Next Week - New Reviews Features!
Hi All -
I am excited to make this announcement! Did you know that the 7 Cups review feature has not changed in over 4 years? That is a long time! Today, I am excited to announce that we are going to tweak the review tool functionality! The goal is to make it easier for members to leave more helpful reviews for listeners and to ensure the reviews generated are fairly delivered.
Here are some of the changes we are thinking of giving a try -
Timing of reviews:
For every L-M connection, the member can only leave one review per 48-hour time frame. The goal here is to reduce duplicate reviews and ensure that members know that each review matters. If you are going to leave your listener a review, you need to make it count.
If something goes wrong in the chat after a review is submitted, the member can always use the block feature or wait 48 hours to leave another review.
Star ratings & text reviews:
We were able to look at star rating data on the whole and determine that star ratings are misused by members. At present they are not the best tool for determining the quality of the listener. We need to tighten them up to better reflect each listener's skills. We did some research on how to best collect star ratings and what other sites do. And we thought about how to incorporate that information into 7 Cups star reviews.
We will remove the 4-star rating categories (helpfulness, response time, empathy & professionalism). Instead, it will be one-star rating measure out of 5. Members will choose one of the above:
1 Star - This was not a helpful chat
2 Stars - Could have gone better
3 Stars - It went okay.
4 Stars - I liked it, helpful chat
5 Stars - Loved it! Awesome chat!
The Review box will have these directions:
Help others select a good listener by leaving a review. If you liked the chat, say what was good about it.
If you thought the listener could improve, please mention your feedback here.
Depending on which star they choose, a different pop-up text will appear in the text box.
If rating <=3 stars, show this modal on submission-
We are sorry your experience was not great. Click here to connect with a verified listener.
If rating >= 4 stars, show this tip-
Thanks for your feedback! We are glad you are getting the help you are looking for!
--
Please share any feedback on the ideas mentioned above. As always we want to try something new and see the impact on the site and in the community. Your feedback and ideas are welcome!
@Laura maybe a simpler rating process will be more helpful and accurate ratings.
Why can they rate every 48 hours? Do they need to have a new chat to rate again? or can they just keep rating the old chat? If they keep rating the old chat then they may just keep giving bad or fabulous ratings. That makes ratings not real.
What about if they rate 3 or less the member has to give at least a certain length explanation of what went wrong?
@soulsings I think the rating timings are still as they were in the past - we can still rate every time we connect with someone new with the minimum # of messages.
@Laura is this correct? Reviews have the 48 hour time limit, ratings do not?
@AffyAvo reviews and ratings will come together now, in the same modal. Much like how amazon and yelp do them. so there is no chance of trolled ratings.
@Laura
This is super! I like the idea of a 48 wait time for reviews. Not only can this give fair advantages, but also help lead to more timely process reviews and less stress with the number of reviews that are in need of being processed. With the new star rating feature, I think that can only be fair as well in learning where our listener quality stands and how the member can rate the listener in a straightforward way.
@Laura
Great idea but I'm wondering what will happen to the current star ratings on our profiles and how we will change this to make it the same on the new rating as I worry perhaps it wont be the equivalent if there is a completely new system.
@bear228 you will start at your present overall rating, there will be no reset there :).
@bear228 I wondered the same. Also I wondered if the different categories helped improve the quality of ratings, in relation to what is asked from listeners.
Help others select a good listener by leaving a review. If you liked the chat, say what was good about it.
If you thought the listener could improve, please mention your feedback here.
So is this feedback now separate from a review? Or can I only write something about a listener every 48 hours if it's not a block?
It always seemed to me like we were being encouraged to leave more reviews, so I'm confused as to why suddenly it's only 1 every 48 hours. Some people will only listen to 1 listener in that time, others might connect with many.
@AffyAvo It seems like one review per listener in 48 hours so that there aren't multiple reviews for a listener being piled up within those 48 hours. I think that connecting with more than one listener would still allow for a review per listener. 
@InternalAcceptance yes it is a pair wise idea. so you can review more than one listener in 48hrs.
@InternalAcceptance I reread the wording. It's still not clear but I can see how it can be interpreted that way too. @Laura can you clarify all of this better? Is it a rating every 48 hours per listener?
Also, please clear up the rating/review/feedback and the timing.
