Dealing with large numbers of potential match records

Issue

When Matchmaker finds multiple potential account matches for a lead, these are stored as Potential Match records in Salesforce. Matchmaker will then attempt to narrow these down to the single account match if Match Prioritization Rules are enabled. However, sometimes an account match cannot be made. This could result in thousands of Potential Match records in the system.

Impact

A large number of Potential Match records suggests that there are many leads that are not getting matched to accounts, likely due to an ineffective Matchmaker configuration. Additionally, this object counts towards overall storage limits in the Salesforce org.

Potential Solutions

Match Prioritization rules help narrow the choices of potential matches to the most likely match using additional criteria. By narrowing the choices of potential matches through Match Prioritization rules, you can limit the number of Potential Match records in the system.

When investigating this issue, it is recommend that the Matchmaker administrator checks the following:

• Are Match Prioritization Rules enabled? If not, check out our documentation on Match Prioritization Rules Settings.
• If Match Prioritization Rules are enabled, can they be edited to more effectively filter out irrelevant accounts?
  • Consider including the At Least One Email Match & Best Geographic Match prioritization rules. (Note: The Account Creation Timing rule will always result in a single account match and should be placed at the end of the prioritization list.)
  • Are there some accounts that should always be excluded? If so, configure the Account Criteria Match to only include accounts that meet certain conditions.
• Check the Potential Matches Cleanup advanced setting - the default setting is to clean up these records after 90 days, but perhaps the system should do this more frequently if the administrator expects that potential matches will be manually monitored on a regular cadence.
• Validation rule - expand

If the steps above still do not seem to help with lead matching and many potential matches are still being created, or accounts are being matched incorrectly, it's possible that the lead or account data in the org may need to be cleaned up or that the matching configuration may need to be restricted even further. We recommend reading through the list of helpful tips provided on the Matchmaker Implementation Considerations page if problems still persist.

NOTE: After making any Matchmaker Configuration changes, it is highly recommended that users Delete System Records. For more information, Matchmaker KB 1011: How to Delete System Records.

As always, if additional assistance or questions arise please contact our Customer Success team by logging a case in the Full Circle Customer Success Community.