Important Updates: Level System (now live!) and Ratings & Reviews (testing changes)

[sunshine15]

23 hours ago, Alex.M said:

greatest rating system of all times 

It seems to be the new norm where buyers are mistakenly selecting "good" qualities in the wrong section of "Where you can improve" instead of "Things You Did Right". I've noticed this has been happening with a lot of non-native English speakers who think they are selecting positive attributes for their order.

[kanishkaseo11]

2 hours ago, Alex.M said:

Some strong suggestions that could make the new level/rating system better and acceptable for sellers:

• - Lower the threshold for each level: Level 1 - Success Score 4 / Level 2 - Success Score 6 / TRS - Success Score 8
• If the current rating system especially the value for money remains the same then the average rating should be lowered as well: Level 1 - Rating 4.4  - Level 2 - Rating 4.5 - TRS - Rating 4.6
• More transparency on how the success score is calculated
•  If the success score won't change that often at least add a couple of decimals so we can see when it goes up or down ( Success score 8.49, 9.55, etc ).
• Remove the lowest rating in a 60-day period from all the metrics ( as it was )
• Perhaps make the ' value for money ' part of the rating count less from what it is now.
• Change the way buyers rate when they leave TIP. If for whatever reason they give 3-4 stars for value for money but then they tip... the value for money should still count as 5 stars, there is no reason to tip if the value for money was anything lower than 5 stars.
• If something should be increased perhaps the average response time. Level 1 85% Level 2 90% TRS 95% , 24 hours to respond to a message is more than enough for anyone who cares about their Fiverr account in my opinion.

 

I think these ideas would make the new level system better. These suggestions align well with the goal of fostering a more supportive and balanced marketplace environment.

[creativecolumn]

@Alex.M I forwarded your suggestions with some of mine. 

[Alex.M]

55 minutes ago, kanishkaseo11 said:

I think these ideas would make the new level system better. These suggestions align well with the goal of fostering a more supportive and balanced marketplace environment.

It might be so but if Fiverr staff won't see them it's useless

[voicedbyken]

10 hours ago, Lyndsey_Fiverr said:

Thank you so much for this information, I cannot tell you how much we appreciate the constructive feedback. We will pass this along to the teams leading this change. 

As for how to get back on track, for now, I would strongly encourage you to reach out to your Seller Plus Customer Success Manager. They can help you pinpoint any issues that the system may have flagged and give you next steps for improvement. 

Is this some sort of sick joke? 

My Success Manager isn't available until the 4th of April. Customer Support sends out the same boilerplate message to everyone no matter what the question is about this new system. When are we going to get some real answers about this without being pointed to the info pages that give no answers to the issues being brought up?

I don't mean to sound aggressive, but this is my livelihood and y'all are playing games here. Maybe get someone in this thread who actually knows something more than what's on your script. There are serious errors with this new system and to deny that is as dishonest as it can get. We need answers before this webinar. Just look at the amount of TRS who will lose their income from this. Look at the backlash this is receiving. This is not something you should wait to address in a serious, adult manner. Stop treating us like your employees. Without us you have no job.

[vickiespencer]

4 minutes ago, voicedbyken said:

My Success Manager isn't available until the 4th of April.

You could email them. That is what I always do. 

[voicedbyken]

3 minutes ago, vickiespencer said:

You could email them. That is what I always do. 

I will do this and see how it goes. Doesn't change a thing about the way they're dealing with the issues here

[ssj1236]

10 hours ago, smork said:

I do appreciate the response @Lyndsey_Fiverr - The problem there is that none of those success managers are available until after the review date next month (which is odd), there are no slots to book at all.  So, its not possible to have any help from them before the review date next month.

 

You really should email your success manager directly rather than set up a call. As a TRS seller, I know how you feel right now mate. This really isn't a good position to be in. The mental strain alone makes this feel like a nightmare. 

Edited February 16 by ssj1236
Adding in context.

