Hello everybody!
Despite tons of discussions about the poor way ratings are handled for the products, where all the power is in the hands of the buyer, while authors are the real juice for Envato, nothing really changed.
We deal sometimes with very crazy customers leaving poor rating for the usual silly reasons like:
They don’t read manuals and say product is broken
We refuse to do customizations
Pictures are not included
They expect the product to do something that is just in their mind
Nowadays, many services allows the author or service provide to rate the customer as well. This means when a customer sends me 150 support emails for stupid reasons, while usually we have 1 support request every 10 customers, that customer has definitely something wrong, and we can rate him.
The rating of a customer can appear right next to their username, like authors rating.
So that customers that tries to just have work for free or harass authors can be framed in the correct way, and they’ll think twice about their behavior.
@QantumThemes
Wow, that’s a good idea.
I got exactly the 4 types you’ve mentioned above.
They don’t read manuals and say product is broken
–> Rated 1 star becuase install wrong package or don’t know how to use the importer (it is clearly written on doc).
We refuse to do customizations
Just yesterday, I’ve just got 1 star rating with comment “200% good theme but don’t provide customization service”.
3.They expect the product to do something that is just in their mind
The buyer asks for a refund since the theme don’t have what they want and when I ask them what they really want, they won’t say. Actually, they don’t know what the product should do anything.
Another case, I’ve tried to introduce developers in Envato Studio, that buyer rated 1 star and said I’m trying to sell customize services
We really cannot play mouse-cat game with those. Just leave your time with your more respectful buyers.
I am also pissed off indeed, but IMHO, with your suggestion, this won’t help.
As a customer point of view, I won’t take any time to click and see the info of the other buyers to see their creditibilites, they just care (at least) what those buyers said to the product they are going to buy.
When you rated that customer badly, they also had the chance rated you badly. That’s a lose-lose relationship. And if you had this tool, I think it just waste your time with these nonsense things.
What you want to do is letting buyers NOT harass you but what you suggest is to create a feature that you can harass them back.
Doing this will demotivate them to be your repeated buyers & what you said to other buyers will surely give negative impacts to your new buyers.
As Envato’s aspects, as we are all in a very hard situation to convert visitors to buyers, Envato won’t do this to send them off Envato market.
Winning customers will not always be a victory.
About cases % yes, but a very good product with few 5stars rating can be sunk because of a 1 star rating from a very tedious customer. So for example if ratings of products are ponderated (they have a relevance proportional to the good karma of a customer) difficult customers won’t be harassing authors anymore, as their rating will worth less because of poor reputation.
Also the users who watch product ratings will see the “karma” or “authority” of the customer who left the rating, which makes lot of sense to me.
When i buy products on envato i watch ratings of course, but i also spend time reading the comments, as many times i see that bad ratings of products I wanna buy were written by customers who have no clue of what they are doing.
Very interesting argumentation, and I totally get the point.
Unfortunately authors are in a situation where customers have all the power.
In a real shop, the owner have the right to kick out the door the customers who damages the shop. When you own any business, you have the right to defend your work.
Just to say, Uber drivers, as well as many other similar services, can rate the customers. That gave me the idea, as bad behaviors can’t always win.
Since this rating/refund started, the way customers relate to authors changed a lot. I feel there is no respect anymore, and we get 14 year old kids who wants to teach us how to code ajax.
Authors are now puppets in the hands of the buyers, with no chance to redeem.
This system have tons of possible exploitations, just people never thought about those yet.
For example, if I had no talent and time to loose, let’s say I can simply destroy a competitor of useless support requests, bad ratings, and similar, without letting him any chance to fight back.
Isn’t it a loose-loose situation too?
Than also the actual one is a loose-loose: stupid customers leave bad comments and rating, they do not achieve a decent website because they don’t read, the author loose sells because of the ratings and comments, so can’t affort to offer updates and support. Both customer and author loose.
I am a customer, I’ve print screen this comment. This is the mentality I’m dealing with when trying to resolve an issue. I purchased a template but instead of it being wordpress is was joomla. My client wants over 10 wordpress websites and I’ve never used wordpress before, had no idea about Joomla. I purchased $50 24 installation service under the understanding it needs to be the wordpress version. A copy of Gates template was EMAILED to me so I know they are capable of EMAIL templates so the installation began only to learn the seller sent me the Joomla version AGAIN. I’ve purchased this product March 8th and it’s now March 11th- do you not think customer satisfaction is important when expecting good ratings? why is it impossible to exchange versions of a template? do you think a seller should get a good rating for not understanding a mistake was made and needs to be corrected? I’m print screened this comment that you want to rate buyers instead of looking at how you can improve on your services. I’ve also print screened the 24hour installation that displays way past the 24 hour mark and still nothing is installed. Do you think this makes envato look good or bad?
The power of ratings is always in the hands of the seller. If you want great ratings then provide a product and service that makes people motivated to leave excellent ratings. My client has nothing but 5 star ratings in his industry and has the most reviews then anyone in his industry in his local area. I will share tips on how it’s done.
