Success score looks like a joke

[graveyardshiftx]

Meh. I mean, I'm not happy about this update, but at this point I am at the "please no more" stage with a gun to my head. Honestly, being a TSR isn't all it's cracked up to be. I've been one for like what, 5 years now and I secretly long for the days where I could honestly tell clients with unrealistic briefs ("build me the next AirBnB website on a $300 budget!") to eff off.

I'm a 8 apparently. Whatever that means. It seems to me that consistently exceeding expectations and having 1200+ 5 stars reviews without a SINGLE  negative one isn't even enough to be top crust now, since there is a "secret" reviewing system between Fiverr and my clients that I am not allowed to be part of. I mean, what's even the point of having 1200+ 5 stars reviews visible on my profile if they're a lie? Maybe I'm actually crappy at my job, but Fiverr and my clients both think I'm an 8 year old little girl who can't take constructive criticism since they feel the need to discuss my performance without me having any say or input in it. How weird is that? I don't want cheap "gold stars" I want a transparent reviewing system where ALL 3 PARTIES can actually say what they feel because lord knows I have opinions on some of the people who come to me with a request.

At the end of the day, this is all bollocks. If you don't want your 20% cut of the substantial amount of money I bring to the platform, then demote me and be done with it. This is madness...

Edited February 15 by graveyardshiftx

[cheftychefty]

What fiverr needs to do is use profits that they earn from their sellers and hire secret shoppers like most regular businesses do and use that as a metric. Pay the secret shoppers to buy a low tier order from us at random points throughout the year and make that have a strong mark against us versus the wave of people who are just clicking a score depending on how their day has gone. How do you regulate that because you can't buy one order from everybody? Easily. You only have the secret shoppers buy from the successful artists who are at the top or moving a lot of product. That way its a metric that checks in with them to ensure their quality of work because paying a shopper to check in on someone whose barely doing a few orders a week won't really matter. What's the salary of a fiverr staff member? I can imagine there is at least a dozen salaries that aren't needed at the office. I'm sure losing a few would be okay. Afterall that's how they're treating their sellers. I mean who really cares if this is how they make a living, right? Tell a few at the office that they have until march 14th to figure it out.

I understand all of the profits are paying all of the people behind the screens but all of the hard work comes from the sellers making this platform as big as it is and now we are being punished. Does fiverr think this will make the platform stronger? What it's going to do is make all of the sellers who have made fiverr hundreds of thousands, find other avenues to make money and go elsewhere because it's now become to volatile here and it's not safe financially.

A lot of people are upset that they only got Seller Level 2 and I'm over here wondering if I'll have a place to live by April 🤣 It's not funny but I don't know how else to feel so I just laugh at how unrealistic it was for me to assume fiverr would always be a healthy source of income. Prime example of not putting all of your eggs in one basket because that basket may get stomped on by the same person handing you the eggs.

[leannelrivers]

20 hours ago, anniejenkinson said:

I can see this wonderfully encouraging 'success' system having a few issues retaining high-revenue sellers.

Indeed. And 'couldn't organise a p*** up in a brewery' also came to my mind. 

[priyank_mod]

10 hours ago, cheftychefty said:

What fiverr needs to do is use profits that they earn from their sellers and hire secret shoppers like most regular businesses do and use that as a metric. 

I come from Fashion Retail and we genuinely used to deploy 'Mystery Shoppers' to check the readiness and excellence of retail stores/staff. 

And what you suggested indeed crossed my mind quite a few times🙈 that - what if a genuine sounding enquiry from a new-to-the-platform buyer is someone deployed by Fiverr to check on us!! 

[ceilingeyes]

The metrics for the Success Score are both ridiculous and unhelpfully vague and nonsensical. Ive been a Seller for 5 years and my rating is 5-star. Out of over 350 orders ive only had 3 or 4 really be difficult and need escalating. Everyone else has been almost universally lovely and a pleasure to work with, whether they were single order buyers or regular clients. My gig is rated as a 6 out of 10 in success score. Out of the three metrics, only my "order cancellations" is positive, as I said, as only a small handful have been problematic. 

But the other 2 metrics, "Effective communication" and "Conflict-free orders" need room for improvement apparently. Looking at Fiverr's wording of these it sounds so vague how theyre judging these things. And I wholly believe this isnt being judged by a real person, but by some sort of algorithm. According to their own words, they seem to be judging us on things as simple and silly as how colloquially we speak to our buyers? I enjoy speaking personally and normally to my buyers, particularly those who order from me regularly. If we're both native speakers and of roughly the same age, background etc why cant i talk like friends with them if we both enjoy doing so?

 

Ive never perceived any sort of communication issue or "conflict" with my buyers, and when there has been a language or communication issue ive always stayed professional and calm and always been able to resolve it and end up giving them work they appreciated and enjoyed. 

 

So my issue is, if neither I nor the overwhelming majority of my clients perceive any sort of conflict or communication issue, how/why is Fiverr declaring there is? it's punishing Sellers like me for a nonexistant problem.

 

This whole system revamp needs tearing down and putting in the bin. I cannot see any benefit to anyone of this new system and its procedures, only drawbacks. This is what you get when the people in charge have absolutely no idea what the experience of actually being a Seller on their site is like.

[emmasuebowtique]

On 2/14/2024 at 3:24 PM, paulkifner said:

I have three main gigs, and the new success score seems like someone just put random numbers. Really, all those reasons are totally unrelated to reality. I have the most popular gig (let’s call it N1) with a success score of 8, a less popular N2 with 6, and the least popular N3 with 4, so in the end, my success score is 6. Generally, I was waiting for the new level system with excitement because I was going to be top-rated, since they lowered the required number of orders. But now, it’s going to lower my level from level 2 to level 1 🙂.

