Groupon Self-Service Lets Companies Design Their Own Deals

If you could design an entire daily deal campaign for your company without talking to any pesky salespeople, would you? Most people prefer to minimize the number of pesky salespeople in their lives, which is why Groupon’s new self-service deal tool might be a great idea for even small businesses than the ones that Groupon usually works with.

Some companies are just too tiny to get the immediate attention of the company’s sales staff, you see. “Before, we ended up with a lot of merchants that’d call in, and we wouldn’t necessarily have someone available right then and there,” the company’s VP of product development explained to Bloomberg Businessweek. A self-service platform, which is popular in Web advertising, would let small businesses create and administer their own deals without an intermediary. That’s a good thing and a bad thing: it opens up the Groupon model to smaller businesses that might not normally try the service. However, if their deals go horribly awry, businesses can’t blame Groupon’s sales staff for over-promising or not explaining things correctly.

Groupon Unveils Self-Service Tool to Draw Merchants to Deal Site [Bloomberg Businessweek]

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.