Official feedback thread re: the new leveling system

[marki0315]

i am glad i am not the only one  who doesn’t like Fiverr new rating system ,it doesn’t have that human touch to it anymore or i got too used to old system 😅

1 star for me on this update.

[jonbaas]

6 hours ago, johnparsons01 said:

Following from my last message about communications. Received a somewhat non-specific response from my SM. If an order autocompletes, it may impact the score as it shows the buyer is disengaged and this apparently is my fault as I did not send another follow  up message between when the order was placed (when I do follow up with a Thank You and a questionnaire) and the few days to the delivery. If this happens and then the order autocompletes - bang. Buyer Satisfaction score takes a hit.

Well, that might explain things for me. I've had a ton of autocompletes. No malicious buyer intent; they just recieved their delivery, and moved on to other business needs. Not my fault, and not worthy of a 4 seller success score, due to the enigmatic "buyer satisfaction". As Fiverr themselves have stated over the years, "buyers are not required to leave a review".

So, NOW we ARE penalized if an order autocompletes, and no reviews are left?

I feel a bit like Fiverr's yo-yo.

[williambryan392]

43 minutes ago, jonbaas said:

So, NOW we ARE penalized if an order autocompletes, and no reviews are left?

 

 

Kinda, but with extra steps I think.

As @johnparsons01 said autocomplete can suggest the buyer is disengaged. More importantly though I think when compared to other sellers it's not good for us if their orders are not being autocompleted. It's all relative between sellers.

We know that the review of a new buyer to the platform matters more because Fiverr wants them to have a great experience and buy again. Someone who has purchased a lot already probably matters less, and someone who has purchased a lot from you already probably matters even less.

I expect this also affects how impactful an auto-completed order is. If that same buyer buys again from you (or someone else) it maybe also negates the autocomplete impact to a degree. If that buyer always lets orders auto-complete it maybe also negates the impact to a degree. If they usually accept the delivery and rate and review, but don't with you then it probably has more impact.

I expect there are hundreds of data points that in turn impact the importance of other data points, which in turn impacts the score.

I even recall seeing an email or a post from a success manager (I can't find it) saying that we should actively try to get the order accepted as this gives a stronger indication the order has gone well / buyer is happy with the deliverable.

[priyank_mod]

6 minutes ago, williambryan392 said:

I expect there are hundreds of data points that in turn impact the importance of other data points, which in turn impacts the score.

+💯

The human thought process tends to be very LINEAR and can easily get blindsided by what they can see on their dashboard and public reviews!! 

Their world kinda starts & ends with what's evident and visible to them -  while Fiverr most likely doesn't even take the visible parameters into consideration. 🫠 Or even when it takes them into consideration, the impact is likely to be very minimal. 

[donnovan86]

1 hour ago, jonbaas said:

Not my fault, and not worthy of a 4 seller success score, due to the enigmatic "buyer satisfaction".

I had this happen to me last year. So there are people that just leave private reviews, my success manager confirmed it. So yeah, it might be due to that. I dislike that we can't really see any feedback and we are randomly affected...

[donnovan86]

28 minutes ago, williambryan392 said:

As @johnparsons01 said autocomplete can suggest the buyer is disengaged. More importantly though I think when compared to other sellers it's not good for us if their orders are not being autocompleted. It's all relative between sellers.

 

I mean half or more of my orders sometimes are autocompleted. My success score is 9 and has been ever since the implementation of this system. I don't think autocompletes are the problem. The issue is when/if they leave a bad private review. You have no idea because you don't know what people do in the background. I waited for a buyer to say what they want revised for 3 days, they did not reply, and once they did reply after 3 days, 10 minutes later customer support canceled the order. So there are people that will go to customer support to cancel behind your back, rate you only privately, etc. And in the case of that person, they also used my work, of course.

So yeah, what we see in the foreground is only a part of the story. I can say that from my own experience, I had months with only 5 star reviews and despite that the buyer satisfaction rate was poor, my success manager confirmed. I only had 5 autocompletes, messaged them and 3 of them said they were very happy, just didn't have time to review, the other 2 never replied or came back, based on the inbox. 

[williambryan392]

3 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

I don't think autocompletes are the problem.

Fiverr definitely values manually accepted/completed over auto completed, the email made that clear (I wish I could find it!), and it doesn't surprise me, it kinda makes sense, but it is just one of many, many things they look at I think. Like you a lot of my orders autocomplete.

