No feedback contracts no longer impact Job Success Score (JSS)

mitchell-jason · ‎10-21-2020

I am excited to announce a new change to the Job Success Score (JSS). We know that JSS is a hot topic. This post aims to provide transparency into the changes and answer any questions you might have.

On November 8th, 2020, we updated the JSS calculation process to exclude contracts that ended without feedback. Before, if a freelancer or agency had a large number of contracts that ended without feedback, those contracts could have negatively impacted their JSS.

What is JSS?

Your JSS measures and reflects your Upwork clients’ satisfaction with the projects you complete for them. You can view your score on your My Stats page and learn more about JSS here.

What does this mean?

We removed projects where clients didn't leave feedback from consideration in the JSS calculation in November. This means that it will no longer negatively impact your JSS if a client does not leave feedback at the end of a project. Note that, as a result of this change, a small set of professionals no longer had enough outcomes with different clients to earn a JSS. To minimize this impact, we reduced the minimum number of distinct clients required to earn a JSS from 3 to 2.

What’s the problem with including contracts that end without feedback in the JSS calculation?

Picture a contract where a professional and a client work together, and at the end of it, the client does not leave feedback. Before the change, if the professional already had a high percentage of completed contracts without feedback, the professional’s JSS could have been negatively affected.

The original design was based on a study that found clients who had negative experiences would often avoid filling out the feedback form altogether instead of giving negative reviews. More recent analysis suggests this may no longer be true. As a result, we are changing the calculation to reflect today’s reality.

How does this change affect you?

If you had contracts before the change where a client did not leave feedback counting against your JSS, you may notice a boost in your score from this change.
If you do not have sufficient outcomes from at least 2 distinct clients, you may no longer meet the threshold for JSS, and you may see your JSS go away. Getting more jobs can help minimize this impact.

What’s next?

This is just one of several changes we’re planning to implement in the coming months, so stay tuned!

This post itself is in response to your feedback that you want to be informed when changes are made. Thanks to everyone who has offered feedback on JSS communication through our customer surveys and social media, through the Upwork Community, and directly to our team. Be on the lookout for more changes to JSS and other aspects of the Upwork experience in the near future.

We are all looking forward to this next chapter together!

kochubei_valeria · ‎11-06-2020

Hi Shohrab,

Unfortunately, we won't be able to comment on an individual score or how specific contracts affect it. In general, if a freelancer had past contracts where a client did not leave feedback, they may notice a boost in their score from this change.

kochubei_valeria · ‎11-06-2020

Hi Casey,

Keeping contracts with no recent activity open should not affect your score negatively. That said, if you have contracts that are still open but no further work needs to be done, you can consider asking your clients to close them or go ahead and close them yourself. Please, note that when you close a contract, the client is notified and will have 14 days to provide their feedback on the contract. If no feedback is provided on the contract by them, it will not have an impact on your score once this change is implemented.

rafsun_ug · ‎11-06-2020

calado-marco · ‎11-06-2020

I don't agree with stoping milestones. In fact milestones are the way, that i'll at least garantee part of the payment when "sneaky" clients come along. But i definitly agree that fixed price/flat rate contracts should only be approved when the client deposit the first milestone. In my view that would help to keep part of the freelancers profit, it will assure that Upwork will keep their fee, and would also keep way freeloaders looking for free work.

norlin_sunga · ‎11-06-2020

How will this impact Top Rated/Top Rated Plus professionals if say there will be a slight shift in their JSS due to this?

taxstrategies · ‎11-06-2020

Whenever I visit my car dealership for an oil change, they pound on me to give them feedback and furthermore it must be "10 out of 10 or it doesn't help us". I find this experience draining, but I appreciate knowing that the dealership has such a stupid scoring mechanism that an 8 or 9 out of 10 is detrimental.

I am pleased that you are making this change as begging our clients to include feedback is tiresome, feels demeaning and contaminates the relationship. If they want to give feedback let them, but in this day and age we are barraged with opportunities to provide feeback that we pass on.

taxstrategies · ‎11-06-2020

When a client comes back to you multiple projects and only leaves feedback the first time, the client is "voting with their feet" and showing their approval. Repetitive contracts should be viewed favorably.

29350bfa · ‎11-06-2020

Viacheslav K wrote:

Does this mean that not earning anything from the contract or refunding everything will remove the negative impact from JSS?

Oh, man, I hope that's the case, because I refunded a guy $250 for accusing me of **Edited for Community Guidelines** I didn't do even though I've spent 8 hours deobfuscating a JS script for him — it was part my first experience on Upwork. It was his fault for hiring 2 people to do the same thing on the same OpenCart website simultaneously. My JSS is 84% now, and all my customers were super happy; even the first guy left me one hell of a review, but out of rage, I refunded him although he didn't ask for it; he just blocked me without even giving me the benefit of the doubt, and he just didn't like how maturely I handled the situation, so even though I told him that I wasn't trying to be patronizing when I told him he'd feel better when he wakes up in the morning, he woke up all grumpy, and told me he wasn't going to **Edited for Community Guidelines** with me anymore, and blocked me. I didn't even know it was possible to block people on Upwork. #TheMoreYouKnow 😂 I know myself very well, and I never regret having a business model that's more about making friends, and less about talking to customers like a robot, while vanishing when one's needed the most. So again, I hope the refund doesn't affect my JSS once this new change is implemented; it would just feel like getting an A instead of A+ while all your answers were correct, and the teacher's reasoning for that would be, "I just didn't like the way you cross your Ts." 😂 Cheers, bro! 😄

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

sempuss · ‎11-06-2020

It’s a pity but seems like JSS works randomly and it’s behavior in most cases is weird.

calado-marco · ‎11-06-2020

For my understanding a no feedback will not count for the jss statisc score. In one hand it will help does who have most positive feedbacks and, yes, it will also dowgrade does who have a so-so score or even a more negative score. But overall it will also raise the bar for freelancers raise their work quality - and you have to agree that's not a bad thing! Self improvement can only bring you more work!