Update: Addressing new level system questions and feedback

[creativecolumn]

@gunawanguan @alanletsgo It's not a typo. Level 2 will only have 10 Gigs and the news was confirmed by Fiverr. 

[amazingpix]

@Kesha

Hello Kesha,

One of my gigs - ( https://www.fiverr.com/s/gkk29E ) success score is completely misrepresentating or wrong when it is evaluated in terms of the parameters used for getting the gig success score.

the gig ( https://www.fiverr.com/s/KZZRNE )  is newly created and has two 5-star ratings from the same buyer and I had a very good understanding during before and after the projects with the buyer on both projects and the buyer also mentioned several key areas with reviews that went well. 
.
Despite all these positivities how come the gig score can be 3 and how "Conflct-free Order" is negatively impacting the gig when both the orders were completed 100% without any conflict dispute, or cancellation?!

.

The issue is not only about this gig. Two of my most popular gigs (one with  "199" 5-star rating out of 205 ratings and another with "42" 5-star rating out of 45 ratings also get scores of 4 which is not relevant at all when compared to these  gig's popularity and quality of services delivered. The correct score should be around 7. Thanks.

Edited February 16 by amazingpix

[anniejenkinson]

4 hours ago, katherinasim said:

I'm feeling ridiculous to get down to the Level 1 after being on the Level 2 for 3,5 years. 

The requirements to be on the level 1: Rating: 4.4 (Me: 5.0), Response rate: 80% (me 100%), Orders: 5 (Me: 1283), Unique clients: 3 (Me: 897), Earnings: €391.45 (Me: Earnings: €76 985). How can someone with 5 orders and 4.4 rating on Fiverr be at the same level as me??

 Fiverr, are you sure it's a FAIR and TRANSPARENT Level system????? 🤪

This is apparently a system on which the top earners must be doing the worst jobs, Katherina! I don't think they employ any senior statisticians, just a bunch of young folks programming AI to do the jobs that ought to be done by humans, and AI carries bias due to poor abilities to determine 'human factors'. Any business consultant knows this.

There's no way this flawed ststem has been achieved based on carefully constructed bases; the design is based on inconsistency and a lack of insight.

It seems to me to be an impossibility and a gross contradiction in terms that people like you, who have earned high, are the low performers. In any other field, those businesses that earn most tend to be seen as successful.

Here, we crawl on the ground to be trodden on and insulted.

In five years here, not once has anyone from Fiverr sent out a brand image and performance survey to top sellers; if they did, the results would be shocking.

[cal5086]

5 hours ago, carddesignrr said:

what is bad Order Cancellations?

I have had asked this for years on here. If a buyer and seller come to a mutual agreement to cancel an order, why is this counted as a negative against anyone? It doesn't make any sense.

The only time a cancelation should count against a seller is if that seller is overly late and hasn't contacted the buyer and then the buyer has to cancel.

We are penalized now for canceling (even mutually) but if we force the client to work with us and get a negative score, it's a lose lose situation for sellers and has been one of my biggest gripes for years on here.

[design_desk]

18 hours ago, chronos_1 said:

I have score of 10 but here is my input: 

1) Remove or change value for money:

- I set a price which I feel is justified for the experience and expertise I bring. Buyer is unknown about the work that gets put behind the curtains nor has expertise on how it is done.

- If the buyer thinks that price for the service required is high then he/ she should not start the order itself.

- I think this forces seller to reduce the prices as we get directly compared to other gigs with lower prices and provide same services. However, prices are based on final quality that you would receive which cannot be quantified without asking 2 sellers to do exact same work. 

 

2) Success score to remain TRS which is 9 is high in my opinion and it should be 8. Same goes for rating, since the new rating system has come into effect it seems 4.7* is the new 5*. To remain TRS we need to have 4.7* which I think is not good.

Absolutely!! 
 

Value for money doesn't make any sense for the service business like graphic designing. How can we determine someone’s art/skill by value for money?!!!

Success score benchmarks are really high and not practical with the new review rating system.

