Update: Addressing new level system questions and feedback

[hamza_teamalif]

Just got clarification from CS:

Automatically completed orders do not affect your success score negatively.

[williambryan392]

9 minutes ago, hamza_teamalif said:

Automatically completed orders do not affect your success score negatively.

 

Perhaps not directly, but indirectly, when compared to other orders from competitor sellers, if their orders are being accepted (success point), and then rated (another success point) then I think indirectly you will be negatively impacted. (Obviously this is me speculating).

[emmaki]

Yet a "Success Manager" tells a seller paying $40 a month for good advice that autocompleted orders are really not good and should be avoided.

Who to believe? CS or SM? 

I'm going to lean slightly more on the SM since CS does tend to rely on template messages that don't answer the actual question but instead cover the broad subject instead. 

But who knows. I think automatically completed orders are assigned lottery numbers and once a day, the algorithm has a lottery ball thing and (relative to all other sellers with autocompleted orders that day) one lucky seller wins the jackpot.

The jackpot is "very positive impact". The rest are then made into algorithmic shapes and put into one of these (virtual algo) machines to let the chips fall as they may. Obviously the algorithm is more complicated than this image, but this is just to give you an idea of how it works. 

HTH everyone! 

 

[duashahid345]

[Context: My main gig is being affected by Order Cancellations - Strong Negative Impact. I have had 41 cancellations in total, 20 of which are due to various reasons, like duplicate orders, orders by mistake, wrong payment method, cancelling before submitting requirements etc, Like totally not in my hands. Apart from that I have 969 completed orders as of today]

So I spent hours checking my cancellations, sorting through them, writing their order numbers and ticket numbers (if any), along with complete reasoning. Drafting a proper case and even doing their job for them. And after waiting for 3.5 days (as the CS agent told me that they will consult with their relevant team), I got transferred to a new CS agent, who first throwed the generic reply at my face without taking into context what my issues are (mind you I gave 3 big concerns and she only addressed one at the start, incompetency at its peak!)

Then I again highlighted that I'm here talking about the 20 reverted orders (Majority were according to Fiverr's own policy of cancelling before submitting requirements), to which I got the statement:

" Please be advised that removing orders from affecting your Order Completion Rate might have a very small impact on your overall success score, as it is part of many metrics that affect it. "

So they do, in-fact acknowledge that those orders should be removed, yet they aren't removing then? And say they wont have much of an impact? I'm talking about my main gig here with hundreds of positive reviews, let alone the smaller gigs which are STILL not being addressed despite drawing their attention to it. They themselves say that SS is not a mere aggregate of individual SS, but depends from gig to gig, and on volume of orders. Their statements are beyond contradiction.

Now I'm again being transferred to someone else as I realize she has given up upon me, and will again have to wait for 3+ days to a generic response.

I mean, I have friends with more cancellations and lesser completed orders than mine, with 10 scores. And half of my cancellations are reverted ones, yet I have to suffer.

 

 

 

 

Edited February 19 by duashahid345

[visualstudios]

23 minutes ago, emmaki said:

I'm going to lean slightly more on the SM since CS does

Plot twist - they are the same people

[eclixo]

1 hour ago, dusuacangmon said:

Today a Buyers tips me 50$ but just 4 star rating :)))). The new review Question really made the buyers rate lower than the old one, so never you will get 5 star rating for sure.

I think fiverr should be more direct with buyer when asking feedback, they must tell them its not a feedback but a rating mechanism.

[hamza_teamalif]

57 minutes ago, williambryan392 said:

Perhaps not directly, but indirectly, when compared to other orders from competitor sellers, if their orders are being accepted (success point), and then rated (another success point) then I think indirectly you will be negatively impacted. (Obviously this is me speculating).

38 minutes ago, emmaki said:

Yet a "Success Manager" tells a seller paying $40 a month for good advice that autocompleted orders are really not good and should be avoided.

Who to believe? CS or SM? 
 

This is what I got from CS after asking for more clarification:

Autocompleted orders do not affect your account negatively since orders are completed and not canceled. Please bear in mind that your performance is based on your order processes and your relationship with clients. It is not just about autocompleted orders.