[cal5086]

On 2/15/2024 at 12:07 PM, Alex.M said:

greatest rating system of all times 

The same thing happened to me, gave me a wonderful written review and also a tip and 4 stars :/

It honestly wouldn't be so bad, because 4 stars isn't a bad score when just looking a 1-5, but the way fiver uses it in their system, anything other then constant 5 stars is negative it seems, it almost seems like a simple thumbs up or down on each metric would work better then what we have currently.

[acreativeminds]

@Lyndsey_Fiverr In Asia ISPs always change their IP address. I am worried about my top-rated badge. because I worked hard for years to come to this stage. Since 2021 I have been a top-rated seller who hasn't committed any kind of violations. Hope you guys fix this system. I know the new system you guys can see I violated but I am not. so hopefully you guys will fix this before next month. 

[anniejenkinson]

I'd love to know where, in all the stats, 'order value per annum' is factored in. Does this have any weighting whatsoever?

How much a person earns on Fiverr is a massive indicator of 'success' in any commercial context.

It speaks for itself when someone starts on $5 and a few years later is taking more than $100k a year. It's extremely hard to argue that these sellers are doing it all appallingly wrong. In fact, Fiverr says so many of those sellers obviously have no clue what they're doing! Obviously, I have earned $330k and been terribly unsuccessful. In that case, why bother?

If they (we) were doing it all wrong, the clients would not be investing at this high level. It is indeed going to be fun and games when business buyers come here and see their favorite, best providers so bizarrely downgraded. I think they'll decide the site has no clue what it is doing in performance analytics.

[cal5086]

19 hours ago, smork said:

@Kesha @Lyndsey_Fiverr

As someone who has been selling on Fiverr for nearly a decade and has held Top Rated Seller status since 2015, I urge the relevant team to reconsider this update, which seems nothing short of a disaster. The overwhelming negativity, confusion and disappointment in the fifteen pages of comments here and numerous other posts across the forum should be evidence enough.

This update is not only harmful and derogatory but also further punishes hard-working sellers who are the backbone of Fiverr - We are just as important as buyers. Once again, it's clear that Fiverr isn't listening to its sellers. This update demonstrates a serious lack of understanding of what it is to be a freelancer and how to create an environment that is balanced and fair for both sides, sellers and buyers. Surely, if even one freelancer were involved in the decision-making process, they could have provided countless reasons why this doesn't make sense.

While I understand the need to weed out low-quality sellers, Fiverr is unquestionably harming a significant number of reputable sellers in the process.

The Fiverr team seems to be continuing on a disappointing path of grinding down its sellers for no apparent reason - Hassling buyers to leave private reviews?  The seller not knowing what has been said or how that impacts them? The clearly huge amount of weight you've assigned to these tattletale style private reviews and not disclosing it to your sellers? You are playing with people's livelihoods as if it's some sort of game, and that is incredibly disappointing.

Regarding the previous post I made in this thread, I received an 8/10 score with no clear explanation or means to address it. The offending statistic was "Client Satisfaction." In my almost ten years on Fiverr, with nearly 6000 completed orders and a 5-star review score, I have only received three negative reviews, and none of them are accurate; two were left by mistake.

As a Top Rated Seller, you've always said that we are periodically reviewed to ensure we a maintaining the level of service required to be a TRS. So, Fiverr knows I uphold my end of the bargain. If some disgruntled buyers have unfairly criticized me in private reviews, Fiverr should present that information to me so I can defend myself, rather than blindly siding with them and damaging my business.

Your support team seems clueless about the situation, providing nonsensical copy-paste responses when asked for clarification.

@Kesha  I hope you'll relay this feedback to your team. They have reached out to me in the past via email asking if I'd come and contribute to the forum, I've had s***e chats for feedback on new features that were in testing, interviews for blog posts, and asking me to look into starting up Fiverr workshops. I've had a seller success manager before they started charging for the feature, and he frequently sought my opinions to relay back to the team. I am pretty sure that I speak on behalf of many when I say that Fiverr needs to listen to its core sellers instead of throwing them under the bus.