Edited February 16 by design_desk

[bamisesoile]

5 hours ago, donnovan86 said:

What I mean by it's clear is this: https://www.fiverr.com/cp/success-score-explained They explain it very well, and they do show the info for each gig. Obviously since this info is from private ratings, it won't show what order influenced that negative review. Which renders the information useless for sellers, because you know an order affected your gig or maybe more orders, but you don't know which ones and why. 

So yeah, it's clear how you can improve, they have guidelines in that link and I think Kesha sent another one. But the reality is that you don't really have any specific feedback when it comes to what was wrong. Not to mention some buyers leave reviews randomly. In my case, I understand what needs to be improved, so it's clear to me. I do understand some people don't have any clue what went wrong since they only had great public reviews, and for them the answer is... private reviews. A lot of buyers leave random or even bad private reviews. We never knew them (how bad they were), and now they come to light in a devastating way. 

Again, don't you think people can read? If my score is 9 because of seller satisfaction and I have had a 5.0 star rating on 98 of my jobs in the past two years, how do I know who wasn't satisfied? What customer wasn't satisfied? This is why people are complaining. The importance of ratings is to know what went wrong and why. You can't tell me my area of improvement is customer satisfaction and also show me that my customers gave me 5 stars. Please quit "masplaining" for them. They got it wrong with this sh*t. About the private ratings  , why are they doing that too? "Beyond Exceptional" is not a rating anyone will give except you go above and beyond. Why must I go above and beyond when I do just fine? Eventually, that also drops your score. I am a top-level seller who has had a 5.0 star rating since 2019, and my current rating leaves me in TRS, but I can see this blowing up any moment. It isn't a simple "improve on what was highlighted as negative" thing. Do you think it is? People can see how messed up it is already, and instead of saying, "They explained it well," when really all they've done is hide a lot of things yet wave the flag of transparency, please keep reading the comments. 

[bamisesoile]

3 hours ago, vickiespencer said:

Private reviews have been a thing for a while now. Hanging around the Forum helps keep sellers updated about them. 

Dont you see the downside in what you just typed? Tbh, if not for this success score, you will not find me here. It isnt stated on their website but they can do videos rolling out other products but I have to "hang around a community" before I can get an information. Very funny chile!

[shuvo_va]

@Kesha

Hello Kesha, Would you please answer the following 2 question?

1. If I delete non-performing gigs with low success scores, will the overall success score go down or up?

2. What is the success score for a newly uploaded gig? Zero (0) or 10?

 

[scottparker747]

This new level system is inaccurate of may freelancers work, deliberately we rely set up to downgrade profiles and further put power in the buyers hands while again degrading freelancers who are the actual reason sellers come here. 

My profile was due for review finally to get to top rated seller on 15th February. All of a sudden this new system is downgrading my profile to level 1. I have perfect stats! Over 100 orders, 100% responce rate, 100% order completion, 100% on time delivery, 5.0 positive review. 

I'm guessing fiverrs continual aytraction to  lower quality buyers who have ever demanding requirements and want it for nothing. Is making fiverr the "cheap" freelance platforms again, driving away high quality freelancers to satisfy thier low end heavy level of buyers. 

Noting o have had some very high quality buyers but of late, the number of penny pinching, never happy with anything,  expanding the world for $5 potential clients has been relentless, 6 months ago maybe 1 in 10 requests would be liek this now its well over 90%. 

Looks like upwork may bea better option to consider, that and they only charge us 10% not 20%

[charlsmcfarlane]

6 hours ago, donnovan86 said:

From what I read here, seems that conflict can be even an extension or multiple extensions, since that's also characterized as a dispute.

Precisely my point. If the system is objectively measuring these data automatically, and they’re unrelated to private reviews, surface some examples of where the seller fell short.

Example:

“Delivery time – Strong negative impact

Here are three orders that have impacted this score negatively. Take some time to review them and consider how you can improve in future.

Order 1

Order 2

Order 3”

This doesn’t highlight a specific buyer as having given negative feedback. It just gives a seller specific orders to review, rather than a page of generic tips that don’t help.

