Meet Karen Hyde, our Executive Matchmaker, who has now worked for The County Register for 6 years. It’s our belief that Karen is an exceptional Matchmaker, not only highly effective for us at The County Register but she is actually one of the very best in the U.K.
So, what is Karen’s secret to the success that she generates? We believe it’s her ability to connect with her clients and treat every one of them as individuals. Say’s Karen “I treat everyone differently and recognise them as a unique individual. I try to cater for whatever their needs are. Some people need lots of TLC and encouragement, whilst others like to remain more remote and prefer email contact to a phone conversation. We are happy to cater for these individual preferences. Some may need a shoulder to cry on during their
dating journey and I am always ready to be a really good friend and confidante when the need arises. Others may need advice on dating etiquette and how best to proceed with a potential partner, which I am always happy to provide”.
We asked Karen about her greatest success stories, and she has many special ones over her 6 years. We have changed the names of the clients involved as confidentiality is incredibly important for many clients at The County Register, but Karen’s favourite success story involves ‘Roger’ and ‘Diana’. Karen has chosen this one because in her words “Roger had been on such a journey”. He had been widowed in the recent past and due to being low on confidence in this new and very different world of dating, he was meeting people but was finding it difficult to be able to take things to a second date.
Karen takes up the story in her own words “Recently widowed, Roger was struggling with the matches I was providing, maybe he was simply trying too hard and was not progressing to being able to get a second date with the ladies I was matching him with and was ready to throw the towel in on many occasions, suggesting I had done enough for him. But he was so nice that I always urged him to carry on and reassured him that success would come in time and I believed totally that it would.
Eventually Diana came along, and they matched on her first profile match and his last one. The thing about Ralph is that he would take advice and I knew him well enough to know that he would take it constructively and not as a criticism. After many happy years of marriage it is understandable that he was a little rusty in the dating world and needed some help and pointers as to how he could improve his approach. I am so glad we persevered and that the two of them met and hit it off so well”.
It’s not always straight forward however and even though Karen and her colleagues in the Matchmaking Team are often changing more than 50 lives a week for the better, with positive introductions and one a good week maybe as many as 80 or 90. Which may well be what some smaller companies achieve in a year. Sometimes things can get harder as it did with Roger and those difficult conversations are necessary for Karen. She meets them head on however if the feedback from a potential match is not as positive as she had hoped for.
Says Karen “I handle these conversations as sympathetically as I possibly can as feedback is so important – good and bad. I also try and move on the conversation and ask them about things that I know please them like how their children, grandchildren or dog are. I try to remember this sort of detail, so they know I always listen to them. I also tell them that they know how much I want this to work for them and show as much sincerity as I can. This is personal to me, and I want to do my very best for every client and for us to achieve the best of result for them, by working in collaboration. That is how I see my role as a matchmaker and why I am able to generate the number of successes that I do and change so many lives for the better”.
A lot of people think that the world of dating and personal matchmaking is only the premise of younger people, happily Karen is quick to correct that. She continues “Many potential clients think that I am predominantly working with under 40’s and people still looking for love the first time around. That isn’t true however as at The County Register, as one of the oldest and best-established dating companies in the UK we deal with many older clients too, people in their 50’s, 60’s and 70’s who have suffered divorce, a bereavement or that a long-term relationship stretching back many years has now run out of steam. Karen says “I love working with the older people. They have rarely tried online so aren’t disillusioned by online dating when they come to us, so it is all a very new experience without expectation and some of my very best successes have come from this age group”. So if you’re 50 plus, this isn’t the time for giving up and settling for alone. It’s the time to make contact with us and to talk through your hopes and aspirations for the future and to put us to work to help you to meet that wonderful new partner that is out there for you.
Meeting Karen was a real privilege and it’s easy to see why she is so good at what she does as a matchmaker. She wants to help, she has a hunger for success and is very focused on producing the matches that she does, changing lives weekly in the process. But for me Karen’s biggest asset and differentiator was her caring approach, caring about every client in her care and wanting to achieve the very best result possible for that person. Karen Hyde, take a bow, you are a true star in your chosen career.
