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!

suranga14 · ‎11-06-2020

wow, amazing

Thanks

quality_boston · ‎11-06-2020

clients who create multiple contracts have NO clue they need to leave feedback every time. it's frustrating for them and they don't understand why they need to do it.

I work with clients who genuinly are clueless about JSS and they should be given more infromation about it because they just don't understand how critical it is for people who do the work.

34397649 · ‎11-06-2020

Fantastic change team, this was really affecting me as a freelancer. Thanks for listening to the community!

sanjana_mun · ‎11-06-2020

I'm glad that upwork always tries to listen to both of the groups (buyer + seller) what can be a better news than that???? Thanks upwork truly overwhelmed 🥰 This is wholesome

sazzadhsn · ‎11-06-2020

Thank you so much!

deepak_2015 · ‎11-06-2020

Wow, That's a great feature and It's helped a lot of freelancers to boost their career. Because It's help in this case when the client didn't respond and freelancer closed the contract ourself.

Waiting 🙂

doaa-fatima · ‎11-06-2020

Hi I am not agree with this change as if we complete the project succesfully and client didn't leave feedback then in this cause why up work doing this kind of not honest things ???????

haqayyube · ‎11-06-2020

Thanks Jason for the good news, mostly lot of clients become irresponsive after getting the job done and I had to end contract after a long period of dormancy. I have ever faced this issue lowering my top rating score from 100 to 90. But I hope will not encounter this issue again.

My profile is the wittness of these kind of contracts.

https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/~01f43265fcb346246c

Regards.

29350bfa · ‎11-06-2020

Haider R wrote:
Considering your very little experience on Upwork and less than $500 lifetime earnings, this doesn't make sense.

I'll happily use your logic, Haider, so I had 139 positive reviews on Fiverr before it got disabled, 51 of which were mine (I'm a fan of taking shortcuts, so my cousin was kind enough to lend me his abandoned Fiverr account, so that I wouldn't have to worry about dealing with people who associate skills with ratings; people like yourself, apparently, no offense), plus, 10 on Upwork, and 6 on Freelancer. That makes 67. These are the ones that are documented, so to speak, but you know, some of us have a clientele outside of known platforms, since relying on such platforms is ridiculous, and you've just proven so by claiming that I have "very little experience on Upwork and less than $500 lifetime earnings". I don't like using ad hominems, but either you made yourself look like a fool without realizing it or you're trying to get me to admit some kind of "crime against humanity" just because I got a lot of customers that trust me, and we don't have to go through silly bureaucratic nonsense. There's something called "PayPal". I'm sure you've heard of it. And before you get any ideas, I never suggest that I work outside of any platform even though the idea is appealing, considering that I got 14 years of experience under my belt, so leaving myself at the mercy of platforms that are crawling with incompetent freelancers who only care about money — you know the ones I'm talking about 😉— does not seem fair at all, but I have to stick to the rules, because I don't have a choice — only when I'm misunderstood that I stop caring about policies. However, here's a live example, so that maybe you'll understand. An Israeli customer hired me on Fiverr for the first time, and he fell in love with my services, and he even called me, "A true prince of a man", and when he wanted to hire me again, he couldn't find me on Fiverr, since it got disabled, so he reached out to me on Telegram. Is that such an evil thing? If your account got disabled, does that automatically mean your services are bad? If that's the case, then every customer that's ever complained to me about an incompetent Afghani, Bangladeshi, Indian, and Pakistani freelancer should've ended their story with, "And then his/her account got disabled."

So, the only thing that doesn't make sense is you being a great hustler on Upwork — which is admirable — yet somehow it didn't occur to you that it's possible to make money outside of platforms without breaking any policies. Did Upwork become Big Brother all of a sudden? I don't think so. 😂 If my neighbor wanted me to fix his laptop, should Upwork be involved? Jeez, man. No wonder I rarely read replies. There's a fine line between a troll, and a reasonable person, apparently. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ritukohli09 · ‎11-06-2020

Hi, If freelancer will initiate to end the contract then What kind of effect it can be created on my JSS. Please let me know.

Thanks