How the Fiverr Success Score (actually) works - kind of scary?

[joakimpe]

If you're like me, you like to be up to date on the new features on Fiverr, then you have probably read through all the new features of the Success Score system. And maybe you are a little confused as well if you start poking into the details?

For you who don't know what it is, here what the new Success Score is (without vague expressions and buzzwords):

It's a whole new parameter that is being used to rank you on Fiverr. This success score gives you a score from 1-10 and, here is the kicker - it uses AI.

The AI scrapes information from your orders, and makes a conclution if you did a good or a bad job on the order. Just so were are clear, buyer feedback is only a portion of the information gathered to make up this score, so if the buyer is overly happy but the AI thinks there was other information that made the order bad, you could risk getting a worse score. 

So what info does the AI use to establish a score? As far as we know it's the following:

• Revisions
• Extentions
• Partial refunds
• Feedback from buyer (public and private)
• If customer support needs to be called regarding the order
• Possibly just words and information used in the chat (I got hinted at this, but it's was not a clear answer. This means if the clients says "bad" keywords, it could affect the score. I really hope this is not the case)

Again, I have gone back and forth with customer support, and they say that the AI would know if the difference between a "good dispute" and a "bad dispute". I personally do not trust an AI to make these judgements, as it can be quite complicated. I personally would like to have the score 100% determined only by buyer feedback (that is what matters, is it not?)

One additional note I would like to add: It was really hard to actually find this information. All the information in the help center is very vague, and they never clearly mention it's run by AI. It's very wishy-washy (vague) and it's hard to really understand the clear cut facts of what is going on.

The general questions I would like answered is:

How does the success score system actually make a score for you?
(yes, revisions, extentions, partial refunds or if you contact support, but we would like more details. Technical details.)

And how does the AI really separate good disputes from bad disputes?

This is the information I have managed to gather, please share more information you know in this thread (or if you have questions)

(Fiverr staff, feel free to correct me if you feel like there is something you feel I said wrong about the new system. I am only going of the Help page and Customer Support)

[kingpirux]

there is none. Im sorry to tell you that fiverr is run by an AI, they don't care about your opinions. Just see how much they changed on the new system since all this started, completly nothing really. They even got mad at us, and they removed the Client Satisfaction information from the visible area and now is invisible, but it still there, so literally they will not change anything and if you complain they will go more and more bad against you.

Is simple, they wanted to lower the scores of everyone because they get more money from new freelancers than from old timers, the reason is simple, old timers take their money away, new freelancers are normally cheated to spend their money in promotion, in the fiverr pro and in the fiverr bussiness  etc... so one new freelancer gives more money than one old freelancer that takes their money back when they are able.

So don't expect anything, that will be better, if they do anything ti will be nice because we didnt expect anything anyway...

[joakimpe]

2 minutes ago, kingpirux said:

there is none. Im sorry to tell you that fiverr is run by an AI, they don't care about your opinions. Just see how much they changed on the new system since all this started, completly nothing really. They even got mad at us, and they removed the Client Satisfaction information from the visible area and now is invisible, but it still there, so literally they will not change anything and if you complain they will go more and more bad against you.

Is simple, they wanted to lower the scores of everyone because they get more money from new freelancers than from old timers, the reason is simple, old timers take their money away, new freelancers are normally cheated to spend their money in promotion, in the fiverr pro and in the fiverr bussiness  etc... so one new freelancer gives more money than one old freelancer that takes their money back when they are able.

So don't expect anything, that will be better, if they do anything ti will be nice because we didnt expect anything anyway...

It's true, and it makes sense as they are a big company that is focused on profit, as all companies. But I am not sure if I agree that new sellers spend more than old timers. For example I spend a crazy amount on ads every month, but it's because I have been in the game a long time and I know I get my ad money back around 5x every month. Beginners would normally not be able to have scaled to this level in the beginning.

Also, Fiverr is very focused on getting a good service for the buyers on the platform so they keep coming back. I would think that old timers are more efficient at delivering a good quality result than beginners. The only thing I think beginners can provide is a lower price since they just want some reviews to begin with. But I am curious to what you think about this

[kingpirux]

if that would be at any close of reality,..... then you shouldnt need to pay for ads... sorry man... you are just giving them more reasons to lower everybodys scores to force everyone to pay for ads more

[kingpirux]

just think about it... you are literally paying for promoting your own stuff, plus you are paying 20% of your income, plus i dont know what else are you paying... if you are big, the 20% should be more than enough to cover more than ads... but it doesnt and now is worse...