 

5 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

The issue is when/if they leave a bad private review.

This is definitely an issue, and probably amongst the most important, but also one of many that may impact I think.

What if an order auto completes but the last messages in the chat from the buyer is 'I love this, you're brilliant, thank you!', and you reply, 'my pleasure, it was great to work with you, let me know if I can help with anything else'. Does Fiverr not look at that as well? I'm not saying they do, but I think it's very feasible that they do and this is just another data point.

I think one of the main problems that people are wrestling with re this new system is that we're trying to find the key things that will make us successful on Fiverr, and I think it is so multi-faceted, there isn't one thing that makes or breaks.

[farshad19rodar]

My Success score dropped from 9 to 8 before I delivered an order!! Now that I've delivered an order and received a 5-star rating, do I expect it to go up again? I really don't understand how I can make it go up and why it goes down. well, in the old score system, I could at least crunch some numbers and pretend to understand what was going on. Now, it's like playing seller score roulette ... I just spin the wheel and hope for the best!

 

Edited March 17 by farshad19rodar

[williambryan392]

3 minutes ago, farshad19rodar said:

My Success score dropped from 9 to 8 before I delivered an order!! Now that I've delivered an order and received a 5-star rating, do I expect it to go up again?

Maybe, maybe not, what if another seller that you're compared against has delivered two orders in the same period, or quicker, or left higher reviews, or their communication was judged to be better, or they sold more gig extras. You might have done well on your order, perhaps the competition did better.

[donnovan86]

3 minutes ago, williambryan392 said:

Fiverr definitely values manually accepted/completed over auto completed, the email made that clear

Oh, my success manager said that too. She even encouraged me to tell people to review my work. However, that doesn't show that autocomplete orders are bad for you. They just aren't offering a positive impact, however I don't think there's any negative impact from them either. They don't help you in any way, aside from making $$. And could be a problem if that person gives you a bad private review. Obviously you can't know that...

5 minutes ago, williambryan392 said:

and I think it is so multi-faceted, there isn't one thing that makes or breaks.

100% my point. A lot of people just see public reviews and say it's impossible to have a success score of 4 or whatever. The reality is, as I said in a reply to another person, there's so much data available, a lot of that data is private, so there's no way for us to know exactly what buyers say, and also what ends up affecting our account. I had half a year in 2023 only with 5 star reviews and very bad ranking. My SM said that the buyer satisfaction rate was low, much lower than usual. If you just look at the public data, there's no way I should be either at the bottom of search results, or even removed from there. But private reviews said otherwise so.. I will leave others to try and figure out what is factored in the success score algorithm and just work the best I can to assist my clients. There will always be some people that rate by mistake or rush, just like there will be people that take their time to complete everything related to reviews. 

I can't force people to rate me, I am not that kind of person, even if Fiverr certainly seems to value reviews way more than autocomplete orders. I have a person that orders quite a bit every week, they don't bother with reviews. Should I force him to share a review? No, clearly he is not that kind of person. I value business relationships more than a review.. 

[williambryan392]

1 minute ago, donnovan86 said:

just work the best I can to assist my clients.

This is all you can do I think. That's my approach.

 

2 minutes ago, donnovan86 said:

However, that doesn't show that autocomplete orders are bad for you.

Not directly no, but indirectly if your competition is getting manually accepted orders then they could be.

[farshad19rodar]

5 minutes ago, williambryan392 said:

or their communication was judged to be better

this section is exactly unclear to me, How on earth will they assess my communication skills? Is the AI going to read through all our chats?🤨
 

Edited March 17 by farshad19rodar

[donnovan86]

4 minutes ago, williambryan392 said:

Not directly no, but indirectly if your competition is getting manually accepted orders then they could be.

Maybe, but as I said, I just focus on what I can control. Does wonders for your mental health.  😄 

[williambryan392]

2 minutes ago, farshad19rodar said:

Is the AI going to read through all our chats?🤨

Maybe, maybe not. If you were Fiverr, and you could do this, you probably would as it's yet another data point to help compare you against hundreds/thousands/millions of sellers.

[williambryan392]

Just now, donnovan86 said:

Does wonders for your mental health. 

Massive agree! That's why I stopped looking at the competition a while ago. It stressed me out!