It also reinforces to the seller the validity of the score, because the system can cite multiple examples of where the seller fell short, rather than just giving a score that seems completely at odds with every statistic that seller has ever seen.

[arsalanco1]

Hi i just wanna ask on fiverr Website its showing my account flagged but in Fiverr mobile Application everything looking normal 

i mean my level, benefits etc even i am promoting my gig as well its still active 

my question to everyone are you guys facing the same thing or you have samething showing on Application and website?

 i want to know 

Does that flagged going to exact my gig ratings ? And what about my level 2 thing will i be able to stay on level 2 now or now i don't have any level on my account ? Or the flagged mean i won't be able to move to top seller ? I mean should i keep using it same as before ?

[priyank_mod]

3 minutes ago, arsalanco1 said:

Hi i just wanna ask on fiverr Website its showing my account flagged but in Fiverr mobile Application everything looking normal 

i mean my level, benefits etc even i am promoting my gig as well its still active 

my question to everyone are you guys facing the same thing or you have samething showing on Application and website?

 i want to know 

Does that flagged going to exact my gig ratings ? And what about my level 2 thing will i be able to stay on level 2 now or now i don't have any level on my account ? Or the flagged mean i won't be able to move to top seller ? I mean should i keep using it same as before ?

Mobile app is not integrated with the new system. New framework is only accessible on the laptop right now - that's why. 

[arsalanco1]

what about this sir ?
Does that flagged going to exact my gig ratings ? And what about my level 2 thing will i be able to stay on level 2 now or now i don't have any level on my account ? Or the flagged mean i won't be able to move to top seller ? I mean should i keep using it same as before ?

[mrtranscendence]

Hi, all and @Kesha :)

My name is Abhi, I am a Fiverr Pro & TRS seller. 

As we all navigate through the recent updates to Fiverr's leveling system, I wanted to take a moment to share 4 different agendas that have emerged from my experience as a seller over the past several years.

A. Success Score

While the incorporation of performance metrics spanning a two-year period is understandable, the current grace period of just one month poses challenges, especially for sellers with significantly high order volumes. In this scenario, a seller processing a low number of orders, such as 8-10 orders a month, may have room for improvement. However, consider a seller handling over 1000 orders a month; how can they possibly make significant improvements to any metrics within just one month, especially when compared to a 24-month evaluation period?

Solution: Either the threshold needs to be maintained at a moderate level to allow all sellers to adapt to the new leveling system, or the grace period should align with the period over which the success score is calculated. It's important to recognize that sellers operate within various categories, with different numbers of orders and earnings, and a fair approach should accommodate this diversity.

B. Success Score in Decimal

Secondly, the Success Score's representation as a whole number limits its ability to provide nuanced feedback. Displaying the score in decimal format would offer sellers clearer insights into their progress and areas for improvement, thereby empowering them to make more informed decisions about their business strategies.

Solution: Similar to the rating system, I advocate for displaying the success score in decimal format (e.g., 4.8, 4.2) to provide sellers with a more precise understanding of their performance. 

 

C. Six Performance Metrics

Additionally, the requirement to maintain all six performance metrics to retain current levels raises concerns about fairness and recognition of exceptional performance. What if the seller is having Rating, Orders, Unique clients and Earnings which is 2000x time than what is required but just lacking a bit in a success score? Sellers who excel in most metrics but fall short in one area should still be acknowledged for their overall contributions. 

Solution: Similar to the other five metrics, the success score should be moderated to ensure that sellers can maintain it. Alternatively, if a seller achieves dramatically high scores in the other five metrics, the success score calculation should take into account these exceptional performances in its formula.

 

D. Value For Money

The assessment of value for money is particularly challenging in creative and service-based businesses. Previously, I typically received predominantly 5-star ratings. However, with the introduction of the Value of Money section in the new rating system, I've observed a shift in general reviews to ratings like 4.3 and 4.7. Fiverr's marketplace is highly competitive, with buyers encountering numerous sellers offering similar services across various price ranges. For instance, if a buyer opts to engage with a higher-priced seller, say charging $100, they may question the value proposition compared to lower-priced alternatives, even if the service delivered is of high quality. This subjective evaluation of value can vary significantly from one customer to another.