[smashradio]

On 3/1/2024 at 2:59 AM, joakimpe said:

If you're like me, you like to be up to date on the new features on Fiverr, then you have probably read through all the new features of the Success Score system. And maybe you are a little confused as well if you start poking into the details?

I've been keeping tabs on you (duh, we're competitors) and as someone who's been in the game for a decade, it's cool to see a fellow Norwegian climbing the ranks so quickly. I can't help but think you might have picked up a few tricks from me, and if that's the case, I take it as a high compliment. If not, you're just a cool dude. 😄

You're spot on about several issues.

I've had no problems with the new system personally, but I know many highly skilled sellers who've been demoted because AI has taken over.

Fiverr's obsession with AI seems more about wooing investors than improving our experience. We're the ones who end up dealing with the mess. And the way AI determines rankings is even worse than you'd think.

Yes, it considers factors like revisions, time extensions, refunds, feedback, support interactions, and keyword usage. Inside sources claim the process is "intuitive."

But considering these are the same folks who gave us Neo, their definition of "intuitive" is, at best, dubious.

The reality is, AI can glitch. AI makes errors. But no one at Fiverr seems to care because they're convinced AI can do no wrong.

The recent nonsense spouted by staff, the regurgitated GPT content, and webinars urging writers to pass off AI-generated work as their own original creations are all evidence of their love affair with AI. 

I strongly believe buyer feedback should be the main criterion here, and it still is – to some extent. But from what I hear, this is just the tip of the iceberg. 

 

On 3/1/2024 at 2:59 AM, joakimpe said:

 

How does the success score system actually make a score for you?
(yes, revisions, extentions, partial refunds or if you contact support, but we would like more details. Technical details.)

 

All the metrics mentioned earlier, along with additional factors such as your disputes, revision requests, both public and private reviews from the past few years, your interactions with buyers, and a variety of new metrics from reviews that include AI interpretations. That last bit is what'll get you. 

On 3/1/2024 at 2:59 AM, joakimpe said:

 

And how does the AI really separate good disputes from bad disputes?

This is the information I have managed to gather, please share more information you know in this thread (or if you have questions)

 

By guessing. Just like it does when writing the next word. 

 

[ch6k0r]

39 minutes ago, smashradio said:

All the metrics mentioned earlier, along with additional factors such as your disputes, revision requests, both public and private reviews from the past few years, your interactions with buyers, and a variety of new metrics from reviews that include AI interpretations. That last bit is what'll get you. 

By guessing. Just like it does when writing the next word. 

 

Hello, I'm curious if there's any official info that the success score takes few years into consideration?
If that's the case, it will put us old sellers at a very huge disadvantage as I will be so difficult to recover from all those years that you thought you were doing good based on the old metrics, keeping them at 100%.
A new seller on the other hand can easily fix their score since they don't have 700+ orders for example

[tr_titul]

I don't know.🙃

[smashradio]

19 hours ago, ch6k0r said:

Hello, I'm curious if there's any official info that the success score takes few years into consideration?
If that's the case, it will put us old sellers at a very huge disadvantage as I will be so difficult to recover from all those years that you thought you were doing good based on the old metrics, keeping them at 100%.
A new seller on the other hand can easily fix their score since they don't have 700+ orders for example

Official? Not that I'm aware of. They use broad terms like "performance over time" and "history of your gigs."

Most sellers who previously performed well tend to continue doing well under the new system.

One reason why some well-established sellers are more severely affected could be that they relied solely on public feedback and statistics to measure their own performance, rather than proactively maintaining excellent behind-the-scenes metrics.

Others and I have shared guides and discussions on the buyer satisfaction rate for years – a metric Fiverr long denied even existed.

Those private reviews could really impact you, and you wouldn't even know how or why.

The new system aims to address this by "increasing transparency", but Fiverr's version of transparency hasn't been very popular because it's anything but transparent and consists of vague, boilerplate GPT drivel. 

It just gives you a vague sense of a few key metrics, but that’s about it.

What's really going on behind the scenes hasn't changed much, so sellers who were unknowingly struggling with the BSR while public stats looked good, will now feel the impact of this much more since more metrics are considered.

We've always had a "success score" of sorts. Initially, it was just public reviews, then we got the private ones, and we knew Fiverr was doing more behind the scenes – like measuring why and how revisions got handled, even flagging multiple accounts as "low quality" based on buyer input when they asked for revisions.