[priyank_mod]

I have a feeling that the impact of auto-completed orders/revisions/extensions on success score will soon become the latest addition to the list of timeless-unsubstantiated Fiverr misconceptions. 

The off-the-platform Fiverr-Gurus will soon pick it up and start propagating it like gospel. 🫠

[smartdezigns]

19 minutes ago, priyank_mod said:

I have a feeling that the impact of auto-completed orders/revisions/extensions on success score will soon become the latest addition to the list of timeless-unsubstantiated Fiverr misconceptions. 

Why the buyer's unresponsiveness behavior should affect the seller's success scores? This is not fair..

Auto-completed orders should not be included in calculating the success scores.

[zerlina84]

2 hours ago, jonbaas said:

So, NOW we ARE penalized if an order autocompletes, and no reviews are left?

If this is true, it’s pretty gross.

Out of everything they demand of us, the client accepting the order is definitely NOT something we can control, no matter how many follow up messages we send. And it doesn’t mean anything.

I have many repeat clients that leave it to autocomplete; if it were a sign of anything, they wouldn’t order again and again.

My Communication having a negative impact on my 8 SS is something not even my SM understands, and if it’s because of that it’s just pathetic.

1 hour ago, williambryan392 said:

I expect this also affects how impactful an auto-completed order is. If that same buyer buys again from you (or someone else) it maybe also negates the autocomplete impact to a degree. If that buyer always lets orders auto-complete it maybe also negates the impact to a degree. If they usually accept the delivery and rate and review, but don't with you then it probably has more impact.

I truly believe we overestimate the algorithm. I don’t think any machine is smart enough to have ALL that in consideration.

For example, I used to over analyze the Fiverr Choice badge, but when I lost it to someone who hadn’t delivered in weeks I realized it’s probably just buggy… like so many things on this site.

[williambryan392]

23 minutes ago, zerlina84 said:

I truly believe we overestimate the algorithm.

Perhaps! There's no way to know of course.

23 minutes ago, zerlina84 said:

I don’t think any machine is smart enough to have ALL that in consideration.

That's where I'd disagree. In this thread we've maybe discussed dozens, or perhaps over a hundred different things (data points) that can impact score. Let's say though Fiverr looks at a 1000 different data points (I'm purely guessing at a number).

Compare that to algorithms that analyze financial markets and might process millions of transactions and signals in real time to make predictions or execute trades. That's a lot more than a 1000. Or big data analytics where there are algorithms that are designed to get insights from massive datasets. These datasets can contain billions to trillions of data points, covering everything from internet search queries to transactions across global financial markets to the weather. Or there's OpenAI, or BERT by Google which processes and learns from such a crazy amount of data, potentially even billions of data points (e.g., words, sentences) to train their parameters.

There is definitely the tech/machines/capabilities to do this on Fiverr. Now whether they are doing it or not, or doing it well is another question. But for a company that's worth just under a billion USD now, or was close to being worth $12 billion USD at its peak, I really don't think it's far fetched that they would have the resources or skills to build a system that considers hundreds or even thousands of data points to compare sellers to one another, and match sellers with buyers effectively.

 

 

[williambryan392]

25 minutes ago, zerlina84 said:

For example, I used to over analyze the Fiverr Choice badge, but when I lost it to someone who hadn’t delivered in weeks I realized it’s probably just buggy… like so many things on this site.

Perhaps they did that to get that seller some orders, so that seller stayed engaged with the platform. That way Fiverr have another engaged seller to offer buyers more choice when it comes to sellers. Perhaps they felt you were engaged enough with the platform.

It's just speculation on my part, but there's likely a number of reasons why Fiverr chooses to give someone the Fiverr choice badge, and it's not necessarily just because they do good work. It could be to serve Fiverr's goals of creating a dynamic and varied marketplace of lots of engaged sellers and happy buyer.

It's perhaps like why people often talk about a slump in sales (old system) when they hit level 2. Perhaps Fiverr decides at that point you've worked hard on your profile, you're committed as a seller, and so they can redirect some traffic to other/newer sellers to make sure they're engaged. Again, I'm just speculating. It could also be a bug! Who knows!

[donnovan86]

47 minutes ago, zerlina84 said:

My Communication having a negative impact on my 8 SS is something not even my SM understands, and if it’s because of that it’s just pathetic.

