How to Manage Messages - Partner Portal

Manage Store

How to Manage Messages

Published Mar 12, 2025

There are 43% more incidents and escalations when the response time exceeds 24 hours after the initial customer message is received. To avoid receiving escalations and incidents, check messages and email daily and respond to all messages within one business day.

We recommend responding to the oldest message first. However, to assist with the prioritization of your store, please note:

Types of messages	Additional information
Orders that are flagged as Incidents	Orders where the customer is having a poor experience with the delivery or issues with the product that they received, that will trigger an incident. For more information on incidents, visit our article on how to manage incidents.
A message from Best Buy directly to your store	In rare cases, you may receive a direct message from Best Buy regarding an order or account issue. Your store should prioritize these messages, but they will not be tracked in your Response Time metric.
Order messages with a Critical Flag	A machine-learning algorithm distinguishes between positive or neutral (e.g., question) and negative (e.g., complaint) sentiments to flag potential escalations as “Critical.” In addition to the analyses, the following criteria must be met before a conversation can be flagged as critical: The last message(s) in the conversation that was(were) sent by a customer had no direct response from the seller or the operator. Direct response means the customer is recipient. The last message of the conversations was sent within the last two weeks. The related order is in an active state (it does not have a Closed, Refunded, Canceled, Refused or Incident Closed status). Note: When a reply is sent to a customer in a conversation flagged as critical, the "Critical" badge is removed. Orders with a Critical flag will visible from your Dashboard, in Messages and in conversation threads of orders. Sample of Critical flag:

Types of messages

Additional information

Orders that are flagged as Incidents

Orders where the customer is having a poor experience with the delivery or issues with the product that they received, that will trigger an incident.

For more information on incidents, visit our article on how to manage incidents.

A message from Best Buy directly to your store

In rare cases, you may receive a direct message from Best Buy regarding an order or account issue. Your store should prioritize these messages, but they will not be tracked in your Response Time metric.

Order messages with a Critical Flag

A machine-learning algorithm distinguishes between positive or neutral (e.g., question) and negative (e.g., complaint) sentiments to flag potential escalations as “Critical.” In addition to the analyses, the following criteria must be met before a conversation can be flagged as critical:

The last message(s) in the conversation that was(were) sent by a customer had no direct response from the seller or the operator. Direct response means the customer is recipient.
The last message of the conversations was sent within the last two weeks.
The related order is in an active state (it does not have a Closed, Refunded, Canceled, Refused or Incident Closed status).

Note: When a reply is sent to a customer in a conversation flagged as critical, the "Critical" badge is removed.

Orders with a Critical flag will visible from your Dashboard, in Messages and in conversation threads of orders. Sample of Critical flag:

How to Locate Your Store Messages

Select My Messages on the navigation bar.
You can select to see all Unread messages or All messages. Search and filter by customer's name, subject, etc., as needed.
If you need to reply to the customer or follow up on the order, keep the message status as Unread. You can mark the message unread again by selecting the message and a Mark as unread button will appear.
To respond to the message, select the Recipient(s) and Topic at the bottom of the page. Enter your message and then click the Send message button. The message will display below the original message. Please note that if you use "< >" brackets within your message to the customer, anything you type between these brackets will not appear in the message.