Today I can see the Success Score has received another threatening update for me to enjoy

How am I meant to get back on track when I don't know what the problem is in the first place or what I can do to fix it?  How can I get back on track when I don't believe I've done anything wrong and you apparently only give me 30 days to fix something that is the result of you drawing from 2 years of data to punish me for?

Do better please.

As a TRS who has been on this website for over 10 years now also, I do agree with this statement above.

I love working on Fiverr, but I do feel like over the years it went from a very cool almost social market place where Fiverr's end of the bargain was infrastructure and marketing while my end was bringing/attracting clients and the skills to do the work, in that aspect I love this site, it changed my life for the better.

Over the last 5 years it has flipped to where I feel as if I'm just a cog in a wheel, everything I do is governed via metrics and now those metrics have turned into a "Success Score" that is obtuse and to be totally fair somewhat draconian, at least in it's current state, maybe this will change with more insight, idk.

At the very least if Fiverr is going to implement a new system like this, everyone should stay at their respective level and start at 10/10 as far as the "Success Score" goes, instead of back weighting it. Imagine if the NFL made new rules to the game and changed the amount of points touchdowns and field goals counted for, then retroactively applied that to every game in their history, I kind of feel like that is what is going on here :/

It is a very stressful time and I feel like it's a stress that doesn't need to be here, the only thing that should matter is, are the buyers and sellers happy, I know this is a delicate balance, but right now it does seem like the sellers aren't happy at all and buyer happiness is directly linked to how sellers feel and interact with their clients.

I have no plans to leave Fiverr, I will do my best to raise whatever innumerable calculations need to be raised to get to 9/10 "Success Score" and hopefully keep my TRS that I have worked so hard for over the years. But as I have a family and people who rely on me I have 100% dusted off my resume and started to work on it. It is unfortunate because I love working on here, I love meeting new authors and helping them get their books to market.... but it shouldn't have this amount of manufactured stress attached to it.

I do hope we are all overreacting to new change, I really do, I hope Fiverr looks at this feedback and goes back to the drawing board somewhat, or finds a better way to implement this system that doesn't immediately effect everyone for the negative. I hope more TRS will leave their thoughts also.

[johnparsons01]

29 minutes ago, cal5086 said:

As a TRS who has been on this website for over 10 years now also, I do agree with this statement above.

I love working on Fiverr, but I do feel like over the years it went from a very cool almost social market place where Fiverr's end of the bargain was infrastructure and marketing while my end was bringing/attracting clients and the skills to do the work, in that aspect I love this site, it changed my life for the better.

Over the last 5 years it has flipped to where I feel as if I'm just a cog in a wheel, everything I do is governed via metrics and now those metrics have turned into a "Success Score" that is obtuse and to be totally fair somewhat draconian, at least in it's current state, maybe this will change with more insight, idk.

At the very least if Fiverr is going to implement a new system like this, everyone should stay at their respective level and start at 10/10 as far as the "Success Score" goes, instead of back weighting it. Imagine if the NFL made new rules to the game and changed the amount of points touchdowns and field goals counted for, then retroactively applied that to every game in their history, I kind of feel like that is what is going on here 😕

It is a very stressful time and I feel like it's a stress that doesn't need to be here, the only thing that should matter is, are the buyers and sellers happy, I know this is a delicate balance, but right now it does seem like the sellers aren't happy at all and buyer happiness is directly linked to how sellers feel and interact with their clients.

I have no plans to leave Fiverr, I will do my best to raise whatever innumerable calculations need to be raised to get to 9/10 "Success Score" and hopefully keep my TRS that I have worked so hard for over the years. But as I have a family and people who rely on me I have 100% dusted off my resume and started to work on it. It is unfortunate because I love working on here, I love meeting new authors and helping them get their books to market.... but it shouldn't have this amount of manufactured stress attached to it.

I do hope we are all overreacting to new change, I really do, I hope Fiverr looks at this feedback and goes back to the drawing board somewhat, or finds a better way to implement this system that doesn't immediately effect everyone for the negative. I hope more TRS will leave their thoughts also.

