Private Review System Feedback: Remove "Perfect" as a rating option.

[texvox]

DISCLAIMER TO FIVERR REPS: this is not an issue I am currently being negatively impacted by and is not being shared as an emotional response to something that has happened to me. I am sharing because this is an unreasonable situation for any seller, and should be of concern to sellers as a whole.

A peer who is both buyer & seller here on Fiverr shared the below screenshot with me this morning from the private review system after she completed a purchase a few days ago.

Notice in the current iteration of the system that under the question "How would you rate the overall quality of this delivery?" the five rating options are:

1 - Very Poor

2 - Below Average

3 - Average

4 - Above Average

5 - Perfect

I am uncertain whether it has always been this way, or whether this is a "test rollout" for the private systems, but perfection is an unreasonable goal and should not be a term that is anywhere near a review system. It also does not mirror the public review system which does not use this rating term, which in itself is going to naturally drive different outcomes between public and private reviews. Please reconsider this decision.

Fiverr is imperfect. Fiverr's own employees are imperfect. Perfection is a lofty philosophical concept and not a day-to-day reality for the vast majority of humans on this planet. That this term made it into the review system feels very poorly conceived. That, or it's part of a goal to artificially drive down review ratings, which works against Fiverr's own claims of "increased authenticity."

SOLUTION: Please consider changing this term to something like "Excellent" or another super-enthusiastic term, but not perfection. You can't hold yourself to perfection, and should not hold your sellers to that expectation either. 

@Kesha @Lyndsey_Fiverr @ran_success can this please be forwarded to whatever development team is responsible for this system, and can additional context be shared around why "Perfect" is currently the 5-star rating option privately when it is not so publicly?

Edited March 8 by texvox

[dereck_s]

So I guess the real question is .... Is a 4/5 star review viewed as bad to Fiverr? I'd assume it does as good luck getting any orders as a 4 star seller on the platform. The terminology they use is totally unrealistic. When's the last time you truly got a service anywhere (and I mean heckin anywhere) that was "Perfect, cheap, and fast"? My favorite restaurant is 4.1 on google, Fiverr's own app is 4.6, etc.

5 stars should totally be what you aim for but anything above a 4star review is a really good review in my eyes and not something you should be punished for.

[dereck_s]

There is something called the "Good, Fast, Cheap Law". It's considered a law / rule in regards to pretty much all aspects of business including digital goods like something you'd get on Fiverr which make me wonder if any of them have actually ever studied business. (credit to Adam Cubbage for the image / quote).

The Law of Good, Fast, and Cheap.

Basically, this law states that you can have any two components at the expense of the third.

Law #1: You can have it Good and Fast, but it won't be Cheap.

Law #2: You can have it Good and Cheap, but it won't be Fast.

Law #3: You can have it Cheap and Fast, but it won't be Good.

 

Edited March 8 by dereck_s

[texvox]

2 minutes ago, dereck_s said:

There is something called the "Good, Fast, Cheap Law". It's considered a law / rule in regards to pretty much all aspects of business including digital goods like something you'd get on Fiverr which make me wonder if any of them have actually ever studied business. (credit to Adam Cubbage for the image / quote).

The Law of Good, Fast, and Cheap.

Basically, this law states that you can have any two components at the expense of the third.

Law #1: You can have it Good and Fast, but it won't be Cheap.

Law #2: You can have it Good and Cheap, but it won't be Fast.

Law #3: You can have it Cheap and Fast, but it won't be Good.

 

I like this presentation as well:

[carineb]

52 minutes ago, texvox said:

Notice in the current iteration of the system that under the question "How would you rate the overall quality of this delivery?" the five rating options are:

1 - Very Poor

2 - Below Average

3 - Average

4 - Above Average

5 - Perfect

We keep circling back to the same issue for the past few weeks...
For a satisfaction survey to be fair, trustworthy, honest, and unbiased, each response should have its exact opposite counterpart.

Here, the exact opposite of "very poor" should be "very good".

At least Fiverr is consistent in how they design their surveys!

It's the same with surveys for public ratings. I've already posted it 10 times, and here comes the 11th! Enjoy 😜

 

[texvox]

1 minute ago, carineb said:

We keep circling back to the same issue for the past few weeks...
For a satisfaction survey to be fair, trustworthy, honest, and unbiased, each response should have its exact opposite counterpart.

Here, the exact opposite of "very poor" should be "very good".

