roads away from the only point of access. Access is through a public carpark which is not classed a road. W3W allows you to navigate to the carpark and then clearly shows the route out the otherside to where the customers carpark is.
  4. It is increasingly common for retail customers to put the W3W of thier front door/garage in the notes when they place online orders.
  5. W3W is an exellent aid to saftey in cases of ilness, accidents or breakdowns and is already used regularly by brewery staff.
  6. If there are numerous parking restrictions in place around a delivery, W3W can be used to navigate to a specific loading bay or area designated for deliveries without the need to read through and interpret written instructions.
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2

Iā€™ve used What3words for years on personal deliveries - I live in a hamlet of 8 houses spread over 3 unnamed roads, all with the same postcode, so Iā€™m all too familiar with its benefits :smile:

Thanks for putting this forward and in great detail. If anyone else would find this useful, please give this thread a vote :+1:

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Semi-related - weā€™ve recently noticed DHLā€™s Ship platform now has a W3W field - could any update in this arena also allow W3W data to be shared with courier integrations also?

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With delivery addresses it would be helpful if we could integrate What 3 Words into exactly where their drop would be for deliveries. A number of times where the drivers need to park or where the drop is can be a completely different road or even post code to where the actual business address is. If we could have a part that could come up on the app where you can click the What 3 Words link and take the map straight to that spot.

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in theory this could be super useful as a feature - especially if built into the dray tools on the appā€¦ so, in theory each customer could have a series of W3W refsā€¦
the empties are hereā€¦
the drop is hereā€¦
best parking spot is hereā€¦ or hereā€¦

against each order they could click the W3W link to navigate?

Also if, during deliveries there was a way to input the W3W as they deliverā€¦ that would be amazing - so they could enter the details ā€œliveā€ during deliveries for next time.

would be amazing, especially for less experienced delivery staff to be able to pick up some deliveries and be able to navigate their way without too much discussion before leaving the yard.
Please can we have this?

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6

Thanks guys; Iā€™ve merged this with another thread on the same topic.

This is a great idea too! Thanks for the suggestion.

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ā€¦ and i looked so hard for a thread so i didnā€™t go and duplicate somethingā€¦ thanks for merging - seems a popular topic
J

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