I think that having the sections for Helpfulness, Professionalism, Empathy, and Response Time is still a good idea, personally, since they all are separate and members may not think to mention them individually.. I do really like the idea of more of a prompt for text reviews and only allowing reviews in a certain amount of time.
I'm also wondering if members are able to rate the same conversation, though, since that does feel as though it could be an unfair advantage? It seems like it's limited to when a Live Chat is ended, which would have to be for separate conversations, though, which seems fair.
@InternalAcceptance totally agree with you in every point!
I like the idea of improving the way reviews work!! This all sounds wonderful!
The more time I have spent here, I wanted to see the elimination of the four categories, and have just a good ol' plain Overall Helpfulness category with up to 5 stars. Helpfulness is what really matters here, the bottom line. Was this individual helped or not. Granted, not everyone can be helped but we all can sure try our darndest to do so. I'm not going to get into the [inherent] pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses of the other three categories.
Also, I would love to see, have longed to see, negative reviews simply sent to us via email, albeit with the author(s) of it not identified/kept anonymous, so we can see for ourselves what went wrong (and also determine its validity or not, and contest it accordingly) in the chat and make the necessary improvements. The [cumulative] pre-printed, vaguely-worded, auto-generated emails sent out when negative reviews are sent in, I feel have always been quite inadequate in helping us to improve Listener skills in 1-on-1 chats.
Rate/Review enable: programmed system feature. Epic Fail!
Additionally, the ability to rate and review (that flashing star indicator coming on) us after a mere three messages are exchanged really needs to be changed back to at least the way it was before, like if I recall correctly, 30 messages are exchanged...or even beyond that. 
@BeautifulBreeze I liked the categories but I totally agree that we should be able to see the bad reviews and it shouldn't be possible to leave a rating that quickly. lovely wishes to you hope you're holding up as best as you can .
@BeautifulBreeze
I enjoy this idea! This is my personal opinion: The only thing i personally think is a obstacle is that by sharing negative reviews, the listener has to actually be able to accept that feedback, and I know that can be hard to do. For example, say I left a review that said they werent empathetic, but they contested (as you indicated in the process stated above). Who is right? Who is valid? Am i right that i felt they werent or are they right that they felt they were? Sometimes people just arent a good fit. Also, say they were able to see that feedback when it came in. They could then narrow down who wrote it based on time frame, which may make members feel reviews are not confidential. It would have to be done not in real time.
Im mostly thinking outloud here, but my point i think is if they did let listeners see the member left constructive feedback and listeners can see it, the listener should be able to accept it (as long as it is reasonable), and not everyone is good at accepting feedback.
@Laura, I feel this change wil be for the best, and wow its a shock that one thank on 7cups that hasnt been changed was the rating. Whom would have thought of that needing to be updated. Know i cant wait to see the new rating in play and see some new reviews i get
Thank you for the heads up
I'm sad to see the five start go on multiple catagories. I liked that fearture.It helped me figure out what was going well make some adjusments to my style as a listener when I was first here. This new rating systems seems to simple to me. I think it is better for members to reflect on the chat and think about diffrerent componets of what went well. I think it stops people from just saying things like bad, when it didn't go the way they wanted. They need to explain what was bad or didn't work.
@SensitiveAndMore absolutely agree yes
@Laura
Woah, an update on the reviews? This is great!!
I see that the rate-the-listener pop up text time is not changed? Like, after a few messages into the chat, there's a pop up for asking to rate the listener. I think that pop up is too soon.
I've seen many cases where the pop up appears in the middle of the chat and then the member would just fill it with no effort because the chat isn't done yet/they haven't gone far into it yet (too soon).
For example:
The member chats with a new listener. The listener gives a not-so-good first impression to the member, that causes the member to rate and review the listener "meh" or just "good" with an 'okay' ratting star following up. But after exchanging more messages, the member is actually happy with the listener.
Also, I never knew we could give more than one review to a listener until now :0, does the other members knows it too?
My ideas/opinion:
- I think that the individual ratings (empathy, professionalism, etc) should stay, but send it anonymously only to the listener (not for public display).
- Link a "How to review" thread to the pop up so new members can review better
- Put a message somewhere in the pop up that the member can review the listener again after 48 hours (Not quite sure about this one, I'm just putting all of my ideas)
@EmikoKokoro I like the ideas, specially leaving the categories for individual feedback
@LeftistFreedomfighter
Awhh thanks :3 