OPW INTEVIEW -- June 21 -- Chinese internet dating sites use mobile billing as their primary
billing mechanism. But the government threw a spanner in the works and
capped the amount providers could bill each month. Too many mobile
companies were tricking users into signing up for monthly dues. So,
there was a big change in the fees that the government was allowing to
be charged through telephones. It went from 30 RMB to 10 RMB a month. I
recently heard there has been another change; anybody who charges
through the phone has to get permission again from the user before they
can rebill every month. It has had a big impact on all the websites
which were using mobile. Baihe.com used reacted by switching its
business model to become a real world matchmaker with an online dating
element. - Mark Brooks
How are other dating sites dealing with the imposed limitations for mobile billing?
Actually
they don't have a good way to deal with it. Most of the services which
are relying on the mobile are now leaving the space. Their profits are
shrinking very fast. Mobile payment as a major payment method for
online dating companies is shrinking quickly. However, at the same
time, online payment is growing fast with ecommerce growing and the
banks efforts. In the last year, online payments doubled and it's still
growing quickly. Of course, it's still much more complex compared with
mobile payments. With online payment growing, we can predict the
payment environment will improve for online dating companies.
When we last spoke you have moved very significantly and quickly
through to offering real world matchmaking services. How have things
changed in the last year since we spoke?
We have made significant
progress in offline matchmaking business. Our price increased two times
and we are profitable. Our average price is now $1,200.
What services are you offering?
For every candidate we verify
their identity and do some communication before they meet each other.
We make sure the candidates are a good match. A lot of the customers
are afraid that they will be refused by the other candidate. So we
provide the pre-date communication and then we arrange the date.
Do you offer any coaching services as well?
We provide some
coaching in how to communicate and this is also a paid service. We have
one -to-one coaching and some training calls for groups of people. We
also published a book this month. Lots of TV stations and newspapers
are very interested in this book: "Women Must Marry a Good Husband".
How do you charge for the coaching services?
It's now based on
the training class. We charge $40 US per class. At this time, we are
designing a new service. We will provide clients with one year of
coaching.
Who does the matchmaking?
For VIP customers, the matchmaking
is done by the consultant. They are using our back end assistants to
filter the candidates from our user base. For the new product we
designed, we will provide a coach to the customer and they will find
the candidates by themselves.
What regions do you serve?
We have offices in Beijing and Shanghai. Also we provide remote services for other big cities in China.
What have been the major challenges that you've encountered as you have created this matchmaking service?
We have solved a lot of problems and there are still a lot of
challenges. The first challenge was how to build trust. As time passes,
more and more customers start to recognize that we are serious about
providing this matchmaking service. Almost 50% of our current users are
referred by their friends who already used our service. The second
challenge is that there are not enough qualified matchmakers. And the
third one is in balancing profitability and service quality. The
profitability depends on how many customers are served by one
matchmaker at the same time. If you assign too many customers to the
matchmakers, they cannot handle the workload and the service quality
drops down quickly.
How do you determine pricing?
Some customers are very
difficult to serve because they are very critical and need a lot of
attention. So we developed a system which gives out an estimated cost,
the best price to close the deal. The system helps us identify
potential personality issues. Actually we cannot decide very accurately
for every single person. We can only make the system fair on average.
We have some very profitable customers and there are also some
customers who are difficult and we lose money. That's much like
insurance companies.
How do you measure service and success on an ongoing basis?
The
first factor is success rate. Is the client getting married? Are they
engaged? Have they decided to terminate the service because they have
some commitment with someone? Secondly, sometimes they don't find their
right person through Baihe, but still we like to know if our coaching
helped them. We measure our service profit, and monitor the attitudes
of the matchmakers and whether the service is delivered in time and is
meaningful. So we do customer satisfaction surveys every month and
decide if the performance is adequate from the service team.
See all posts on Baihe
PRESS RELEASE -- July 1 -- Half
of Britain's men would choose Kylie Minogue for a Romantic Rich List
date, according to a new poll of British singles by Parship. Virgin-al Richard Branson flies away with a third
of the female vote.
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