Solution : Given the inherent complexities of assessing value in service-based transactions, I propose redefining the "Value of Money" metric to encompass broader indicators such as "Customer Satisfaction," "Timeliness and Efficiency," or "Expertise and Knowledge." This shift would provide a more comprehensive evaluation of sellers' performance, considering factors beyond pricing alone.

In sharing these observations, my intention is to contribute to an ongoing dialogue about how we can collectively shape a leveling system that supports the growth and success of all Fiverr sellers. I deeply appreciate the opportunity to voice these concerns and offer suggestions for improvement.

Thank you for your attention to this matter, and I look forward to continued collaboration and innovation within the Fiverr platform.

Warm regards,
Abhi

Edited February 16 by mrtranscendence

[allstral]

1 hour ago, shuvo_va said:

@Kesha

Hello Kesha, Would you please answer the following 2 question?

1. If I delete non-performing gigs with low success scores, will the overall success score go down or up?

2. What is the success score for a newly uploaded gig? Zero (0) or 10?

 

 

Edited February 16 by allstral

[charlsmcfarlane]

For the most part, I like the look of this new level system. I think the theory is great, but some of the execution is not. Here are what I believe to be the main issues, in order of urgency.

1. the value for money rating is ineffective and will result in a race to the bottom on pricing. Quality and cost are two separate variables so should be surveyed independently from one another. I would be absolutely fine with a buyer saying that the work was fantastic but that it was expensive, because I charge what the work is worth. Putting both variables into a single survey, could cause the quality of the work to be called into question when it was actually a cost concern.

2. A generic guide on how to improve one’s seller success score is insufficient information. Sellers should be provided with specific examples of when they could have done better, so they can learn from the experience and improve. Providing a generic guide is like saying, “find the needle, but we’re not going to tell you, which haystack to look in”

3. Presenting the seller success score as whole numbers is not enough information. My success score shows as a 9 but I have no idea if I’m on the edge of dropping into an 8 or only just below a 10. Obviously I’m going to keep pushing to improve this but I don’t have enough information to know where to focus my attention. Will I wake up tomorrow and be at 8? Who knows? Please present the score with at least one decimal point. For example, “9.6”.

4. A month-long transition is not enough time to allow people to improve their score after potentially years of data dropping into the system by which they are measured.

5. none of this information is available to me on the mobile app, which is the way I do most of my checking and messaging.

Thanks for considering these improvements. I don’t believe this update will ever be rolled back, so I don’t want to complain about it. I’m trying to offer suggestions on how to fix what is broken/unfinished.

[zerlina84]

8 hours ago, vhskid said:

20 hours ago, Kesha said:

 

How rating in private is transparent?

How I can learn from feedback that I cannot see?

This right here is what is wrong with this WHOLE thing. First of all, telling buyers to leave a secret feedback is just wrong, but if they MUST do it and use it to destroy our stats then at the very least we should know WHICH orders were problematic.

so we can LEARN and improve.

it’s not rocket science.

Edited February 16 by zerlina84

[emmaki]

I am totally fangirling over all of @anniejenkinson's posts right now. 

 

[donnovan86]

2 hours ago, bamisesoile said:

The importance of ratings is to know what went wrong and why. You can't tell me my area of improvement is customer satisfaction and also show me that my customers gave me 5 stars. Please quit "masplaining" for them.

It says why under the rating. The problem here is not the rating system, is how people use them. All the non 5 star reviews I got since this system was in beta came with apologies from buyers because they were confused by the system. So.. I think the problem stems from buyers, since many of them either don't understand the review system, or they just randomly leave reviews. 

2 hours ago, bamisesoile said:

It isn't a simple "improve on what was highlighted as negative" thing. Do you think it is?