100% agree with you here and with a lot of what other sellers are saying. A TRS myself, suddenly seeing I am now at risk of losing my level and the attendant benefits I worked so hard to achieve. The nebulous CS score is apparently one reason. Looking at what Fiverr is doing here, I can only imagine what would happen if they rolled similar changes out in any other organisation. I don't know how many hundreds of other comments there are but surely someone will clue in that these changes are not good at all. After the sudden loss of appearance on the search results and drop of orders in Oct that impacted so many including me (that did rebound), this new round of very seller unfriendly changes has made me put into high gear (what should have been a parallel) something of a risk management focused exit strategy. 

[johnparsons01]

Anyone else's Customer Success Manager out of office and unavailable to have a Zoom meeting?

[cal5086]

1 minute ago, johnparsons01 said:

100% agree with you here and with a lot of what other sellers are saying. A TRS myself, suddenly seeing I am now at risk of losing my level and the attendant benefits I worked so hard to achieve. The nebulous CS score is apparently one reason. Looking at what Fiverr is doing here, I can only imagine what would happen if they rolled similar changes out in any other organisation. I don't know how many hundreds of other comments there are but surely someone will clue in that these changes are not good at all. After the sudden loss of appearance on the search results and drop of orders in Oct that impacted so many including me (that did rebound), this new round of very seller unfriendly changes has made me put into high gear (what should have been a parallel) something of a risk management focused exit strategy. 

Yes I do agree with this, I think it's important for everyone to have a backup plan, these past few days have put this much more into perspective for me. But with new focus creates new opportunities the last time something similar to this happened in my life I found this website Fiverr and it changed it for the better, so I wouldn't get overly down about it. We can only do as much as we can do, we can't really control what corporations are going to do when it comes to their plans other then voice our opinions. 

My hope is they find a better way of implementing this system, because my guess is knowing what I know about development, this system cost far to much money for them to just abandon, but it 100% needs more time to cook.

[priyank_mod]

1 hour ago, sripra9007 said:

"This means that even if you are performing good, if your competition is outperforming in the specific metrics it can cause a drop for you or show as a negative impact"

This line from Customer Service in your screenshot seems to be something totally new, and could be a game-changer.

 

 

Seriously!!! 🤐🧐😱

The "Hunger Games" vibes are getting stronger and strongerrrrrr.....

Edited February 16 by priyank_mod

[zeecreations]

7 minutes ago, palmreader37 said:

Is this some sort of a joke cause it ain't funny

Only thing left now is the ability to add and verify your family members. You get ranked on how many kids you have, you got 1 Kid? Back to page 20. This other guy has 11 kids, you need "Room for improvement". 

[rapidtech1898v2]

1 hour ago, sripra9007 said:

"This means that even if you are performing good, if your competition is outperforming in the specific metrics it can cause a drop for you or show as a negative impact"

This line from Customer Service in your screenshot seems to be something totally new, and could be a game-changer.

 

 

Glad to hear that this intransparent system is also a miracle for the customer service.
Doesn´t help us at the end - but is somehow a mental relief

The only thing i would like to have is a clear statement how the metic is calculated in detail.
I don´t know why this is such a mistery.
 

[smork]

4 hours ago, ssj1236 said:

You really should email your success manager directly rather than set up a call. As a TRS seller, I know how you feel right now mate. This really isn't a good position to be in. The mental strain alone makes this feel like a nightmare. 

I appreciate your responses to my posts.

I only signed up to Seller Plus last night because that is the only avenue I/we have to hopefully get an ounce of clarity here (I hope?!).....and then found that none of them are available for over a month.

I've booked a slot now and that gave me access to email the person I booked with so I've dropped them an email now. 

I am sad to say that I am pretty much resigned to this going badly anyway and have one foot out the door.  After nearly 10 years on Fiverr, I've finally reached my limit with all this nonsense.  My mental health has suffered the past few years with the pressures of this place and its only gotten worse with all these bizarre changes they continue to make, so maybe this was the kick up the backside that I really needed to just move on to pastures new, we shall see.