Even so, we  didn't know exactly what went into it. It's just more AI-driven than before, that's all.

I'm not exactly thrilled at the idea of using AI to "understand" a customer journey, especially when that AI can steamroll over you for one tiny mistake and ruin your career. And because it's AI, you can forget about any meaningful human oversight. Fiverr's AI fetish has spiralled completely out of control. I'm not against AI at all – I think it can be a wonderful tool – but that doesn't mean we should leave people's career, livelihood and journeys on Fiverr dependend on it.

And let's not forget, this gem of a system comes from the same geniuses who gave us with Neo, probably the worst AI chatbot I've had the misfortune to interact with.

[gbrl_c]

On 3/3/2024 at 6:41 AM, kingpirux said:

if that would be at any close of reality,..... then you shouldnt need to pay for ads... sorry man... you are just giving them more reasons to lower everybodys scores to force everyone to pay for ads more

Thing is, the way they're lowering scores doesn't make sense. I take myself as an example. I'm a relatively new seller with 5 reviews for 5 stars, no revision needed until today, all deliveries 1-2 days before estimated delivery time, perfect response time, gig chat communication without any rough words/keywords with my clients. A couple days ago I finally hit Level 1 by achieving Success Score of 5. Today I woke up and my Success Score already dropped to 4 and they say I have until today (what??) to get it back to 5 or I will get demoted back to New Seller.

Thing is, after hitting Level 1 I got no orders at all, so why exactly are they decreasing my Success Score? It doesn't make any sense.

In a few days I can't even pay to promote my gigs anymore, just because they want to demote me for some shady reason only they know.

Edited April 21 by gbrl_c

[gbrl_c]

On 4/19/2024 at 7:58 PM, ch6k0r said:

Hello, I'm curious if there's any official info that the success score takes few years into consideration?
If that's the case, it will put us old sellers at a very huge disadvantage as I will be so difficult to recover from all those years that you thought you were doing good based on the old metrics, keeping them at 100%.
A new seller on the other hand can easily fix their score since they don't have 700+ orders for example

New sellers are struggling as well. Perfect rated new seller here and suddenly got demoted from score 5 to 4 without any new orders happening. 

[gbrl_c]

23 hours ago, smashradio said:

Official? Not that I'm aware of. They use broad terms like "performance over time" and "history of your gigs."

Most sellers who previously performed well tend to continue doing well under the new system.

One reason why some well-established sellers are more severely affected could be that they relied solely on public feedback and statistics to measure their own performance, rather than proactively maintaining excellent behind-the-scenes metrics.

Others and I have shared guides and discussions on the buyer satisfaction rate for years – a metric Fiverr long denied even existed.

Those private reviews could really impact you, and you wouldn't even know how or why.

The new system aims to address this by "increasing transparency", but Fiverr's version of transparency hasn't been very popular because it's anything but transparent and consists of vague, boilerplate GPT drivel. 

It just gives you a vague sense of a few key metrics, but that’s about it.

What's really going on behind the scenes hasn't changed much, so sellers who were unknowingly struggling with the BSR while public stats looked good, will now feel the impact of this much more since more metrics are considered.

We've always had a "success score" of sorts. Initially, it was just public reviews, then we got the private ones, and we knew Fiverr was doing more behind the scenes – like measuring why and how revisions got handled, even flagging multiple accounts as "low quality" based on buyer input when they asked for revisions.

Even so, we  didn't know exactly what went into it. It's just more AI-driven than before, that's all.

I'm not exactly thrilled at the idea of using AI to "understand" a customer journey, especially when that AI can steamroll over you for one tiny mistake and ruin your career. And because it's AI, you can forget about any meaningful human oversight. Fiverr's AI fetish has spiralled completely out of control. I'm not against AI at all – I think it can be a wonderful tool – but that doesn't mean we should leave people's career, livelihood and journeys on Fiverr dependend on it.

And let's not forget, this gem of a system comes from the same geniuses who gave us with Neo, probably the worst AI chatbot I've had the misfortune to interact with.

Regarding AI you said it all. AI is a positive tool if it's well designed, but it clearly isn't the case here with the new metrics.

I have no experience being a Fiverr veteran so I can't tell about the rest, but as a relatively new seller I can guarantee you by my own experience Fiverr/Success Score doesn't want/allow new sellers to thrive.

[smashradio]

59 minutes ago, gbrl_c said:

Regarding AI you said it all. AI is a positive tool if it's well designed, but it clearly isn't the case here with the new metrics.