I was a TRS and lost it, and most likely won't have it back again. And that's fine, most if not all TRS features are in Seller Plus, which most serious sellers have it anyway. So aside from the badge and having 30 active gigs, you're not getting anything extra.

Based on what Fiverr said, the score is not meant to fluctuate that much, unless you have very few orders. For me, someone with tons of orders over the years, I am pretty sure I can't even make a dent in the success score and change it, since there are way too many older orders. 

I like that people asked for more transparency, I specifically asked for the success score/buyer satisfaction rate to be public. Until now, this score was only seen by success managers. And now when they offer a bit more info, people outrage. I saw this leveling system in a meeting last month, and I knew right away people would be upset. But it is what it is. 

I am not explaining for anyone. But realistically, you think people outraging here will do anything? Aside from figuring out a few minor issues to change, like customer support canceled orders damaging the success rate and stuff like that, few to no things will change. It's always been like this. I said in one of my last messages where I replied to you that I am just focused on adapting to and understanding the new system. Because I know I am just a freelancer here, regardless of how many years I worked on the platform. It's not my platform and while they are willing to hear us out, chances are that most of the feedback will not be implemented. Unless, of course, you own a lot of stock and you arae on their board. But freelancers on a forum.. we can make only minor changes happen. 

As I said, my problem is with buyers not understanding the system or worse, not caring about the seller they are working with and randomly leaving reviews. It's happened to me even before this level change, a year ago I got a 1 star review from a buyer that was satisfied, the review text was obviously positive and he was happy, but randomly left only 1 star for each category. Obviously that affects my current success score, since it's all about lifetime reviews.. I just left the review there and moved on..

[donnovan86]

28 minutes ago, zerlina84 said:

This right here is what is wrong with this WHOLE thing. First of all, telling buyers to leave a secret feedback is just wrong, but if they MUST do it and use it to destroy our stats then at the very least we should know WHICH orders were problematic.

 

I agree with you, we should know what orders caused the issue.

Then again, that's the premise behind private reviews. They are meant to offer people protection. So I know for a fact they will never show that data. Unfortunately, I don't think they will show private reviews, unless they fully revamp the system. But they will alway try to acquire data privately, so people can be honest. What that means is that few happy buyers will leave a good private review, and only those that were unhappy or want to harm a seller for no reason will go and leave private reviews. I can say for a fact, despite having only 5 stars for 6 months, my buyer satisfaction rate was quite low, certainly lower than normal, according to my success manager. She told me that while people can leave a great public review, they also tend to leave a bad review privately, so these scores vary wildly.

That's why I am not shocked at all to see newer people with only 5 star ratings and a few 4 stars that have a very low success score. At least now we see what buyers are doing to us privately, and in some cases it's not pretty.

[donnovan86]

1 hour ago, charlsmcfarlane said:

Here are three orders that have impacted this score negatively. Take some time to review them and consider how you can improve in future.

Order 1

Order 2

Order 3”

This doesn’t highlight a specific buyer as having given negative feedback. It just gives a seller specific orders to review, rather than a page of generic tips that don’t help.

If you see the order number, you can easily pinpoint the buyer. And that's the whole point of private reviews, to allow buyers to be honest and not feel pressure from being highlighted. Of course some buyers use this to manipulate sellers or blatantly cause them harm. 

I also know that until private reviews will be removed, this info will never be shared. Your idea is great, but realistically, Fiverr will never share private review data unless they change the system, and they won't ask for that anymore. 

I will say this, I saw a lot of sellers with more 3, 4 star reviews or less. So if the focus was on lowering review scores, it's working...

[priyank_mod]

7 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

I am just focused on adapting to and understanding the new system. Because I know I am just a freelancer here, regardless of how many years I worked on the platform. It's not my platform and while they are willing to hear us out, chances are that most of the feedback will not be implemented. Unless, of course, you own a lot of stock and you arae on their board. But freelancers on a forum.. we can make only minor changes happen. 

