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!

tahoora-ahmad · ‎11-07-2020

This new method of upwork is great. I am really happy with this because there are some clients who get their work done but dont bother to give feedback because either they are busy or they dont know how to give feedback. So this new method of calculating Jss is super great!
When there is no feedback from a client it reduces the job success score and profile rating due to which the freelancer's profile is of no use , all of his hardwork has gone and as a result he get less or no orders.
Clients dont take seriously how much feedback is important for us and if we ask clients to add feedback, upwork flags our account. So this is a great step upwork has taken for the freelancers. I really appreciate and hope it's a great success!

Thankyou so much.

Regards,
Syeda Tahoora Nadeen

29350bfa · ‎11-07-2020

Oops, didn't know about that. The way I buy, and spend connects is like that episode from Tom and Jerry, where Tom liquidated everything he owned to impress that gold-digging cat — he even signed a slavery contract! 😂 And you're right, man. It's not fair at all, especially if most customers hire on a first-come-first-served basis, and to hell with competence, since sadly, people would rather helplessly complain about a bad freelancer to a good freelancer — like yours truly 😇— than be smart enough to come up with a decent vetting process instead of using generic questions that don't help achieve anything — that stupid irrelevant "AND WHY?" at the end triggers me BIG TIME. 🤣🤣🤣 So like you, man, I'm all about the quality of service, since it's impossible to convince anyone to hire you no matter how perfectly you master any language. You just got to send that cover letter, make sure you don't copy-paste, and hope for the best. If people in the real world needed to see a JSS on my forehead, I'd have a hard time convincing them to hire me, too. However, since I'm a persistent son of an angel, I'm not going to let stats define me just like I didn't let grades do back in school whether I got the highest grade or the lowest. Oh, and by the way, congrats on the +40% boost, man! I got super happy when my ISP boosted my upload speed 5x, too, which made sending large files to customers a lot quicker! 😃

shakhawatw3p · ‎11-07-2020

Hi,
I have been facing this problem. I have few contracts open without activity. I tried to contact with my clients and sent lots of messages. But they are unresponsive. I was afraid to close contracts myself for without feedback that affects my JSS. This is a good descision. Thank you 🙂

One question about this. I have got an email about 8th November JSS changes. Is this for one time? or it will be continued from now? Because I have not close few contracts yet.
Thanks a lot again!

petra_r · ‎11-07-2020

Shakhawat H wrote:
I have got an email about 8th November JSS changes. Is this for one time? or it will be continued from now?

It will start tomorrow and continue until things get changed again.

NikolaS · ‎11-07-2020

Hi Shakhawat,

I would like to confirm to you that this change is retroactive and will continue going forward. Please know that 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.

maritxu110 · ‎11-07-2020

First of all, thank you for the information I really appreciate that Upwork informs us of all changes. To be honest, I think that if this is a rule from the 8th of November I don't see the point of counting all feedbacks, to be honest if some of the employees don't leave feedback (that I wish they did) what can I do? some people are busy to do it or just they can't be bother to do it and because of that I gonna have lower score, it is not enough for Upwork all they money they get from us? 20% taxas, money fro transfer our money to our Paypal account or other acoounts...Also we have to pay money to submit our application to differente jobs...Honestly in the times we are now, a universal economic crisis why is not Upwork helping their clients because at the end we are all clients on that website.

smsali · ‎11-07-2020

True

dario_martinelli · ‎11-07-2020

Ahmed A wrote:
Oops, didn't know about that. The way I buy, and spend connects is like that episode from Tom and Jerry, where Tom liquidated everything he owned to impress that gold-digging cat — he even signed a slavery contract! 😂 And you're right, man. It's not fair at all, especially if most customers hire on a first-come-first-served basis, and to hell with competence, since sadly, people would rather helplessly complain about a bad freelancer to a good freelancer — like yours truly 😇— than be smart enough to come up with a decent vetting process instead of using generic questions that don't help achieve anything — that stupid irrelevant "AND WHY?" at the end triggers me BIG TIME. 🤣🤣🤣 So like you, man, I'm all about the quality of service, since it's impossible to convince anyone to hire you no matter how perfectly you master any language. You just got to send that cover letter, make sure you don't copy-paste, and hope for the best. If people in the real world needed to see a JSS on my forehead, I'd have a hard time convincing them to hire me, too. However, since I'm a persistent son of an angel, I'm not going to let stats define me just like I didn't let grades do back in school whether I got the highest grade or the lowest. Oh, and by the way, congrats on the +40% boost, man! I got super happy when my ISP boosted my upload speed 5x, too, which made sending large files to customers a lot quicker! 😃

I don't worry that much about connects either: if I get one proper contract, that's hundreds of connects paid off.

The point is that my strategy is to get fewer contracts that are more complete projects, thus have a higher value and require more time (the average timeframe is 4 to 6 months), while on the other hand, it's like Upwork is encouraging you to have many smaller, quick contracts, which in my opinion is counterproductive (at least in the product design field) as it means I'm doing just small things and I'm not adding value to my portfolio as well as getting little satisfaction in doing that.

Also, I've noticed that the less a client is paying and the higher the probability some problems will pop up and the client won't be happy, as you're dealing with such a small budget that the smaller setback can make it not worth the effort.

I feel like Upwork is pushing for volume vs. quality.

(Yes, I feel owning Upwork stocks is like getting back some of the fees. Plus, it's a well-run company, so, why not. After their positive Q3 earnings report on Wednesday, the price just exploded the following day!)

svetl-ka · ‎11-07-2020

this is good but the main problem is different
several times we tell the customer that he would send the contract but he ignores the freelancer
and customers do not answer for a long time, then they begin to blame the freelancer
another problem is that I have been using this site for many years but have not received the top rate
but my friend opened one week ago and he didn't do anything at all but he already has a top rate.

p_walker-tulloch · ‎11-07-2020

Some of them use the milestone to collect full work without paying and when you go in dispute Upwork is not just. They seem to more favor these deceptive clients. Even when you invoke the Non Payment Clause. I really think Upwork should put measures to safeguard freelancers. Alot of Clients come on Upwork for low cost work and some of them also come here to steal people's work and not pay and Upwork protects them because they decide whether to give money or not.