High-speed Internet offerings influence Groupon to hire in KC

Leslie Collins, Kansas City Business Journal
Published: February 24, 2015

Groupon is looking to the Kansas City market to boost its workforce, and one of the key factors was the city's abundance of high-speed Internet options.

In October, the online marketplace (Nasdaq: GRPN) hired 275 in the metro area to meet seasonal demands and retained a number of those employees, Groupon spokesman Nicholas Halliwellsaid. Now, Groupon is adding 80 to 100 full-time, work-from-home customer service positions in the Kansas City area.

"We chose Kansas City because of the number of affordable high-speed Internet choices in the area, making the lightning-fast download speeds that we require our work-from-home customer service reps to have readily available," he said.

Since entering the Kansas City market in November 2009, nearly 3,000 area businesses have been featured on the Groupon website.

Asked what's driving the additional hiring, Halliwell said, "The number of deals in our marketplace continues to grow as well as the number of shoppers coming to our website and mobile app to buy these offers. These reps will give us a greater capacity to help meet the needs of our customers."

Groupon is headquartered in Chicago and operates in more than 45 countries. The company employs nearly 12,000 worldwide and has more than 260 million subscribers.