[williambryan392]

4 minutes ago, hamza_teamalif said:

Autocompleted orders do not affect your account negatively since orders are completed and not canceled. Please bear in mind that your performance is based on your order processes and your relationship with clients. It is not just about autocompleted orders.

I understand, and this is just my guesswork...

Auto-completed orders may not affect your account negatively.

Orders that are accepted affect your account positively.

Orders that are also rated (positively) also affect your account positively.

[duashahid345]

Update: My SS increased from 5 to 6. My friends are asking me HOW. My answer is

Es lo Que Es 🤷‍♀️

[emmaki]

17 hours ago, arianelaurent said:

My SM mentioned autocompleted orders were an issue (to what extent idk).... 

Here's the quote I was talking about. @arianelaurent, could you possibly share exactly what your SM said? 

[arianelaurent]

9 minutes ago, emmaki said:

Here's the quote I was talking about. @arianelaurent, could you possibly share exactly what your SM said? 

Of course! This was in a meeting so unfortunately I don't have the exact phrasing/evidence, but they heavily implied that they had a negative impact on the behind-the-scenes algorithm. 😕

But they also just put this about revisions so how much to trust them... "Revisions: 
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to get into the specifics of how the algorithm of the new level system works. We do encourage sellers to complete orders in a conflict-free manner, and avoid prolonged deadlines that might interfere with the buyer satisfaction"

Edited February 19 by arianelaurent
Algorithm = what they're using to calculate success scores now

[emmaki]

Oh, that's a shame. And that whole thing about revisions is just saying "idk can't help" in 40 words when 3 would do. I should know, I'm a specialist at that writing style.

But it does remind me of something I was thinking last night when I saw that there were going to be like, millions of webinars:

• Lots of opportunities to staff to contradict each other to different groups of webinar-attending sellers
  • Unless the webinar is pre-recorded
• Unlike written communications,   webinars cannot be easily shared/searched to highlight said differences
• Sellers should probably screen record the webinars
  • AI can make transcripts easily
  • The collected transcripts can then be investigated - again with AI - for inconsistencies.

I'm sure Fiverr would approve, there's loads of use of AI in there. 

This probably will not happen though, since it requires a unified and collaborative approach from sellers and is probably not worth the results it will yield. 

[dianeofmusgrave]

So not only are canceled orders that went through customer service from unresponsive clients and canceled orders before requirements were submitted affecting our score (and turning policy into an outright lie)

Now extended delivery is an issue? Can someone confirm this? I teach people. My gigs have a 7-day delivery for a single lesson which I think is reasonable for scheduling but often students have to cancel and reschedule and ask me to extend delivery. I am flabbergasted how this could be held against me that a client needs to reschedule an order. 

 

What about clients who just don't show up for lessons? That leave me sitting there for half an hour waiting? Customers that cancel at the last second over and over. Clients that are 45 minutes late. And we have no recourse? I have done the lesson prep and set aside the time and I can't deliver the order because there hasn't been a lesson. I put up with all of that with a smile and yes sir no sir and now I have to deal with being actively penalised for clients needing extensions? 

Edited February 19 by dianeofmusgrave

[gracefulvoice]

Personally I believe having an open dialogue between buyer and seller, with revisions, is a key part of the collaborative process. The buyer might initially say the want a voiceover to be delivered in a certain style, send your first delivery to their client, who decides they want it to sound deeper/faster/more or less [adjective]. You cant provide hundred of takes of whole deliveries in your initial delivery just to avoid revisions, which could bamboozle a buyer.

Also, life happens. Sometimes a seller needs to extend the delivery. Honestly, if a buyer has said ok and you have a good communication record with them throughout the process, if I, as a VO, have a cold, I don't think it's wise to record audio that is substandard, I would explain to the buyer I am ill and will deliver a few days later than expected because of my illness and recovery. If both parties are in agreement and have an understanding and expectation of new delivery date, why on earth should this be a problem? 

[emmaki]

1 minute ago, gracefulvoice said:

I would explain to the buyer I am ill and will deliver a few days later than expected because of my illness and recovery.

