Match making the future of CX suppliers

Finding the right suppliers to help your business reach its full potential can seem like a time consuming, laborious and frustrating process. Who has time to trawl websites for suppliers only to be met with dead ends or unfulfilled promises?

Meet Matchboard, the CX equivalent of a dating site and one of the most awarded companies in the Australian landscape that has the power to make your business journey a whole lot easier. We spoke with managing director Sharon Melamed about Matchboard, how it works and why it’s leading the way in CX supply.

What key services does Matchboard offer and how do these services support and assist Australian businesses in providing top customer experience?

Matchboard is a free-to-use platform which helps businesses find their perfect match suppliers in the customer experience ecosystem. We’re the CX equivalent of a dating site! Over the last 10 years, matching or middleman platforms have flourished but we found a gap for a B2B services marketplace and filled it. Our top five services and solutions are:

• Contact centre outsourcing – onshore and offshore

• Customer experience consulting

• Technology – chatbots, knowledge management, speech analytics, voice AI software

• Training customer service, leadership and sales

• Recruiting from frontline to executive roles

Thanks to the software which powers Matchboard, we can instantly identify which suppliers potentially fit a client’s need, no matter how specialised or unique the requirement.

How does Matchboard work?

The first step is technology driven – our matching algorithm automatically scores suppliers when a buyer request comes in based on matches in the self-populated supplier profiles. Then we manually review the software match(es), which could be anywhere between one and five. We sometimes reach out to the buyers for a chat, as it could be their budget is unrealistic, or they’ve overlooked alternatives. We introduce the buyer to their matches and the supplier then designs a solution and submits a proposal.

How important is procuring the right suppliers?

Every business relies on third party suppliers, whether that’s technology vendors, recruitment and digital marketing agencies, training or outsourcing providers. It’s important to find the right suppliers because the wrong ones can cause irreparable damage – to your brand, your revenues, your customer satisfaction and your employee retention.

What are the key trends in supplier matching that are currently shaping the industry?

By the time a company schedules a call with a supplier, their team has often done plenty of research online, which means the salespeople need to know more than what is publicly accessible. That’s forced salespeople to up their game. Marketing teams are now more focused on providing rich, helpful content – white papers, ebooks, videos – rather than pumping out sales brochures and press releases.

How does Matchboard evaluate a supplier’s performance history?

We speak to two of their clients and customer reviews are something we also look for to capture broader sentiment. We review the supplier’s website (typos are a red flag!), social media profiles and activity. Companies go through a due diligence process so we’re confident we’re onboarding a highly rated supplier – their service reflects on our brand too! After matching, we check in with the buyer to discuss their experience and keep tabs. Negative feedback is always investigated, and high customer ratings lift a supplier in our matching algorithm.

Have certain types of suppliers become more ‘in-demand’ in recent times?

In the first two years of COVID, we saw immense demand for onshore contact centre outsourcing companies to provide surge/overflow capability for organisations in health, aged care and financial services. We’re now seeing demand for offshore customer service providers as businesses come under the crunch with inflation, or can’t find staff locally. Fiji has been a stand-out destination for offshoring recently. Also, the emergence of ChatGPT spawned huge interest in AI solutions.

Have you noticed businesses have similar, recurring or constant issues?

Businesses come to Matchboard because they are overwhelmed with the amount of information and number of suppliers out there. AI-generated content has exacerbated the problem of billions of blogs and websites which register with search engines. People are yearning for a quick way to find their ‘needle in the haystack’ supplier, and Matchboard’s smart matching algorithm makes this possible – with just 60 seconds’ effort.

What do you enjoy most about the work you’re doing with Matchboard?

I get a kick out of helping businesses find their ‘perfect match’. All Matchboard’s customer reviews on Google are 5-star and each time they arrive, I feel such a sense of validation that we’re making a difference and that’s a great feeling!