I have no experience being a Fiverr veteran so I can't tell about the rest, but as a relatively new seller I can guarantee you by my own experience Fiverr/Success Score doesn't want/allow new sellers to thrive.

New sellers do get a boost in the beginning though, so perhaps that makes up for the time it takes to build a success score. 

[joakimpe]

On 4/20/2024 at 5:13 AM, smashradio said:

I've been keeping tabs on you (duh, we're competitors) and as someone who's been in the game for a decade, it's cool to see a fellow Norwegian climbing the ranks so quickly. I can't help but think you might have picked up a few tricks from me, and if that's the case, I take it as a high compliment. If not, you're just a cool dude. 😄

I appreciate that! When I started you were the only TRS I could find in our sub-category (I started with only doing VO), and I remember looking to you as a voice actor that I aspire to be (the quality of the audio, the skill etc). "How would SmashRadio read this line?" 😅

I'm frequently doing competitor research, and you have always come up as the one that does things right, but I think there is also limits to how much inspiration you can take from competitors, as you need to build your own style / brand. At least long term.

You will however admit that you did influence me to start posting here on the forum. I saw some of your posts here, thought they were pretty entertaining, and since I have seen you before I wanted to give it a shot as well!

[smashradio]

7 hours ago, joakimpe said:

I appreciate that! When I started you were the only TRS I could find in our sub-category (I started with only doing VO), and I remember looking to you as a voice actor that I aspire to be (the quality of the audio, the skill etc). "How would SmashRadio read this line?" 😅

I'm frequently doing competitor research, and you have always come up as the one that does things right, but I think there is also limits to how much inspiration you can take from competitors, as you need to build your own style / brand. At least long term.

You will however admit that you did influence me to start posting here on the forum. I saw some of your posts here, thought they were pretty entertaining, and since I have seen you before I wanted to give it a shot as well!

Hey, that's cool 😀 But yeah, you can only take so much inspo before you go out on your own. Congrats om making TRS btw! And thanks for your kind words! I'd say you have your own brand by now. You do UGC videos and stuff as well, right? 

[joakimpe]

On 4/24/2024 at 4:29 AM, smashradio said:

Congrats om making TRS btw!

Thanks! Glad to finally have achieved it, took me almost 4 years.  

 

On 4/24/2024 at 4:29 AM, smashradio said:

You do UGC videos and stuff as well, right? 

Correct. UGC, VO and translation 

[minimalseller]

On 3/1/2024 at 8:59 AM, joakimpe said:

If you're like me, you like to be up to date on the new features on Fiverr, then you have probably read through all the new features of the Success Score system. And maybe you are a little confused as well if you start poking into the details?

For you who don't know what it is, here what the new Success Score is (without vague expressions and buzzwords):

It's a whole new parameter that is being used to rank you on Fiverr. This success score gives you a score from 1-10 and, here is the kicker - it uses AI.

The AI scrapes information from your orders, and makes a conclution if you did a good or a bad job on the order. Just so were are clear, buyer feedback is only a portion of the information gathered to make up this score, so if the buyer is overly happy but the AI thinks there was other information that made the order bad, you could risk getting a worse score. 

So what info does the AI use to establish a score? As far as we know it's the following:

• Revisions
• Extentions
• Partial refunds
• Feedback from buyer (public and private)
• If customer support needs to be called regarding the order
• Possibly just words and information used in the chat (I got hinted at this, but it's was not a clear answer. This means if the clients says "bad" keywords, it could affect the score. I really hope this is not the case)

Again, I have gone back and forth with customer support, and they say that the AI would know if the difference between a "good dispute" and a "bad dispute". I personally do not trust an AI to make these judgements, as it can be quite complicated. I personally would like to have the score 100% determined only by buyer feedback (that is what matters, is it not?)

One additional note I would like to add: It was really hard to actually find this information. All the information in the help center is very vague, and they never clearly mention it's run by AI. It's very wishy-washy (vague) and it's hard to really understand the clear cut facts of what is going on.

The general questions I would like answered is:

How does the success score system actually make a score for you?
(yes, revisions, extentions, partial refunds or if you contact support, but we would like more details. Technical details.)

And how does the AI really separate good disputes from bad disputes?

This is the information I have managed to gather, please share more information you know in this thread (or if you have questions)

(Fiverr staff, feel free to correct me if you feel like there is something you feel I said wrong about the new system. I am only going of the Help page and Customer Support)

This is helpful news. But what's the point of me knowing if they don't change.