Picture this: You check your gig and see nothing but glowing five-star reviews. Your feedback is stellar, and everything looks perfect. Yet somehow, your orders have dropped off a cliff, and your metrics are telling a different story than what you're seeing in your reviews.
What's going on? The answer might be private ratings, a feedback system you can't see, but may definitely be impacting your performance.
What are private ratings?
Clients don't always feel comfortable leaving honest feedback when they know you will see it. Think about it like this: you're at a restaurant, the food is mediocre at best, and then the owner comes out and asks how everything was. You don't want to hurt his feelings, so what do you say? "Everything was lovely," even though inside you're annoyed you spent your hard-earned money on this meal, and you likely won't be back.
It's human nature. We tend to avoid difficult truths when we have to deliver them directly. Your buyers are no different. Just because someone leaves you a 5-star review doesn't automatically mean they're completely satisfied.
That's where private ratings come in. Private ratings are anonymous feedback that clients can leave about their order. While public reviews focus on the overall experience working with you as a seller, private reviews focus on the overall quality of the actual delivery. The feedback collected is for internal use only and helps improve the buying experience for clients.
How it works
24 hours after completing their public review, clients are invited to leave another optional review. If they choose to participate, they'll answer three questions:
- How would you rate the overall quality of this delivery?
- How closely did this delivery meet your expectations?
- Was this delivery useful for your needs?
Here's where it gets more nuanced: your overall rating in this private questionnaire is just one piece of the puzzle. Private ratings don't all carry equal weight, and several factors determine their impact:
- Not all buyers leave them. The percentage of private ratings you get compared to your total orders matters.
- New buyers count more. First-time buyers' ratings are weighted more heavily than repeat customers.
- Order size matters. Higher-priced and higher-volume orders carry more weight in the system.
How private ratings impact you
Even though you can't see private ratings, you'll definitely feel their impact on your metrics and performance. Private ratings directly affect your Success Score, particularly your Client Satisfaction metric.
If you notice this metric dropping while your public reviews still look great, that's your clue that clients aren't fully satisfied and may be leaving less favorable private feedback. This disconnect is often why sellers experience sudden drops in orders or reach despite having perfect 5-star ratings.
The good news? Now that you know private ratings exist, you can start thinking about how to create experiences that satisfy clients both publicly and privately.
Stay tuned—next week, we'll share actionable strategies to ace private ratings and keep your Client Satisfaction metrics strong.
