“Common Tips to Minimizing Cancellations & Poor Reviews”

Fiverr Tips & Tricks (From Top Rated Sellers)

 

Common Tips to Minimizing Cancellations and Poor Reviews

Cancellations and negative feedback hurt in more ways than one. Not only can they affect your seller rating, hurting your potential for new sales in the process, but they can also affect your psyche. When someone cancels an order or leaves negative feedback, it can give you a feeling of confusion and frustration. This may lead to impulsive actions that can make matters worse. For example, you may decide to message the buyer and demand a new review, or worse, report them to customer service out of spite. Instead of taking a look at why you received the cancellation or bad review in the first place, actions such as these only compound the problem. But what if you never had to experience any of this? What if you could minimize your cancellations and poor reviews, if not eliminate them completely?

Let’s be clear. Cancellations and bad reviews happen and it is not always the buyer’s fault. Life happens, projects change, budgets get adjusted, and acts of nature occur. All of these can lead to you or the buyer cancelling. They can also lead to you not delivering what you know you can or not delivering at all, which is an automatic negative review. With that in mind, let’s focus on five actions you can take to minimize cancellations, and poor reviews:

 

 

The Common Thread

Maybe you’ve read the Fiverr forum or browsed the Fiverr blog. If you have, then you’ve probably heard some of the same advice repeated again and again, which is why I have clumped it under one subheading. It is important to constantly remind ourselves of the basics that make up a great Gig, because they work and they help prevent potential cancellations or negative reviews.

– Have a clear title that says what you do (e.g Write 500 words of SEO content)

– Be clear and concise in your Gig description and packages, leaving no doubt related to what you offer and for what price.

– Make your deadlines realistic so that you avoid delivering late, which triggers a message to the buyer to cancel if they do not hear from you in twenty-four hours.

– Have a video or Gig image that clearly states what you offer.

– Research what successful sellers are doing to learn how to best structure your Gig.

– Ensure your grammar is impeccable so as not to turn off potential buyers.

– Seek mentorship from an experienced buyer or through the forums.

 

You may notice a common thread in these suggestions: be clear! This cannot be stated enough. The clearer you are in these areas of your Gig, the less likely a buyer is to order something you do not offer out of confusion. And if they do, you can easily point them back to your clearly written Gig description and packages.

 

 

Be Honest with Yourself

You can be tempted on Fiverr to create a Gig in an area of focus that you see sellers with hundreds if not thousands of sales in. In fact, with online software, a lot of services are easier than ever to provide. Be honest with yourself about your intentions and what you are truly skilled at. Choosing to get in the game because it looks lucrative is a slippery slope. You may wind up in situations where you accept something you cannot do, which means a cancellation and poor review from an unhappy buyer.

In order to be successful on this platform and prevent that two or three star review, create Gigs in areas you are well versed in. There are so many opportunities to be creative on Fiverr. Even a skill you think people may not value may wind up being your best Gig. Honesty is the best policy.

 

 

Keep It Simple

Don’t take this as a way of saying you should dumb your Gig down. That would be disrespectful to the intelligence of your buyer. What I mean here is that when you communicate about the project at hand, keep things simple so that you avoid confusion. For example, you may be writing a blog post for a client with SEO optimization, link injection, competitor research, and attention to detail. This all sounds great, but what does it really mean? To you it may make perfect sense; however, the buyer may interpret the terms very differently. A buyer may take SEO optimization to mean that you do keyword research, which you may not offer. Instead, keep your wording simple and explanatory. Instead of saying SEO optimization, you may say that you use formatting like bullet points and headings to help the content potentially show up in search results. This is simple and easy to understand. Likewise, you may choose to say that you place links in the content to point to resources that back up your research as opposed to link injection. By stating what you offer in the simplest terms, you avoid any confusion that can lead to a buyer wondering if they purchased what they thought they were supposed to get. This helps prevent a cancellation or that three-star review, which leads us to our next point.

 

 

Never Assume

You may have heard the saying that when you assume, you make an a** out of you and me. There is some truth to this saying. Never assume the client understands what you consider a given. Never assume the client is okay with you taking creative liberties or going off script. Never assume the client will not mind if you deliver fifty words less than promised. If you are not sure the client will approve, simply ask them. It is better to clarify up front than to assume and get it wrong.

 

 

Just Say No

You are a web designer, but why not accept a job asking you to do a party flyer. After all, you are creative and great at designing, even though you know nothing about the industry that the flyer is for. But you think it will bring in a quick $15 if you do it. No harm, no foul, right? Wrong! It would be unwise to accept this project as it is out of your realm of knowledge. Avoid landing an unhappy buyer upon delivery by saying no to those quick projects you think you can probably pull off because your skills are transferable.

This also goes for applying to buyer requests. Never apply to a buyer request to chase money. Applying to buyer requests that are not in your category leads you down the same trodden path.

With the above tips, you can avoid those feelings of frustration or confusion if you receive a request for cancellation or poor review, and work to continue to build communication within the incredible community that Fiverr has.