Proposal for a simple, fair and efficient "Success Score"

[lakris16]

Hi

I applaud business development and trying to develop your platform. However, I think you really need to take a step back with your new "Success Score" system. 

It doesn't motivate or help me to take action, it is overly complicated, and most importantly it doesn't have to! You built an ineffective rocket.

A few remarks before I move on to the solution:

- I handle my Gigs completely consistently, yet my "room for improvement" suggestions are conflicting. It simply doesn't make sense both from a logical and action-oriented perspective.

- As a Pro Seller your sales speech was that I could take communication off-platform as long as I send the bill here, which is also highly preferred by clients. Now I don't have "effective communication", because I don't communicate here.

- The transparency is not better. You have just created more categories. It is evidenced when prodding your support, who states that the calculations are "confidential".

- You have missed basic statistics. For low volumes, there will be huge fluctuations which can have a devastating impact. For high volumes, scores will tend to be lower or converge on their natural level. It's much easier to get a perfect rating on 10 orders than on 100 orders, yet the 100 orders should be rated higher in my opinion. Also, I have a low volume of orders but a high average selling price. This makes it much more random.

- And a lot more...

Suggestions for a solution:

- On YouTube etc. views are king. Your main indicator of success could simply be REVENUE. This would benefit both your stockholders, your customers, AND your sellers and different lines of work that have inherently different volumes would not skew the measure. It's so simple - revenue is why we're all here in the first place!

- You could simply add more "scoring questions", i.e. categories, to your review process and raise the scale to 10. You would get more granular scores, it would be easy for both customer and seller to deduce where to improve and there is no "secrecy" in how the scores are calculated. A rating of 10 translates directly into perfect. You also wouldn't have to do overly complicated algorithmic calculations.

- Make the levels mainly "cosmetic" to give a slight edge in marketing your Gig. As they may fluctuate, the perks can have devastating effects on people who make a full-time living from it. Maybe instead of "Top Rated Seller", even just call them "Bestsellers" in line with the revenue thought above.

- Include the extra perks in the Seller Plus package instead. The serious sellers will gladly pay and you will get a much simpler and effective offering.

And here's my "big picture" remarks. For a full-time seller like me, it's deeply frustrating to rely on algorithms that can make or break my ability to pay my rent. Simplicity will add more transparency, trust, and happier sellers. This is in line with general management, where bosses don't get to bully their employees anymore and realize that happy employees simply create better results and perform better. Make life easier for us sellers, and we will be happier and create more revenue for you! You are constantly reminding me that it is strictly forbidden to take business off-platform, to link to my own (and much better way) of showing my portfolio, don't share any contact info, and keep it all within the platform even when the clients don't prefer it. With this, you are going in the wrong direction and widening the gap between you and sellers instead of motivating us to do our best on your, otherwise, great platform.

I truly believe in your concept for the future and you are making it exciting and possible to be a freelancer and get to work with people from all over the world! I really hope you will listen to some of the feedback you get from sellers and make life easier - not more complicated and ineffective. Thanks, Fiverr!

 

[ndm_archviz]

I totally agree.

The success score is the only statistic that has a completely lack of transparency. You can't know exactly why a gig that has only 5 star review and repeating buyers has a "negative impact" or "strong negative client satisfaction". If you ask to the Fiverr customer support they tell you about the keys of success only aleatory and theoretically things. No numbers, no objective facts. I am very disappointed and surprised that Fiverr has introduced this kind of unpredictable and unfair statistic. 

[eclixo]

I think the only issue with success score is calculation of lifetime performance of gig instead of 3 months and client satisfaction (despite people having only 5 star rating)