 

In the meantime, Fiverr’s email about new changes says: “Utilize this transition phase to enhance your performance and align with the updated standards. Invest time in refining your skills and metrics ensuring you’re well-prepared.” So, do I understand correctly that it’s not Fiverr’s responsibility to ensure their new metrics are relevant, but I just have to accept it no matter what?

 

Okay, let’s look at my gigs’ scores in depth: Gig N1, score = 8, negative impact in “value for money”. I have a lot of custom orders here, but I’ve no reviews with “value for money” lower than 5, and I always come to an agreement about the price, not forcing customers to buy, or something like that. Anyway, everything about this specific metric was said in this thread already: https://community.fiverr.com/forums/topic/324029-new-rating-system-is-punishing-sellers

 

Gig N2, score = 6, negative impact in “Client satisfaction”. I completely don’t understand where it’s coming from. Why does Fiverr know I have an unsatisfied client and I don’t? I have no bad reviews or something like this. Actually, I have one review with 4 stars for “value for money”, but it makes no sense at all since I’ve marked it as negative on a different gig. So they took 4 points off my score and I’m really struggling to figure out why.

 

Gig N3, score = 4 This is my favorite. I have only very satisfied clients, all reviews are 5 stars and guess what? There’s a negative impact in “Effective communication”. I’ve less than 10 orders here, and I’m 100% sure there were no communication problems with any client. This looks like a mystery to me. Even on my gig page, I see the badge “Highly Responsive. Known for exceptionally quick replies.” So what is going on here?

 

We have this explanation article https://www.fiverr.com/cp/success-score-explained right? And in the first section, we can see this small print:

 

To understand how the success score is calculated, read more here.

 

And I know why it’s so small because it explains nothing. It has the same abstract words from the previous article about best practices, and nothing about how it’s actually CALCULATED. You can see there words such as: “…along with other stats that reflect how happy buyers are”, “…different data points from reviews”, “…ability to set clear expectations”. How am I supposed to understand the new score system with this? Especially when I’ve great reviews, but in the end, I see 4 out of 10. Okay, let’s assume that I have communication problems, so why don’t I have them in other gigs? I’m still the same person.  Are you saying I turn into a werewolf when I get messages regarding another gig? Why does “Effective communication” take out 4 points, while “value for money” takes 2 points? Why are all those metrics and reasons hidden from the sellers? There are a lot of questions.

 

In the end, it looks like a random mess. In my opinion, such a success score system just CAN’T go live. Please share your opinions below. We are sellers, we are Fiverr, let’s make this marketplace better!

At least you are a level one, lots of us have been demoted to a level 0 even though our gigs are top performing gis with all around 5 star reviews. The system is flawed and is not calculating correctly however Fiverr will not admit that. They rolled out a program that hasn't even been tested and is going to lose them millions of of dollars monthly if they don't figure it out. I pay well over $1K in fees to fiverr monthly. All it takes is for 1000 sellers having this same issue, they just lost a million dollars in revenue in 1 months time. 

[cheftychefty]

Any of you with a bad success score and no answers should reach out to customer support. I have zero flags on my account or TOS warnings yet the response from the support team says that I "violated TOS or Location Inconsistencies" and due to that I am permanently restricted from using the platform after 6 years, no warnings, and thousands of dollars made in revenue.

Something's not right. I'm a dude that lives in the USA lol. I travel once in a while to visit family or friends who also live in the USA. Make it make sense. I have zero popups or notifications on my account that says my account is flagged. I have seen plenty of people posting on here that their account is flagged and it literally says ON their profile they are flagged but mine does not. Again, I have zero warnings or flags but somehow I'm shadow banned? from using the platform??

You guys could be too and you don't even know it... 🤷‍♂️

Edited February 16 by cheftychefty
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[w0rdpress_pr0]

 my gig is performing the best in my category on top pages, and I have excellent client satisfaction on the inbox messages as well with excellent quality. I have completed over 10 orders with 5-star ratings this month but the success score decreased instead of increasing even I have made 1 room green, I do not have any negative effect, just empty rooms for growth

[digitalgeria]

 

are you seriously comparing this ridiculousness of success score to Upworks?

On 2/15/2024 at 12:12 PM, cristinagva said:

Oh, the great leveling has come. Welcome Upwork 2.0.

Edited February 25 by digitalgeria

[csvoiceart]

You think yours is bad? Some of my gigs have a "negative impact" due to cancellations when I have never had a cancellation on those gigs. This can't even be answered with some "customer hidden review" answer. There literally have been ZERO cancellations.

To clarify I don't want to come across as diminishing your experience, yours is actually bad too. Very bad. This is all very bad. I'm hopeful they will fix it though. The loss in revenue as others stated will simply be too much.

Edited February 26 by csvoiceart

[a1000voices]

I feel ya!  I do voice over work and sometimes my clients take several days to get back to me after I initially submit the project (on time).  So, as a professional courtesy to the agency I am working with, I extend the due date so they have time to confer with their clients. 90% of the time, they don't even need a revision.  I just didn't want to pressure them to get back to me "before the gig was up".  It turns out that this is perceived as a negative and I should have foreseen this possibility. Riiiiight.  I wish I had known this up front before they destroyed me in the algorithm.  One of my gigs used to be at the top of the search, now it is the very last one using those particular key words. I noticed the drop off in December.  I went from 2 to 3 gigs per week to nothing (except my repeat clients).

My theory: Somebody got a new position (V.P. perhaps) and decided to revamp the old system to prove their worth. What Fiverr should have done if they really wanted to change their system, was to change it slowly; one piece at a time.  After a certain amount of time, the whole system would have changed and we would have only had to pivot a little bit at a time.  We are trying to run businesses here and this derails everything. Thanks for listening to my rant.