Response time and rate explained for freelancers

Responsiveness is a key factor in your success on the Fiverr platform. Tracking your response rate and time helps you manage your inbox effectively, stand out to potential clients, and understand your performance.

Understanding response time and response rate

• This is the percentage of first responses to new messages that a freelancer sends within 24 hours. It is visible only to freelancers and factors only the last 90 days of activity.
  
  The response rate indicator tracks only your first response to a new request. Later messages in a conversation do not factor into the overall response rate.
• This is the average amount of time in hours that it takes for a freelancer to respond to a new message in their inbox. It is visible to clients.
  
  Working with clients in other time zones can affect your response time, but not your response rate, because you have a full 24 hours to respond.

Improving responsiveness

• Continually check your messages, especially during an active order. Responding quickly and politely, even to decline work, builds rapport and can lead to future business.
• Download the Android or iOS app to receive immediate notifications and respond anywhere.
• Efficiently reply to common messages using pre-written templates. Use Quick Responses to politely decline a project or to turn down requests for free samples.
  
  Your Auto Reply message only informs the client that you're looking into their message, but it won't mark the message as "answered" if you don't manually respond within 24 hours. Your response time will be affected by the time you take to manually respond to the client.
• You do not need to reply to spam. Click Report to mark the message as spam within 24 hours so it does not affect your response rate.
  
  Note that if you unmark a message as spam, you must respond to the client within 24 hours.
• Change or extend the delivery time on your Gigs if you feel overwhelmed with inbox requests.

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  If you need to take a break, use Fiverr's availability settings to pause your Gigs and protect your response rate.

  1. Go to your Dashboard and find the availability panel on the top of your dashboard.
  2. Set your status to Unavailable and choose a return date.
  3. Leave the "All clients can contact me" toggle off if you do not plan to respond while away.

  When you are set to unavailable:

  • Your Gigs stay visible in search but cannot accept new orders.
  • Your response rate is not affected as long as you keep the contact toggle off.
  • If you switch on the "All clients can contact me" toggle, your response time and response rate will be counted as usual.

   

• You can monitor both metrics from your Analytics dashboard. Check it regularly to catch any drop before it affects your freelancer level. Your response rate updates daily, so consistent effort pays off quickly.

Best Practices

1. Reply to every new message within 24 hours, even if it is just a brief acknowledgment or a polite decline.
2. Use Quick Responses to reduce the time it takes to reply to common questions.
3. Enable push notifications on the mobile app so you can respond on the go.
4. Set your availability to unavailable (with the contact toggle off) when you go on a longer break, rather than ignoring messages.
5. Check your analytics regularly so you can address any dip in your response rate before it impacts your level.

FAQs

• The indicator promotes quicker responses to create a positive client experience. It also helps you understand how responsiveness can grow your business and allows you to track your improvement over time.
• No, automatic responses are not considered a response to the client's message. Your auto-reply message only informs the client that you are looking into their request. You must manually respond within 24 hours.
• Spam and solicitations do not count against your response rate. You must report the message as spam within 24 hours.
• The response rate tracks the percentage of first responses sent within 24 hours over the last 90 days. For example, if you receive 10 new requests in the last 90 days and reply to nine of them within 24 hours, your response rate is 90%.