Upwork no longer offers phone support for freelance and agency accounts?

[jenniferhead]

Greetings community,

I am a Top-Rated Plus freelancer on Upwork and recently started an Agency. I posted a question regarding agencies to the Agency forum, but did not reveive a reply. I called Upwork today to get some clarity, and it appears that Upwork no longer offers phone support for freelance and Agency accounts. Phone support is only available for client accounts. This is disoncerting. I understand that Upwork has likely been flooded with calls since the recent fee and algorithm changes, but it seems like this is a step in the wrong directions, especially since Agencies are paid accounts.

Are there any people here with Agency experience that might be able to answer a few questions? The Agency forum was not fruitful. I did submit a support ticket, which may take up to 72 to hours to receive a response. 

Thanks in advance!

Jenn 

[spectralua]

72? You are fast! It will take weeks realy. 😁

[jenniferhead]

No reply yet. That's just what the automated response said. We shall see how long it really takes. 

[spectralua]

Times with 48hr answer gone. I got responces within 2 weeks average.

Here you will receive answer faster. You can specify your questions in topic to speed up this.

[jenniferhead]

I got a response today! I'm shocked. It is also actually helpful and might answer my question about collaboration. Apparently, I can assign tasks to freelancers in my agency. I will see how this tranlates into practice in a few hours. Perhaps Upwork is improving their online support to make up for the fact that there is no longer phone support? 

[ArjayM]

Hi Jennifer, 

We certainly understand your concern, and we genuinely appreciate your feedback about the process of working for an agency. Please remember that every agency is a unique business, and there are many things that Upwork enables both you and your agency to do.

Agencies and their members can decide how to best proceed with agency contracts.  All agency members can submit proposals, and each proposal draws from the agency’s collective balance of Connects. However, exclusive agency members work on Upwork only as part of the agency. This is the most common type of agency relationship. Your profile and proposals are branded with the agency to clarify the agency’s role in the working relationship with clients. We pay out all contract payments to the agency.

On the other hand, non-exclusive Agency members can work on Upwork independently or as part of an agency. When the contract is with the freelancer as an agency member, we pay out contract payments to the agency. However, we pay the freelancer directly for contracts independent of the agency. You can submit proposals as a freelancer or agency member when you are a non-exclusive agency member.

To update your exclusivity, log into your Upwork Agency account and look under Settings > Members and Permissions. You may also check this help article for more details about working for an agency. We'll continue sharing your feedback, suggestions, and opinions with the appropriate team, and we'll surely keep the forum posted whenever we have updates. Thank you!

[jenniferhead]

Yes, I understand all that. That is the basic agency knowledge available in articles about agencies. Was I am interested in is intra-agency collaboration on a single project. Is this possible? I was trying to sort this out so that an agency member and I could collaborate on a single job, but it appears that the contract is meant only for me. Does the client have to invite both of us to the job? How does that affect the weekly limit? Collaboration is common in my field. 

[PradeepH · Accepted solution]

Hi Jennifer,

Thank you for your message. If you are referring to working with your agency members on an hourly contract, this is possible. You can collaborate with your agency members on an hourly contract, but you need to follow some steps. Your client has to create individual contracts for each agency member and track their time separately on their own contracts. You have to communicate clearly with your client about the work distribution and weekly limits for each agency member to prevent any misunderstanding.

For Fixed Price contracts, your client only needs to create one contract with the agency account. You can delegate work to your agency members as long as your client knows about it and submit work on the same contract. Hope this answered your questions.

- Pradeep

[jenniferhead]

Yes, this is the information that I am looking for. Thank you! I prefer not to work on fixed-price contracts, as there is a lot of mission creep in my field. Is Upwork considering a framework in which agencies can dsitribute work to agency members for hourly contracts (as is possible for fixed-price contracts)? It seems that it would be much more simple for clients and angencies alike to only have one active contract with the desired weekly maximum for hourly contracts.