Glad someone said this. 🙌💯

[donnovan86]

1 hour ago, charlsmcfarlane said:

3. Presenting the seller success score as whole numbers is not enough information. My success score shows as a 9 but I have no idea if I’m on the edge of dropping into an 8 or only just below a 10. Obviously I’m going to keep pushing to improve this but I don’t have enough information to know where to focus my attention. Will I wake up tomorrow and be at 8? Who knows? Please present the score with at least one decimal point. For example, “9.6”.

 

Again a great point my friend.

I guess it depends on the person, but in my case I have 4 gigs now, and it looks like this.

So, with a bit of math, I assume my score is 9.25, right? It would be great if we could see those decimals though. 

[vibronx]

14 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

I assume my score is 9.25, right?

Not necessarily.

21 hours ago, Kesha said:

Additionally, we understand the need for clarity regarding the overall success score and the Gig success scores. The overall success score takes into account your Gig scores. Gigs with higher order volumes have a greater impact on your score, while those with fewer orders contribute less. This ensures that your success score accurately reflects each Gig's performance relative to its order activity.

 

[szybkaiokienko]

And here I am:

+ having no cancellations on a gig within 9... almost 10 MONTHS,

+gig has 2 cancellations in sum, to this moment and it was:
      - Because buyer bought my gig and then said that I should pause her order because she doesn't know if              she  needs it at all from the start and then proceeded with cancellation because she actually didn't need             it from the start
      - and previous one was because the buyer agreed when I said that he only should order if he can wait                  till 12 hours more than delivery deadline on this( I was knowing it will affect me badly as "LATE" but also          wanted to help a  client that really wanting to have a deadline set to the closest day so he would feel                   safer, also he agreed to extend my delivery time if a final delivery will be in 36 hours) , he said "yes, that would be ok" and then got furious even if I done all like he agreed to before ordering so it went to cancellation even if a lot of time still was left to agreed ( I wont ever again go for such a weird buyer).

+ people are super happy leaving gloving feedback, contacting me afterward to tell me how thankful they are and how I am cheap for the quality I offer them

+ my offer on this gig is 30 $ while for the same service artist market calls for 100-300$, I have one buyer that for sure later resells my art for 250$ (ame by accident to this realization, seeing my work somewhere else and was backed with a price it was sold)

+ and still one of such reselling buyers ticked recently that "value for money is negative" in my case. I'm furious. Either she would want it done for 0$ so she can resell it for 250$ later or she actually she thinks MY WORK IS WORTH MUCH MORE (because she resells it for much more). 

+ people are coming back from this gig either for this gig or for other gigs as they are so happy with prices and quality (I'm more pricey than the others in my area -  many of my buyers contact me telling me how I should go for much higher prices (and I'm doing a high-quality work demanding a lot of time).

AND DUE TO THAT PERFORMANCE WHICH HARDLY IS MY FAULT FIVERR AI IS TELLING 4 RATING ON THIS GIG  BECAUSE OF  CANCELATIONS and VALUE FOR MONEY

If a buyer comes back, is happy with the work, thanks you, gives 5-star rating, still wants to come back, and will come back but still gives you VALUE FOR MONEY negative there is something really wrong. Because if my work is really low value for money she should go back somewhere else instead of coming back, somewhere for better work with lower price (which is not possible on the market, I'm actually ripping cheap for quality) 

Just to let other buyers how it works for me:

while thinking of it for couple years and switching slowly to the other platforms and my own site/Instagram canals  -in the last couple days when I saw how it looks on Fiverr now I made not only a hard decision to switch the platform and build my new canal outside of platforms - I made the strongest moves to this time. I have another canal already but treated it as a second child even if it gave me already more than 2 times an hour rate (orders come slowly but prices are much higher). Already have a lot of work done these last days to make that canal promoted better and spent big budget to get new canals much quicker (weeks instead of months ) than I could by myself. If Fiverr adjusts the system so it won't be so stupid and infringing I will have a fine backup, fine "checkpoint" for what Fiverr offers and if it is still worth it but if not I'm just fleeing from here as it is much more stress, much more misunderstanding of principles than it is worth.