#1 own the problem, if you are waiting for others to improve on themselves to solve your problem you will wait a life time. Never blame the customer, always blame yourself - look at what you are doing wrong not what the costumer is doing wrong. The customer is RESPONDING to the framework you designed for them. You want a different response create a different framework. Clients don’t read manuals GUILTY, I’m one of those crazy clients that don’t read manuals - although I did read the one’s given in this example and found the manual extremely well done. Most share the same experience of reading long winded, uninformed manuals so we tend to avoid them as much as possible - maybe make them more exciting - own the problem. #2 all problems are nothing more then a lack of information. give your client as much information as possible. It takes a bit more time to give an explanation but the rewards are excellent ratings. Be happy to do customization just be firm in the costs involved in doing go. Be happy to sell pictures with the templates, my client really wants the pictures and he knows if he is running a business those images need to be purchased else he risks lawsuits. it’s an opportunity to earn more money and get high ratings when the service is offered rather then turned down. Any idea is a concept that only works in one’s mind, you only find the logic of it’s possibility when you ask about it. My programming experience was involved doing the impossible all the time. Everything I thought was impossible turned out to be very possible in the end, I just didn’t know how when I started. New ideas, great new concept come from silly, strange, impossible things that come out of our minds - use them to design templates others thought would be impossible and charge people the value of creating the impossible. If they want it bad enough they will pay for it.
I’ve sent more emails in attempts to resolve this issue so according to your mind set I’m one of those “crazy buyers”. The volume of complaints you get from a customer is the mirror image of your lack of ability to resolve a problem. If you get customers sending you 150 emails requesting support - that reflects on you not able to resolve a problem when a problem shows up. If all other customers resolve a problem with one request that suggests there never really was a problem, the problem is found with the person having to send in 150 attempts to solve a problem.
So if you are not rating each and every customer 5 stars that’s reflecting your mentality that you don’t value your customers which explains why the problem I’m having isn’t getting resolved. You’d rather have a bad rating then a good rating. A bad rating for one is like a bad rating for you all as you all support a structure that doesn’t value the customer. As a customer, not able to exchange a product, showing zero signs of wanting to resolve a problem in 3 days is leaving a very low rating from my perspective. Not just from the buyer but from the entire website selling this service as this clearly is the standard they support. Seeing on the forum we look like “crazy customers” just because we expect service and not getting any won’t look good on any ratings for this website.
the seller I’m dealing with does awesome work but he is destroying his own business by not offering customer service - there is zero. exchanging Joomla for wordpress is not impossible, it’s not impossible to even say we can’t do the exchange up front, it’s days yet the selling is not even discussing a solution yet. You think he should have positive comments? I wish I knew up front the level of service he offers by looking at the comments. The comments I’ve left won’t improve his sales yet he does awesome work. I have at least 10 websites I need to set up and the client wants me to use wordpress. There is over 11 possible sales this guy could be working on just by providing costumer service and exchange Joomla for word press within 24 hours not over 3 days and still not even offer a solution yet and installer is still waiting to complete the installation. Instead of wanting the possible 11 sales, the results will be extremely negative comments not only on this website but rated on the internet lowering sales for all sellers.
seems you want to control ratings so they are always 5 stars, get ride of the customers you refuse to service and give the illusion you offer service? interesting
Speaking as a power buyer, I have no issue with being able to be rated (over 1K purchases and less than 5 support or refund tickets) but the idea would never work for various reasons to do with:
exploitation
the huge variables in buyer experience, type of question, author team size and many more.
I appreciate that authors ratings can be/are sometimes exploited but that’s a different discussion and I am not sure how rating buyers would help with it - in fact I think it would only serve to make it worse.
Perosnally I think the entire rating system at both ends does not really work.
Ultimately the entire marketplace relies on mutual respect. This is what will help manage behaviour, expectation, empathy etc.
hello charlie and thanks for your opinion. i think you nailed the thing when you talk about respect, but face the question with an opinable paradigm.
We are talking about the simple fact of customers blackmailing authors for having free customizations, features, or because for lack of effort they want authors to do installations or configurations that are not part of the price.
Envato decided to make ratings for products (a good thing for sure when i buy a product as any other market) without asking for authors opinion. Totally in their right, but the way it’s done is the problem. The impossibility to contact a customer who left a bad rating to help him and eventually fix things and turn it into a good rating. This makes no sense at all.
Customers can exploit a system where authors have no possibility to contact them. My question is “why”?
Mutual respect is exaclty what “bad” customers don’t have, and this makes talented authors feel like the people cleaning the shoes of the rich landlords in the 18th century. When there is respect and understanding, rules are not needed.
But how would it make any difference if you had a buyer who was doing the above and had one star, or was doing the above and had five stars? Would you give free customization, features and installations to a five star buyer, but not to a four, three, two or a one star buyer?
How would this ability to rate buyers solve the problem of people asking for customization, features and installations? Surely it would be better to handle each instance on its own merits?
Joomla cannot be converted to WordPress with a magic wand. I don’t know which programming skills you have but the 2 platforms are so different that is unthinkable that the themes are magivally “adapted”.
You wrote that you purchased a Joomla theme and then you wanted a Wordpress theme.
This is a classic case of confused customer that complains because of lack of knowledge.
Everything is possible, but not at the price of a theme.
Hey Space thanks for your contribution I’m talking about a system where each other’s ratings are “ponderated” so the average of a product rating is “customer rating” multiplied for “customer reputation” (and same in the other way, don’t take multiplication as real math calculation, talking about ponderated average calculation as you do instatistics, so a rating from low reputation user, customer or author, has lessa value than a rating from a hi rep one).
In the real world is the same thing, if my grandma who knows nothing about Wordpress tells me a plugin is good or bad, i take it in less consideration than if matt mullenweg says something.
We are in a system where the last of the users have same voice than the most expert of the world.
I’m talking about a system where each other’s ratings are “ponderated” so the average of a product rating is “customer rating” multiplied for “customer reputation” (and same in the other way, don’t take multiplication as real math calculation, talking about ponderated average calculation as you do instatistics, so a rating from low reputation user, customer or author, has lessa value than a rating from a hi rep one).