Feedback/Suggestion: Extend the 24-hr response requirement during the holiday season.

[texvox]

It's that time of year - Christmas, followed by New Year's. As a side note, if you celebrate these holidays I hope you had a Merry Christmas and have an excellent New Year.

During this time of the year buyers are given a significant extension to their review window for deliveries - 9 full days, rather than the typical 3 given at all other times of the year. This is understandable due to the holidays bringing with them travel, family commitments, etc. But strangely, sellers are given no such extension on our response time that I can see. It's still 24-hrs or suffer a metric penalty.

Correct me if I'm wrong of course and please point me in the direction of the extension for my own information. And if I am wrong please disregard the below.

Suggestion: since sellers may also celebrate one or more holidays this time of year and find ourselves similarly tied up with family events at home or abroad just as our buyers are, it seems only fair and balanced for the 24-hr response time requirement to be also be extended for sellers during the same calendar dates buyers enjoy this flexibility. I wouldn't expect a major extension, but perhaps the response time expectations/metric could be relaxed to 48, or potentially 72-hours for sellers during this window. 

Anywhoo, @Kesha if this feedback could be passed along that would be appreciated!

Edited December 26, 2024 by texvox

[donnovan86]

It would make sense, then again, we do have the app. And just by opening the app once a day... you can easily reply to people. You could set your account as unavailable and thus you're not receiving any messages. So there are tools. 

I agree that increasing the response time would help, but there are ways to reply quickly or just set yourself as not available during the holidays. If you set yourself as available, obviously that means you can reply and work so.. 

[uk1000]

The field we get the system affecting us with is the Response Rate % where we have to respond within 24 hours or it affects our stats and level.

Though the average response time will probably be affected a lot of we don't respond within 24 hours probably and even though that won't affect level stats directly (as far as I know) it will look really bad to buyers who might then not message sellers as much. So something could be done about that stat too.

Edited December 26, 2024 by uk1000

[texvox]

1 hour ago, donnovan86 said:

It would make sense, then again, we do have the app. And just by opening the app once a day... you can easily reply to people. You could set your account as unavailable and thus you're not receiving any messages. So there are tools. 

I agree that increasing the response time would help, but there are ways to reply quickly or just set yourself as not available during the holidays. If you set yourself as available, obviously that means you can reply and work so.. 

I appreciate that I always see you trying to find ways to make the existing system work in your posts!

That said, we could do a lot of things. It doesn’t mean it has to be that way though. There are a lot of reasons to want to be able to completely unplug and not have to have your mind constantly jumping back to business. It’s nice to be able to be present with others for more than 24 hours at a time without using the unavailable feature and sending your gig into a visibility nosedive as so many have.

This would be something that Fiverr controls on their end, so I’ll-willed sellers wouldn’t be able to manually abuse it which I know is always a concern when it comes to stats. And realistically, if they were able to implement this for buyers review time it should be a fairly easy thing to repeat in other areas I would think.
 

So hopefully they see this as low hanging fruit that it seems to be. Fiverr could do with showing some good-will toward the seller base with all of the very buyer-biased changes they’ve rolled out over the past year. 

Edited December 27, 2024 by texvox

[donnovan86]

7 hours ago, texvox said:

So hopefully they see this as low hanging fruit that it seems to be. Fiverr could do with showing some good-will toward the seller base with all of the very buyer-biased changes they’ve rolled out over the past year. 

Well they won't stop seeing buyers as more important, because that's where the money comes from. And realistically, Fiverr will never have shortage of talent because people want to work online. So I can see why they always tend to appeal to buyers. 

If they were to make seller-focused changes, maybe they would shorten the waiting time of 14 days... make it half that for regular sellers and half the 7 days for Seller Plus members. Especially if you have a good track record as a seller, why wait so much time? Honestly I think that's more problematic rather than adding a day or two for reply times during the holidays. A responsible seller will always have their app nearby or they just set themselves as unavailable.

The reason why I think they won't implement this: it affects the success score. Increasing the review time for buyers doesn't affect anything. But if they increase the response time, that does have an impact on seller metrics. And it wouldn't reflect the buyer's experience, if you are available as a seller, the buyer expects a reply soon, not in 2-3 days. 🙂 

I am pretty sure they solved the unavailable feature's issue. And honestly, stopping gigs for 2-3 days won't really matter. If you stop for weeks, maybe 🙂 I can say that from my own experience. 

