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Understand reward issuing
Understand reward issuing

Learn how rewards are generated and issued to customers, and about the meaning of each reward status.

Maggie avatar
Written by Maggie
Updated over a week ago

๐Ÿ›’ Supported on all platforms

๐Ÿ’ณ Available on all plans
๐Ÿ‘ค Accessible to all roles

When a customer redeems their points for a reward, or when a customer is issued a reward for referring a friend or entering a VIP tier, a reward is generated. The reward status provides information about whether the reward was successfully generated and whether the reward has been used on an order by the customer. You can use reward status information to help diagnose issues like why a customer didn't receive their reward, or to verify what rewards a customer has available to use.

How rewards are issued


When Smile issues a reward to a customer (like a coupon code or gift card), Smile has to first generate the reward in the external platform (e.g. Shopify or BigCommerce). The reward generation can happen either immediately (synchronously) or in the background (asynchronously).

If a reward is generated synchronously (e.g. when redeeming points), it will either be:

  • Successful, and then saved to the customer's profile, or,

  • Unsuccessful, and an error message will be displayed to the customer + the reward will not be saved to the customer's profile.

If a reward is generated asynchronously (e.g. referral or VIP tier entry rewards), the reward will always be saved to the customer's profile, and Smile will use the reward status to convey information about whether the reward generation was successful or not.

After a reward has been successfully generated, the reward status can also convey information about whether it has been used or canceled.

Identify the status of a reward


The reward status is visible from the profile page of the customer who was issued the reward.

  1. In Smile Admin, find the relevant customer.

  2. In the Activity section, click on the Rewards tab.

  3. Use the arrow buttons to scroll and find the reward you're interested in.

The status of a reward is shown in the Status column of the table.

Reward statuses


Status

What it means

Visible to customer

Pending

Smile is working on generating the reward and it is not yet available for the customer to use.

No

Failed

Smile was unable to generate the reward and the reward will never be available for the customer to use.

No

Issued

The reward has been successfully generated and is available for the customer to use.

Yes

Canceled

The reward was manually canceled from within Smile and is no longer available for the customer to use.

No

Used

The customer has applied the reward to an order. See note below.

Yes

โ„น๏ธ Note: Smile does not track the usage of POS coupons or gift cards, and as such, these kinds of rewards will never be marked as Used.

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