Update: Addressing new level system questions and feedback

[egaylord]

7 hours ago, priyank_mod said:

I was reading the official PR release and thought would share this excerpt with one & all. 

 

 

Link: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/01/30/2819910/0/en/Fiverr-s-Winter-Product-Release-Packed-With-New-Features-to-Keep-Businesses-and-Freelancers-Ahead-of-The-Game-and-Introducing-Fiverr-Agencies.html 

"Radical level of transparency" - I asked CS "in the spirit of transparency" how the gig success scores are calculated. This was my response:

 

[emmaki]

perhaps the press release has a typo and it should have read "radicalizing level of transparency". 

[carminesannino]

5 minutes ago, egaylord said:

"Radical level of transparency" - I asked CS "in the spirit of transparency" how the gig success scores are calculated. This was my response:

 

Fiverr team:

[katherinasim]

Do you think one of their goals in all of this is to make us pay for promoting gigs in order to get the same volume of orders as before?

 

[virgoca]

7 minutes ago, katherinasim said:

Do you think one of their goals in all of this is to make us pay for promoting gigs in order to get the same volume of orders as before?

 

wouldn't be able to tell you if that's THE driving factor, but seeing as how many people here immediately thought of subscribing to seller plus just to get in touch with a Success Manager to clear all of this bs, it's obvious this update has benefitted them at least a bit in terms of sellers paying money for things they shouldn't need. 

[yachi15]

9 minutes ago, katherinasim said:

Do you think one of their goals in all of this is to make us pay for promoting gigs in order to get the same volume of orders as before?

 

I stop promoting my gigs. it's useless (for me)  not getting any orders unlike before 

[emmasuebowtique]

On 2/16/2024 at 11:27 AM, knightartist86 said:

I don't even know what to say.

10 years on Fiverr. I've been a Top Rated Seller for many years now. My biggest gig with 1.5k reviews all 4 to 5 rating. Overall Rating of 5 on Everything. 100% Reply status, Repeat Buyer status. Only marked 8 even with all that and Both Criteria saying Positive Impact.

My 2 other non main gigs which hardly get any buyers at all, both some how ranks higher than my main one. 

Well you're still in the game. Most of us were given a level 0 and success scores of 4. 

[alexonjourney]

32 minutes ago, egaylord said:

"Radical level of transparency" - I asked CS "in the spirit of transparency" how the gig success scores are calculated. This was my response:

 

"Hello, we stand for maximum transparency. We will not be transparent about exactly how this transparency is created. And now be quiet and earn our wages."

[emmasuebowtique]

2 hours ago, edc_lab said:

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!

Well Said!! 

[emmasuebowtique]

1 hour ago, almostfauxreal said:

I didn't ask directly but seems like. I asked why there is such a discrepancy between the success score for two of my gigs where I had no cancellation and one where CS told me they remove it from the stats, still I had strong negative on those metrics. And then that's what they answered..
 

My CS rep did confirm that order cancellations are not be calculated correctly and they are actively trying to fix it. So if there is one bug, there is many they just aren't admitting to the others. 

[dereck_s]

1 hour ago, donnovan86 said:

It's clear that the main focus behind this review and leveling systems is to lower scores and not have everyone with 5 stars and level 2. Most of the active marketplace has that score/level, so it's difficult for buyers to pick someone. I can say for a fact that I tried to find some designers, only to find myself quitting because some of their sample designs were stolen from online sources, and almost everyone had the same rating. So I get why they made the change.

 

Ever since I saw this leveling system in January I was against it and I immediately told them it's unfair towards older sellers. However, I don't think they will change that much. They will definitely not scrap the system entirely, but I do hope they will address some of the bugs reported here, like customer support-canceled orders being taken into account for the succes score. 

It's unfortunate that now we will have to deal with even more metrics, and it's particularly annoying to be penalized for revisions and extensions. Many times, those things are outside of our control, and they come from incomplete requirements, for example.

I am curious about these webinars they are holding the next few days and next week as well. Hopefully they cover some of the questions that were repeated so many times. Ideally, they should make a new topic on the forum where they gather questions, and all the most common/popular ones are answered. 

A lot of so called "logo designers" use AI or logo generators, and they have no design talent. I was looking for a logo and some designs for a project and I ended up getting only AI generated stuff. So I can tell you for a fact, as a client, I didn't get a handmade design, and I worked with 3 different sellers, different pricepoints either. At the end of the day, I had to use AI myself and try to figure things out, so yeah.. Similar thing to when I wanted a website designer years ago, he had an average pricepoint, I didn't go with the cheapest option. He made me wait for over a month, on the last day we agreed I would have the website he said he couldn't do it due to personal issues, but he wants me to pay for the work and a 5 star review for his efforts. Even if I got nothing in return. 

That's why I hope the new system will flush out bad sellers like this. I am not a frequent buyer on the platform, but the dozen or so experiences that I had were mostly negative. 

If you ever need a logo we can barter for it. You're a writer right, I can always use some touch ups on my gig description or something to that affect. Open offer to anyone willing to barter of course. I'm pretty fly for a level 0 seller.

Edited February 19 by dereck_s

[venonusa]

On 2/15/2024 at 11:30 AM, melanielm said:

We get penalized for using Customer Support for help with unreasonable buyers? Is the reason for contacting support manually assessed or is this part of the algorithm that automatically ticks the 'conflict' box and brings our score down?