Again, hopefully Fiverr sees and listens, but realistically, I would say to not get your hopes us. I've been an advocate of many changes for close to a decade, the team knows those changes that me and many others have asked for... yet they haven't been implemented. And most likely never will. So the reason why I try to make the existing system work is because that's what we have, and we don't know if/when it will be altered/improved. For me, any improvements are just wishful thinking 🙂 

[naomi_digitals1]

wow thank you

[texvox]

6 hours ago, donnovan86 said:

Well they won't stop seeing buyers as more important, because that's where the money comes from. And realistically, Fiverr will never have shortage of talent because people want to work online. So I can see why they always tend to appeal to buyers. 

If they were to make seller-focused changes, maybe they would shorten the waiting time of 14 days... make it half that for regular sellers and half the 7 days for Seller Plus members. Especially if you have a good track record as a seller, why wait so much time? Honestly I think that's more problematic rather than adding a day or two for reply times during the holidays. A responsible seller will always have their app nearby or they just set themselves as unavailable.

The reason why I think they won't implement this: it affects the success score. Increasing the review time for buyers doesn't affect anything. But if they increase the response time, that does have an impact on seller metrics. And it wouldn't reflect the buyer's experience, if you are available as a seller, the buyer expects a reply soon, not in 2-3 days. 🙂 

I am pretty sure they solved the unavailable feature's issue. And honestly, stopping gigs for 2-3 days won't really matter. If you stop for weeks, maybe 🙂 I can say that from my own experience. 

Again, hopefully Fiverr sees and listens, but realistically, I would say to not get your hopes us. I've been an advocate of many changes for close to a decade, the team knows those changes that me and many others have asked for... yet they haven't been implemented. And most likely never will. So the reason why I try to make the existing system work is because that's what we have, and we don't know if/when it will be altered/improved. For me, any improvements are just wishful thinking 🙂 

I definitely agree - buyers are their target money maker, and I can respect that as a business they are focused there. 

Respectfully, does it have to be an "either or" for a company as large as Fiverr? I do agree, shortening wait time for fund clearance from 14 to 7 days would be a good idea. But that good idea doesn't negate other suggestions. As a one-man-business I'm able to solve multiple complex problems for my business at once, so I assume an outfit like Fiverr with multiple hundreds of millions in annual revenue and many employees could handle several things. I'd love to see both for all sellers. 

I'd like to trust in the unavailable feature, but last time my seller success manager told me "we have the problems ironed out" and encouraged me to use the feature doing so sent my gig into a 6-month impression nose-dive. I literally went from averaging 60k+ monthly impressions and $13k average monthly earnings for 19 months straight to tanking down to $2k earnings the month I used it and under 10k monthly impressions, which continued for the next several months through the end of Q1 2024. I checked with my success manager and was told "your metrics are stellar and you have several excellent private reviews and no detractors." He, a Fiverr employee, looked over all of his background data and ruled out every possibility other than the unavailable feature. So unfortunately I've lost my respect for it. I'd love to be able to trust it, but the fact that it appears to have cost me tens of thousands of dollars in business here makes that hard. 

Here's hoping Fiverr at least takes a look at this! Or some suggestion somewhere. It is sad to feel like offering Fiverr any feedback as a successful seller is like shouting into the void. So whether it's my suggestion or someone else's, fingers crossed. 

[donnovan86]

9 minutes ago, texvox said:

I'd love to be able to trust it, but the fact that it appears to have cost me tens of thousands of dollars in business here makes that hard. 

Well, there can be other factors for low impressions. AI has damaged the service market and it's clear there is a low demand for many services, because people started using AI to generate that on their own. Obviously it's a lower qualtiy, but people don't care. 

10 minutes ago, texvox said:

It is sad to feel like offering Fiverr any feedback as a successful seller is like shouting into the void.

At this point, if I am asked for feedback, I will gladly share it. But creating posts to highlight ideas and suggestions, I shared many of them over the past 10 years and none were implemented so.. I've been in the void for a decade, I just know what matters are buyers and what investors say. They are the ones coming up with ideas and stuff to integrate, along with most likely some of the higher ups in the company. As a seller... we are just talent that makes money. We have no power when it comes to improving the site. And we are not united, either. I agree, your idea should be implemented, same with reducing the waiting time for withdrawals in half. 

But will that ever happen? Unless people unite and everyone stops working and thus there's no revenue, no major suggestion or change that favors buyers will ever be implemented. Will we ever unite as sellers? No, because some people do this part time and want the extra income. Others have this as their full time revenue generator, who is stupid to stop their only source of income.

I am not against any new ideas, if anything I support them. I've just been here long enough to know that Fiverr won't make the changes we want, they have investors and others to please. Which is fine, but that also means you have to find multiple income sources and revenue generators... Otherwise, relying on Fiverr alone is very risky. At least that's how I feel about it.