Ah, but you know who doesn't get ill and need to waste time recovering? AI, that's who! 

AI also doesn't talk back. Look at how neutered poor old Neo is. 

[sujanaprodesign]

It is the worst policy fiverr has ever made. We, the sellers, will now be victims of this. The client will pay low and demand more work. What is the safety of the seller? The client has not so much time to give feedback . I am really going through frustration

[rajamani255]

Hello community, I have been in touch with customer support about the Low-Performance level and whether it means the account's been demoted or not, and I finally got an answer. Apparently, a low-performance level doesn't equal an account demotion, but from my understanding means the account is under some sort of shadowban.

Leaving this here so anyone else who might have received a Low-Performance badge for their account can save themselves the hassle of going back and forth with support for 4 days to know the answer.

[webdeveloper991]

I have multiple gigs but only 1 gig is showing a score of "9", The remaining gigs don't show any score.. because I don't have many orders on those. 

Still, my overall success score is at "8" .. God knows why.. How is that calculated? 

 

Edited February 19 by webdeveloper991

[rehman_b]

9 minutes ago, rajamani255 said:

Hello community, I have been in touch with customer support about the Low-Performance level and whether it means the account's been demoted or not, and I finally got an answer. Apparently, a low-performance level doesn't equal an account demotion, but from my understanding means the account is under some sort of shadowban.

Leaving this here so anyone else who might have received a Low-Performance badge for their account can save themselves the hassle of going back and forth with support for 4 days to know the answer.

They dont suggest how to improve this or when the account will recover from low performance. All my gigs show 4 score. Did not understand what to do NEXT

[rajamani255]

4 minutes ago, webdeveloper991 said:

I have multiple gigs but only 1 gig is showing a score of "9", The remaining gigs don't show any score.. because I don't have many orders on those. 

Still, my overall success score is at "8" .. God knows why.. How is that calculated? 

 

Fiverr maths goes something like this: an SS of 9 on one gig, and multiple gigs without any success score due to lack of enough orders brings down the overall success score.

[edc_lab]

Usually, when you release a relevant update of, let's say, an App, you start distributing it to a small number of users and slowly increase the percentage of people who have the update available on the app store to see if everything is working as planned, otherwise you stop the release and make the proper fixes.

Here on Fiverr, if I remember well, apparently they did that just with the rating system (switching from stars to emojis and checklists), indeed some people were asking here on the forum if someone experienced the new rating system or not.
The vast majority of complaints were mostly about the "value for money" rating, which makes getting a 5-star review harder than ever.
The success score wasn't something people were chatting too much, probably because was a kind of mysterious thing that nobody knew what to expect from that.
Then the Success Score was released and a huge amount of posts flooded the forum (and the Customer Support too, probably).
Most of the messages were about false positives of flagged accounts and incoherent success scores of successful sellers.

The error here, in my opinion, was to release this new success score to every single user in the span of a few hours.
Why plan a month of transition if you release all at once?
If they thought to use the transition month as a fixing month, well, that's a crazy decision in my opinion, it doesn't work like that.

Personally, I think they should have made something like that:
How many active sellers does Fiverr have?
Let's say 250k.
Release the product to something like 0,5% and 1% of sellers, monitor the situation, and check Customer Support and Forum topics in case of complaints and feedback. Then, note everything, address complaints, find solutions, and once you're ready, change the monitored percentage by releasing the product to a greater sample.
Test again the same things and move to a greater percentage until you hit 100%.
If you have 250k active sellers testing the new release on a sample of 1.2k-2.4k is more than enough to initlially understand whether you messed up with the new system or not and then they could have increased the percentage of users testing the new features in the mentioned month of transition.
But no, they released everything all at once, and now they cannot reassure all the worried sellers and this leads to panic and desperation for several of them.

So at this point, sellers got it right when they reacted badly to the news of an upcoming major update, causing them to have perplexities and worries, but apparently, everything was ignored.
It's not just about the system, it's about the approach Fiverr has during these transitions.
My advice here is: You have some great experienced professionals here, just listen to them, it's free!

[nikki_mills_vo]

How is the 'Effective Communication' monitored/implemented?