As for autocomplete orders, as I said half of them are autocomplete, didn't change my success score at all. They don't have a negative impact. But what they do have is no positive impact either. That's why success managers encourage you to get reviews, so the algorithm is fed any data. 

Yet as I said, if there are private reviews for autocompleted orders, those will have a negative impact. But if the order autocompletes and the buyer doesn't leave a private review, I doubt it has any impact. At least for me anyway, I have many regulars that don't bother with reviews. And I don't want to force them to leave a review either. It's their choice... I value the business relationship more than a review.

[priyank_mod]

1 hour ago, smartdezigns said:

Why the buyer's unresponsiveness behavior should affect the seller's success scores? This is not fair..

It's just an assumption expressed by many sellers - often quoted as communicated from the success manager to the seller!! That's why I feel that it will become a popular misconception. (like staying active/online variety)🥲

However, an auto-completed order is also an opportunity lost for the seller, to earn a review (public or private or both). Its like an empty bullet shell which will NOT nullify a bad private review or a 2-star public rating. So it would affect us indirectly but not literally.

Algorithms devour the data, so like William said, it would be using a million data points to calculate our scores. And an auto-completed order fails to provide tangible data points to the algorithm. 

[priyank_mod]

1 hour ago, williambryan392 said:

It's just speculation on my part, but there's likely a number of reasons why Fiverr chooses to give someone the Fiverr choice badge, and it's not necessarily just because they do good work. It could be to serve Fiverr's goals of creating a dynamic and varied marketplace of lots of engaged sellers and happy buyer.

I do not wish to but fully agree on this - this might just be the case for the badge!!🥲

 

Damn... <bubble breaking moment> 

[johnparsons01]

26 minutes ago, priyank_mod said:

It's just an assumption expressed by many sellers - often quoted as communicated from the success manager to the seller!! That's why I feel that it will become a popular misconception. (like staying active/online variety)🥲

However, an auto-completed order is also an opportunity lost for the seller, to earn a review (public or private or both). Its like an empty bullet shell which will NOT nullify a bad private review or a 2-star public rating. So it would affect us indirectly but not literally.

Algorithms devour the data, so like William said, it would be using a million data points to calculate our scores. And an auto-completed order fails to provide tangible data points to the algorithm. 

A fairly well-based assumption one would think if communicated by a Success Manager, no? At the end of the day, we cannot force a buyer to manually complete an order or then to leave a review. There are a million and one reasons for this but to assume that it is because of something we have done - or not done - is due to us creating an environment of disengagement is itself a rather large assumption to make. 

[emmaki]

24 minutes ago, johnparsons01 said:

A fairly well-based assumption one would think if communicated by a Success Manager, no?

Only if one takes in good faith that success managers are privy to all the details of the new system. This is a job listing for a SM position in TLV on the main Fiverr site:

https://www.fiverr.com/jobs/QjkuRTE2

Note how the listing - correctly - refers to Fiverr Sellers as customers throughout. I like this part (describing one of the roles of the position:

Quote

• Ability to create structure in ambiguous situations

That could mean many things, of course, but offering suggestions on how a thing they don't really know works would definitely "create structure in ambiguous situations". 

I don't believe they have access to as much data as we'd like to think.

There's also an opening for "Head of AI Guild" in tech:

https://www.fiverr.com/jobs/QTguMjQ3

If anyone is wondering what a/the AI Guild is, here's Perplexity AI: 

As a reminder, we are customers. We have no real say in this guild and its development, other than the time-honored vote of "walking with thy feet."

Still, I did recall @levinewman's conversation about some sort of seller representation (as far as we know, unpaid, unless Levi has an update?) within Fiverr and it's fairly obvious that whatever Fiverr's AI Guild would do would have to involve Fiverr's seller-customers to some capacity, since they deliver the AI-related services to the other half of the Fiverr customer equation. 
 

Quote

• Build and Lead the AI Guild: Recruit, retain, and provide guidance to a high-performing team of AI practitioners across various areas of expertise.

The big question is are those practitioners Fiverr staff or Fiverr customers or a combo of both? Will we find out more about this in the second "product release" coming this year? 

The other positions I looked at were boring and/or I lacked the knowledge of the things involved to make much of them. 

Right then, who wants to tell me I'm off-topic today?