Happy holiday shopping season! The Goods Marketplace team has compiled some quick tips to address merchants’ frequently asked questions about Gateway, and help you get the most out of this exciting period. 

 

Please review this guide closely, as the information may be new to you. Subjects covered include Deadlines for Order Tracking, Customer Ticket Handling, Inventory Management, and Paused Products.


Tracking Information

Meeting Deadlines for Order Tracking



On-time Tracking Upload

1 business days after order is placed

 

You must upload tracking information for all orders by their assigned due on date in Commerce Interface (CI), Groupon's fulfillment portal. Only carriers on our list of Approved Shipping Carriers for Goods Marketplace can be used. Do NOT upload a tracking number for your order until the package has been received by your carrier. Early/invalid tracking uploads will negatively impact your performance metrics, and could lead to compliance fees.

On-time Tracking Movement

3 business days after order is placed

 

Before your order can be processed for payment, your uploaded tracking information must show systemic MOVEMENT. Merchants are NOT paid simply for uploading an order’s tracking information.

 


Delivery Cycle Time

Average 6 calendar days after an order is placed

 

On-time deliveries play a crucial role in maintaining customer satisfaction and satisfactory performance metrics. The average time elapsed between the date you receive an order and the date it's marked delivered should be 6 calendar days. 


If your average delivery cycle time falls below 6 days, this will negatively impact your performance metrics and could lead to suspension.



Are you using our Supported Shipping Carriers?


Currently, the most common cause of orders not getting invoiced is the use of unsupported shipping carriers. In order to receive payment for an order, you must use a supported shipping carrier, upload the corresponding carrier code along with the tracking information to Commerce Interface (CI) and this tracking number must show movement.


Please review our list of Supported Shipping Carriers and Codes here. This list was last updated on June 17, 2019.


 

Updating Tracking Information


If you made a mistake and uploaded the wrong tracking number to an existing order, you will need to submit your update here. Please note that if you do not submit your tracking updates in the correct format, your orders will not be updated. 


Tracking update requests for orders that are more than 30 days old will not be accommodated. If you submit a tracking update and your new tracking number has already shown delivery on the carrier's website, it is possible that your order will not get invoiced. Make sure you are uploading correct tracking the first time and if there are errors, let us know as soon as possible. If you believe that your order was not invoiced due to a late tracking update, please open a support ticket with us.


Handling your Customer Tickets

Five Essential Tips for Customer Ticketing On Gateway


  1. Whenever your customer sends you a message, you must provide a response within 1-business day. This includes new tickets AND existing tickets.

  2. Failure to respond within this 1-business day will result in your ticket being "escalated" to Customer Service. When tickets are escalated, the result is often a refund being issued to the customer!

  3. Understand the different types of ticket status and ticket reply options, and use them to your advantage. Review this related support article: "Replying to Customer Tickets"

  4. Be sure you have "notify@r.groupon.com" whitelisted on the email client associated with your merchant account, so you don’t miss any notifications. 

  5. If your customer ticket is missing essential info for you to resolve their issue, you should escalate the ticket to Groupon CS to request the missing info. 


Escalated Tickets


When a ticket does not receive a response within 1 business day, it is automatically escalated to Groupon Customer Service, who will attempt to assist the customer in your absence. 


Merchants can still add new replies to “Escalated” tickets but must search “Escalated” in the Filters field to find them.


Click here for a video walkthrough of how to find your Escalated tickets in Gateway.



Tickets escalated due to an unresponsive merchant often result in refunds, so make sure you check for "Escalated" tickets at least once a day!



Managing Product Inventory

Each product in your inventory is assigned a Merchant Available QTY, a Groupon Available QTY, and a Sold QTY




Please read the brief support article Maintaining Your Product Inventory so you can educate yourself on this system and avoid issues during the holiday period.


This article also explains how to work around a commonly reported issue that has prevented merchants from setting a product’s quantity to “0”.


Paused Deal Listings


Are your listings being “Paused”? 


If you find that any of your listings are being "Paused" by our system during the holiday period, this indicates your fulfillment metrics associated with those products is not at a satisfactory level. 



Consider these pausings a courtesy warning about the need for improved performance, and closely review your individual Deal Scorecards in addition to your overall Merchant Scorecards.


If this deal’s performance for On-time Tracking Uploads, On-time Movement, On-time Delivery, Return Rate, Cancellation Rate, etc., fails to improve, it may be shut down entirely. 



How do I Unpause a Paused listing? 


These “Paused” listings can be “Unpaused” by the merchant at any time. These steps are found in the following support article, Pausing/Unpausing Deals in Gateway.