At least Fiverr is consistent in how they design their surveys!

It's the same with surveys for public ratings. I've already posted it 10 times, and here comes the 11th! Enjoy 😜

 

I've seen your posts on this and I agree - it's a whacky system. Given how much destructive power a lackluster private review has over sellers accounts vs. a public review I'd prefer that Fiverr address this issue at the private review level first, but both need to be seriously looked at.

[emmaki]

Fiverr staff reading this post: 

[zerlina84]

Wait so they doubled down and changed Exceptional to Perfect?!

I have no words.

[visualstudios]

3 minutes ago, zerlina84 said:

Wait so they doubled down and changed Exceptional to Perfect?!

I think it was always "Perfect", I remember talking about it with my Success Manager years ago.

[maitasun]

6 minutes ago, zerlina84 said:

Wait so they doubled down and changed Exceptional to Perfect?!

I have no words.

No. The "Exceptional" still exists. It's part of the public review. The "Perfect" is part of the private feedback.

Both are the same [fill in the blank]...

Edited March 8 by maitasun

[texvox]

21 minutes ago, zerlina84 said:

Wait so they doubled down and changed Exceptional to Perfect?!

I have no words.

I don't know if it was a recent change or not since I've only made one Fiverr purchase and it was many years ago. Seems like based on @visualstudios reply above it may have been this way for a long time. Either way, perfection is an unreasonable burden to place on a seller. Not even Fiverr itself can ensure perfection.

Edited March 8 by texvox

[rudyabel]

4 hours ago, texvox said:

DISCLAIMER: this is not an issue I am currently being negatively impacted by and is not being shared as an emotional response to something that has happened to me.

I don't think that matters to those who read this who are already being impacted. By the way things are going, it may even catch up to you too soon enough. 

[texvox]

19 minutes ago, rudyabel said:

I don't think that matters to those who read this who are already being impacted. By the way things are going, it may even catch up to you too soon enough. 

Since I created this thread to grab the attention of Fiverr reps for the reason I am saying that is because this forum has been full of emotional responses to the entire review system recently which Fiverr reps could potentially write off as just "Well, you just don't like how it's impacting you." So I said what I said so that Fiverr could see that people who are not yet impacted still see what an absolutely terrible execution this is. 

Edited March 8 by texvox

[emmaki]

49 minutes ago, texvox said:

full of emotional responses to the entire review system recently which Fiverr reps could potentially write off as just "Well, you just don't like how it's impacting you."

On the growing and learning post, it has been indicated that Fiverr understands that the "tension is high". So they're definitely listening. 

[anniejenkinson]

On 3/8/2024 at 3:49 PM, carineb said:

We keep circling back to the same issue for the past few weeks...
For a satisfaction survey to be fair, trustworthy, honest, and unbiased, each response should have its exact opposite counterpart.

Here, the exact opposite of "very poor" should be "very good".

 

That is correct. The only possible correct response. Ask any qualitative or quantitative research agency senior and you will be given the answer carineb has given, which is that there must be options offering strict polarity. The way Fiverr is designing the satisfaction scores is gravely flawed and as such, has introduced a strong bias before the 'survey' even begins. This means buyers have no chance to give an accurate response even if they wish to. Now, it's all mixed up and a nonsense.

The second vital element of any well-designed survey is that each respondent comprehends the survey in exactly the same way, i.e. that it cannot be misinterpreted, taking into account linguistic nuances, ethnicity, age, social grade. There are so many variants of the new surveys and the levels that everyone is confused and we are far from all understanding things the same way. 

The surveys work against both buyers and sellers. It defeats me how such a huge organisation can get aspects as basic as a five-scale survey so fundamentally wrong. Should Fiverr not have the budget to hire the appropriate advisors from research agencies? Ask Ipsos, MORI, Kantar, Market Probe, Gartner, any of those. Ask even a one-man qualitative or quantitative consultant; you'll get the same answer from all of them.

None would come up with satisfaction surveys offering rating scales like Fiverr's unless they had all been on an all-weekend drinking session and were having a laugh. These satisfaction surveys would make them feel profoundly irritated.

These are the very low-level basics we learn in the first weeks of being trainee qual or quant researchers. If Fiverr is not even getting the low-level basics correct, what the (insert rude word of choice) are they doing to everything else behind the scenes? It's risible.

[rudyabel]

This conversation is too important to let float away. So...TTT.