Whereas I'm on a 10, two of my gigs aren't; both down to effective communication. One is on 9 and says it has 'negative impact' and the other on 8, which says 'room for growth'. How does room for growth result in a worse score than negative impact?

I'm wondering whether there is a problem with this section and how it's implemented? As an example, I had a conversation late last night which resulted in an order. I reviewed the requirements straight away, thanked the buyer for their order, asked a question about one pronunciation and had a response and audio guide in response, which I thanked them for and confirmed when they would receive their order. This was all done on the app as it was outside business hours.

Yet, just over 12 hours after this, I received an automated email from 5rr to remind me that I haven't yet reviewed the order requirements! This reminded me it's not unusual for me to get such emails, so effectively does this mean my score is being being affected by a technical glitch? If the system incorrectly thinks I've ignored orders for over 12 hours, of course! Am I being penalised further now for not sending another, annoying, unnecessary message to my buyer just to prove to the system that I've done my job? Probably!

Am I alone in receiving reminders to do things I've already done, or could this be the reason so many of us seem to be marked down on communication?

[rajamani255]

16 minutes ago, rehman_b said:

They dont suggest how to improve this or when the account will recover from low performance. All my gigs show 4 score. Did not understand what to do NEXT

I think working with your existing buyers and encouraging them to review your deliveries might bring you out of Fiverr jail in a couple months. 

[arianelaurent]

1 minute ago, nikki_mills_vo said:

How is the 'Effective Communication' monitored/implemented?

Whereas I'm on a 10, two of my gigs aren't; both down to effective communication. One is on 9 and says it has 'negative impact' and the other on 8, which says 'room for growth'. How does room for growth result in a worse score than negative impact?

I'm wondering whether there is a problem with this section and how it's implemented? As an example, I had a conversation late last night which resulted in an order. I reviewed the requirements straight away, thanked the buyer for their order, asked a question about one pronunciation and had a response and audio guide in response, which I thanked them for and confirmed when they would receive their order. This was all done on the app as it was outside business hours.

Yet, just over 12 hours after this, I received an automated email from 5rr to remind me that I haven't yet reviewed the order requirements! This reminded me it's not unusual for me to get such emails, so effectively does this mean my score is being being affected by a technical glitch? If the system incorrectly thinks I've ignored orders for over 12 hours, of course! Am I being penalised further now for not sending another, annoying, unnecessary message to my buyer just to prove to the system that I've done my job? Probably!

Am I alone in receiving reminders to do things I've already done, or could this be the reason so many of us seem to be marked down on communication?

I cannot find it but either on this topic or the one before it, someone mentioned that they had contacted CS about this Review requirements/app issue and CS confirmed it was a glitch with the app, which meant that the communication wasn't registered. It was affecting the effective communication metric in this seller's gig score.

[carminesannino]

4 minutes ago, nikki_mills_vo said:

How is the 'Effective Communication' monitored/implemented?

Whereas I'm on a 10, two of my gigs aren't; both down to effective communication. One is on 9 and says it has 'negative impact' and the other on 8, which says 'room for growth'. How does room for growth result in a worse score than negative impact?

I'm wondering whether there is a problem with this section and how it's implemented? As an example, I had a conversation late last night which resulted in an order. I reviewed the requirements straight away, thanked the buyer for their order, asked a question about one pronunciation and had a response and audio guide in response, which I thanked them for and confirmed when they would receive their order. This was all done on the app as it was outside business hours.

Yet, just over 12 hours after this, I received an automated email from 5rr to remind me that I haven't yet reviewed the order requirements! This reminded me it's not unusual for me to get such emails, so effectively does this mean my score is being being affected by a technical glitch? If the system incorrectly thinks I've ignored orders for over 12 hours, of course! Am I being penalised further now for not sending another, annoying, unnecessary message to my buyer just to prove to the system that I've done my job? Probably!

Am I alone in receiving reminders to do things I've already done, or could this be the reason so many of us seem to be marked down on communication?

First order response received, on App doesn't work. You have to connect from the web, if you are only with a mobile device, I recommend using the browser to respond to an order request. I noticed this years ago, without anyone telling me....