Edited February 16 by smork

[purecopy]

My biggest issue is when buyers request revisions, you do them and they ghost you. I've had orders stuck in revisions for months before and still have not received replies. Buyers have even been online and active on their accounts, but continue to ignore me. 

My dilemma is: do I cancel or do I just redeliver? Usually, when I redeliver they immediately respond and either request revisions again or leave me a negative review. Regardless of what I do, it negatively impacts my score. I miss the simple days of Fiverr where reviews were just 1 - 5 star ratings and that's it. 

[cal5086]

2 hours ago, smork said:

I appreciate your responses to my posts.

I only signed up to Seller Plus last night because that is the only avenue I/we have to hopefully get an ounce of clarity here (I hope?!).....and then found that none of them are available for over a month.

I've booked a slot now and that gave me access to email the person I booked with so I've dropped them an email now. 

I am sad to say that I am pretty much resigned to this going badly anyway and have one foot out the door.  After nearly 10 years on Fiverr, I've finally reached my limit with all this nonsense.  My mental health has suffered the past few years with the pressures of this place and its only gotten worse with all these bizarre changes they continue to make, so maybe this was the kick up the backside that I really needed to just move on to pastures new, we shall see.

Sigh, yeah I do feel the same. I have to try to be positive about it though and hopefully they will iron out the issues.
 

The biggest problem to me is as a TRS I'm currently at 8/10 and to keep your TRS you need to be at 9/10 so basically you have 1 point of wiggle room and this is based on hidden reviews and metrics that seem very vague. Designing and thriving under this system without just a ton of manufactured stress seems like it is going to be very hard, and we are all freelancers so we live this 24/7, at any given minute of the day, your metrics are counting away.... which ultimately eats at the heart of what freelancing really is at it's core.

Try not to get too down man, with everything there is more opportunity, all we can do is just keep moving forward.

[rajamani255]

Hello forum, I came to this post to make sense of what is happening to my account level. I contacted customer support and all they told me was that I had been demoted to Low Performance (basically stating the obvious). But what I don't get is that is Low Performance supposed to be equal to level 0. Or do I hold no level at all according to the new update? Keep in mind that I was a level 2 before the update. The Low-Performance tag is accompanied by this message:

"Take action: Your performance is below Fiverr standards

Low performance is affecting your visibility in the marketplace. To improve your exposure, make sure your success score is 5 or higher."

But I clearly have a success score of 5 and it says I am Low Performance. I am super confused and customer support wasn't much help either. If anyone else has this Low-Performance tag next to their My Level and can help me figure out what it means it would be great.

[leonormiserol]

8 hours ago, cal5086 said:

The same thing happened to me, gave me a wonderful written review and also a tip and 4 stars 😕

It honestly wouldn't be so bad, because 4 stars isn't a bad score when just looking a 1-5, but the way fiver uses it in their system, anything other then constant 5 stars is negative it seems, it almost seems like a simple thumbs up or down on each metric would work better then what we have currently.

This is either a mistake, or a way to confuse buyers. Or simply a new review system that is poorly thought out and applied without going through testing, which hurts us.

Look at the following where it says:
WHERE YOU CAN IMPROVE

Clients get confused because they basically don't read well and they think they are rating positive aspects of you! But it is quite the opposite. You can verify this by asking your client and you will see that it was an error due to the confusing system.

After that you can ask him to talk to CS to fix the review. This is all very bad.

[eclixo]

35 minutes ago, leonormiserol said:

This is either a mistake, or a way to confuse buyers. Or simply a new review system that is poorly thought out and applied without going through testing, which hurts us.

Look at the following where it says:
WHERE YOU CAN IMPROVE

Clients get confused because they basically don't read well and they think they are rating positive aspects of you! But it is quite the opposite. You can verify this by asking your client and you will see that it was an error due to the confusing system.

After that you can ask him to talk to CS to fix the review. This is all very bad.

Can't we tell buyer about updated rating system before asking them feedback? or is that a violation of Terms and conditions?

[leonormiserol]

It seems to me that we should educate our customers before they qualify, without violating the TOS, explaining that it is a little more confusing now, just be sure to point out the correct options.