For example, I've had to contact CS multiple times to have cancellations removed when the buyer never filled out requirements. Do those work against me now (or will things like that in the future)?

I don't think our performance will be penalized if we contact Fiverr customer service.... but we can ask @Kesha for confirmation.
 

[rakibzkhan]

Can anyone tell me what is success score? 

[mandyzines]

2 hours ago, visualstudios said:

That sounds like a nightmare. I can barely work on a computer with one screen (using 3 right now), imagine doing anything serious on a 5 inch display.

Yet it seems like we're increasingly required to do everything else on our phone these days. My mom went to one of two oral surgeons on the island last week and they would only allow the intake forms to be filled out via app, not on paper and in person, for example. She can barely see out of one eye and they wouldn't even help her.

I want to be free from screens when I (barely) leave my house and actually interact with the world, because I'm old.

1 hour ago, zerlina84 said:

Honestly, we should be very careful when chosing these platforms as our livelihoods. Fiverr is my main source of income, but what if their servers explode or something? I'm exagerating obviously,....

I don't think it's an exaggeration. What if things escalate in a certain country? Boom. What if you become part of an ethnic, religious, national, or political ban of sorts all of a sudden? Boom.

2 hours ago, emmaki said:

it used to be that people would simply Google something if they didn't know something

To be fair, all Google really does is show you ads, censor, and steal/sell your data; it isn't like the good old days.

3 hours ago, edc_lab said:

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.

It's Fiverr's Operation Warp Speed! Everything's great! Transparency and innovation. 

 

Edited February 19 by mandyzines

[voicedbyken]

59 minutes ago, katherinasim said:

Do you think one of their goals in all of this is to make us pay for promoting gigs in order to get the same volume of orders as before?

 

I doubt it since Promotions at least for me have diminished in their return over the past 2 months.

I've had Promotions since beta and consistently made $150-$300 in orders per $10 spent on promotions. Most months I would be out of pocket $60 in promotions and make $2K+ off that alone. December was the first time it went south. I spent $70 on promotions and made $0 from them. January I only made $10 more than I paid to promotions and this month I'm at $15 and have made $60 making it the best of 3mths so far. 

I feel like Promotions were made to run really well to drive sellers into the program and now that they have a ton of sellers paying them to promote - they lowered the effect. Similar to a fast-food restaurant releasing a new burger. The first month or two the burger is looks great, smells great, and tastes delicious, but then the quality diminishes overnight, and you pay the same price but get a low-quality, mystery meat sandwich that tastes no different than their other low-end burgers. 

[emmaki]

3 minutes ago, mandyzines said:

To be fair, all Google really does is show you ads, censor, and steal/sell your data; it isn't like the good old days.

True, true. Perplexity is my new favorite search engine, even though it's basically just Google SERPs in an AI dress. 

The good old days of knowledge involved books and this, which amazed me with it's video and sound clips. AND IT HAD A GAME. 
 

 

[panoslazarisads]

Hi all,

Quick question , is it just me or it's impossible to get 5 star reviews now?

I got a 4,7 from a client that we working together for 10 months and recently a 4,3 from an order that went very well.

I think it's very unprofessional to ask a client why they left "bad review" so I never do that

[voicedbyken]

Just now, panoslazarisads said:

Hi all,

Quick question , is it just me or it's impossible to get 5 star reviews now?

I got a 4,7 from a client that we working together for 10 months and recently a 4,3 from an order that went very well.

I think it's very unprofessional to ask a client why they left "bad review" so I never do that

Not impossible, but due to the confusing nature of the review system, this will be the new norm

[carineb]

3 minutes ago, panoslazarisads said:

I got a 4,7 from a client that we working together for 10 months and recently a 4,3 from an order that went very well.

"Very good" was worth 5 stars in the old system.
"Very good" is now worth 4 stars in the new system.

[emmaki]

Perhaps there's a joke about bending over here? As in rather than bend over backwards....

[visualstudios]

5 minutes ago, carineb said:

"Very good" was worth 5 stars in the old system.
"Very good" is now worth 4 stars in the new system.

I already posted this elsewhere, but it bears repeating. The new system is designed, on purpose, to be dishonest. This is not how you ask for feedback. This is not opinion, it's science. Screenshot for emphasis. The new scale fiverr uses is not linear.

https://www.questionpro.com/blog/what-is-likert-scale/

[rehman_b]

I have 5 star rating on communication and here it is showing a negative impact🫤

[zerlina84]

15 minutes ago, emmaki said:

The good old days of knowledge involved books and this, which amazed me with it's video and sound clips. AND IT HAD A GAME. 

Omg I was talking about this game inside Encarta with my friends the other day and no one could remember it! 
 

but we digress. Let’s go back to complaining about the SS, please.

[michmikaia]

11 minutes ago, carineb said:

"Very good" was worth 5 stars in the old system.
"Very good" is now worth 4 stars in the new system.

And I got my first 4stars today due to this.

[maitasun]

5 minutes ago, voicedbyken said:

Not impossible, but due to the confusing nature of the review system, this will be the new norm

When you can't raise the quality standard of 90% of your sellers, and you're not willing to get rid of cheaters and scammers, you come up with the brilliant idea of replacing stars with emojis, without letting buyers know those still represent the 1-5 star scale, so to bring everyone down to the lowest possible level.