"The See-Through CEO"

Hey Jason. You're a good man for going online. I've been wanting to talk to you about Match. I'll get to the point. Basically, it's not very good... at the moment. It could be great. I'll tell you why.

Match has a fundamentally flawed business model, which basically goes “put a profile up for free, which makes Match’s user numbers look big, but don’t let anyone contact anyone unless BOTH parties to the contact pay a monthly fee”.

Man, that sucks eggs. Why not make it so that paying members can make two way contact with everyone on the site? At the moment you’re basically saying that if I pay for access, I only REALLY get access if the people I want to contact ALSO have access.

Instead you have all these (I imagine) frustrated paying members who are blasting out emails to people they hope to meet, but who, for whatever reason, haven’t yet stumped up the cash.

I, for example, had a profile up for 6 months (while I was evaluating your site) and got a number of emails, reporting that I had gotten emails which I will not be able to read, from girls whose identity I will never know, unless I pay up. Maybe the mystery of getting anonymous emails is too much for some people to bear and they finally sign up. Good for Match!

But that’s a sly way of doing business isn’t it? Oooo, yeah, suck people in with an easy profile creation process, and then let OTHER MEMBERS do your advertising for you by having them send messages that can’t be read unless the cashola is duly surrendered.

Now comes my issue with transparency and openness (tying this in to your blog topic). To continue the story of moi, I paid a subscription to Match (using a different account altogether – fresh image, you know…).

The first questions I asked your help centre (first by email, and later, when advised by email that my question was too complex to be answered by email – what the!?) were

1. How do I know which of the profiles on your site is a paying member, so I know I’m not wasting my time writing to a non-payer? (I was told that the site doesn’t support that functionality at the moment, and the only indication I have is a member’s “last active” date. So, I asked…)

2. How do I know what proportion of female members in my area are paying members? At least I’ll know my odds! (Sorry sir, we can’t give out that information at this time).

I got that sickening feeling that shoots through your body when you know you’ve bought a lemon.

In subsequent weeks, I wrote about 5-6 emails. Now, I don’t fish, I hunt. I don’t believe in spamming the lot and seeing what comes back. I’ll take a good hour to write an email after having really thought about why I like this particular girl.

You’d think that if they all actually received my messages, one out of those 5-6 would have written back. What was my response rate? 0%

(Alternate theory 1: I am choosing the wrong girls and they just don’t dig my prose.)

Now I’m supposing that most of these girls aren’t members. Evidence in favour of my theory: they don’t tend to look at my profile after I sent them an email. Why? Because Match doesn’t even tell them it was ME who sent them a message!

(Alternate theory 2: Girls only want beef cakes – must go to the gym more...)

Let me say, I’m not against Match making money from this business. So you should! It’s a great site in many ways, and for your clientele, paying means the quality of members and their profiles is higher. I’ve checked out many a free dating site and haven’t found a good one yet. I’m willing to pay for access to people who are serious and not just having a flutter.

Now, check out the Aussie site www.rsvp.com. It has a far more transparent and open business model. You pay for “stamps” and you use a certain number of stamps to contact another member (ANY member). Then both members can continue a dialogue for a limited time (enough to exchange email addresses and numbers if the sparks fly).

I’ve gotta go to bed now, but Jason, please please please incorporate some openness and transparency as you say you’re going to. I suspect you will make more money with a more open approach, not less, the business will survive longer, you’ll have less frustrated members, and more happy couples.

Like you, I am a massive believer in the power of the internet to connect people. Match isn’t achieving that at the moment, but it could. And it would be so much better.

Zzzhaaarwingggg

Josh

(PS. If you don’t fix it, I will come over there and do it for you. It’s too important man. Oh, but the catch is, you’ll have to pay me. A lot… of money. Hehe.)

Dear jason,

I never normally take (or have) the time to join these type of debates, but having read Joshs' comments and your own, I felt compelled to respond.

I can understand Joshs' frustration in not being able to contact those that had not signed up to the site, but having said that, it is ultimately business and there must be some way in which to encourage people to sign up, if we could all swap email addresses and telephone numbers, there wouldn't be much need for a membership over any period of time.

I was a member of match for a few months and had a fantastic response.... none quite what I was looking for, but had a few good conversations on the way and as always, learned a bit about me on the way. Having said all that, I cancelled my membership when my email address (personal one) was sent in error to a guy who had mailed me, I responded to him through the match email, but unfortunately, for some reason my own email address was tagged onto the email and my trust was broken. Now, I could handle the guy and said I wasn't interested etc, but and here comes the but, I sent through a complaint to customer services as I was, as you can imagine quite angry at this mistake and there was no response. Do you know, I have been a general manager of hotels for years and there is one thing I can't stand and that's bad customer service. Vodafone recently offered me a free years line rental which to stay with them and I turned it down because I get paid well in a job I love, but I can't stand to not have a service I'm promised, I'd rather pay someone to deliver a good service than receive a free but terrible service. Anyways, I'm rambling, the upshot of it was when I didn't get a response from Match, I cancelled my membership, statiing clearly the reasons why and once again, got no response, apart of course from the incessant auto emails to come back, nobody took the time to read my complaints or come back to me.

So, as a Sales/Marketing/Service professional I would say that spending all this money on TV advertising, (that does catch the eye, but is not a good advertisement for match and doesn't truely reflect the benefits/usps of match) is an absolute waste of time, if you lose customers through poor customer service. I'd be teaching you to suck eggs if I was to tell you that this costs you (as it has with my friends who won't sign up because of my experience)

Good luck in your new role, I think it'll be a fantastic journey for you, during which you will learn so much whilst working to be the best that you can be. I wish you well and can understand the passion you feel about the site, it's great.... to keep it great, customer service needs to be improved, security needs to be looked at and a real understanding of who is leaving the site and why is paramount to its success.

Sj