Response Time - calculation changed?

[leannemunro]

Hi folks,

I may be wrong but I thought that we didn’t get penalised for our response times if messages are received “out of hours”, is that right?

I got my first message in a while (I’ve returned from a break) and it’s made my response time go from 1 hour to 9 hours. Buyer sent me a message at midnight (my time) and I didn’t reply until morning (just before 9am). Is this normal?

When I used to use Fiverr, I don’t remember this impacting my response time, as long as I got back to them promptly the following morning. However, I used to get a lot more messages back then so it’s likely that helped!

To add insult to injury, the message I received was from a student asking me to do four of their assignments! 😒 NOPE. byee

Thanks!

[blavaro]

Response time and response rate come somehow together.

Best information you can get is available here https://sellers.fiverr.com/en/article/response-time-rate-faq

The bottom line is:

Response Rate is the percentage of first responses to new messages that a seller sends within 24 hours. Response Time is the average amount of time in hours that it takes for a seller to send a first response.
Both change daily to reflect the last 60 days.

The word penalisation is not directly connected to time but to rate I believe.
Low rate can get you penalised in terms of seller level.
Low time shows how quickly Buyers could expect the answer to their message.

Would that answer your concern?

[uk1000]

I assume it might have always (since the evaluation started) based it on all first messages in the last 60 days rather than those within normal working hours, but that you had enough other messages sent at more normal times to make the average response time low enough. You could check with CS to get their answer.

Though I agree it’s not exactly fair to sellers (especially if you don’t get many messages in more normal hours) or that informative for buyers the way it works now and it should be changed I think.

[maitasun]

Hi folks,

I may be wrong but I thought that we didn’t get penalised for our response times if messages are received “out of hours”, is that right?

I got my first message in a while (I’ve returned from a break) and it’s made my response time go from 1 hour to 9 hours. Buyer sent me a message at midnight (my time) and I didn’t reply until morning (just before 9am). Is this normal?

When I used to use Fiverr, I don’t remember this impacting my response time, as long as I got back to them promptly the following morning. However, I used to get a lot more messages back then so it’s likely that helped!

To add insult to injury, the message I received was from a student asking me to do four of their assignments! 😒 NOPE. byee

Thanks!

I may be wrong but I thought that we didn’t get penalised for our response times if messages are received “out of hours”, is that right?

May I ask how were you penalised?

Increase of the average response time isn’t a penalisation. It’s simply a math calculation.

[uk1000]

I may be wrong but I thought that we didn’t get penalised for our response times if messages are received “out of hours”, is that right?

May I ask how were you penalised?

Increase of the average response time isn’t a penalisation. It’s simply a math calculation.

May I ask how were you penalised?

Increase of the average response time isn’t a penalisation. It’s simply a math calculation

Though you may be penalised by possibly getting less new orders/messages because of the quite a lot higher average response time shown, just because you got a message eg. in the middle of the night.

eg. that one message (about something that was against the TOS anyway since it was for academic work) could now make it a lot less likely to get more orders (especially where the buyer wants/needs to discuss it beforehand, and without many hours delay between messages).

For all we know, the search ranking algorithm might also take response time into account if they think it’s an important enough stat (and they think it’s important enough to show it to the user). If it does, it might cause it drop in search ranking if response time goes very high.

[maitasun]

May I ask how were you penalised?

Increase of the average response time isn’t a penalisation. It’s simply a math calculation

Though you may be penalised by possibly getting less new orders/messages because of the quite a lot higher average response time shown, just because you got a message eg. in the middle of the night.

eg. that one message (about something that was against the TOS anyway since it was for academic work) could now make it a lot less likely to get more orders (especially where the buyer wants/needs to discuss it beforehand, and without many hours delay between messages).

For all we know, the search ranking algorithm might also take response time into account if they think it’s an important enough stat (and they think it’s important enough to show it to the user). If it does, it might cause it drop in search ranking if response time goes very high.

UK, I was just asking the OP in which way he was penalised, because it wasn’t mentioned in the post.

Though you may be penalised by possibly getting less new orders/messages because of the quite a lot higher average response time shown, just because you got a message eg. in the middle of the night.

eg. that one message (about something that was against the TOS anyway since it was for academic work) could now make it a lot less likely to get more orders (especially where the buyer wants/needs to discuss it beforehand, and without many hours delay between messages).

Several times I’ve had my response time increased to 8-9 hours, due to users messaging me while I was asleep, and it didn’t affect me in any way. Orders kept coming in as usual.

For all we know, the search ranking algorithm might also take response time into account if they think it’s an important enough stat (and they think it’s important enough to show it to the user). If it does, it might cause it drop in search ranking if response time goes very high.

My gigs have never lost their position whatsoever due to my response time being increased.

[leannemunro]

Thank you everyone. These are all really helpful answers.

That’s good to know about distinguishing between response rate and response time. I thought that it might affect my level if I don’t manage to get it back to a normal range again.

And yes, perhaps I didn’t use the right word, although I do think it could put off potential buyers who might now think I could take 9 hours to respond to them. It doesn’t look very good! It’s also in an angry red font which seems to be Fiverr’s way of telling me it’s bad! 🙂 Just frustrating because it was from somebody who was breaking the TOS.

A single slow response to one message wouldn’t normally be an issue for me as I used to get multiple messages each day. Since I’ve returned though, I’m lucky if I get a message every two weeks so it’s likely to remain like this for some time.