Chase Bank UK chat

That’s from 8 months ago. Nothing more recent?

1 Like

JP Morgan unveils Chase, its UK digital bank

2 Likes

It’s hard to know if reporting like this is based off real confirmation from Chase that the launch is next week, or just repeating rumours.

Still, it doesn’t really seem to be a secret at this point.

3 Likes

400 employees in London, 200 in Edinburgh and 250 more in customer centres in India and the Philippines.

(Emphasis mine). They kinda lost me there. They can’t advertise UK customer support and then pawn most of it off to the usual customer service countries. I try to avoid all companies that don’t have EU/US support because it just becomes a copy paste headache

Also this part makes me question whether the article is based off actual info from Chase given that every other article always talked about Edinburgh based CS

3 Likes

Sounds like they may be providing overnight cover for the Edinburgh staff from overseas?

And maybe chat/messaging support is also possibly from overseas.

Not sounding great, frankly, and I doubt that will dethrone Monzo or Starling.

2 Likes

A lot of companies do this. Provide basic, non-specific support from overseas and then have any customer-specific support in the UK.

6 Likes

It’s often pretty awful in my experience.

A lot of having to overexplain yourself and sometimes some quite confused responses.

They seem to think the customer “won’t be able to tell” over chat and that’s just not the case. I know there was a big debate about accent confusion years ago when offshoring first started for call centres, but there is also a general issue around communication clarity and idioms, etc that just makes trying to speak to someone not from the same country more difficult.

3 Likes

Calling a bank ‘BO’ is just silly.
Calling a bank ‘Bó’ is next level of…something…though.

1 Like

But by the time I get to the actual helpful support, the overseas operations have usually turned my brain into mush when this is the case

I’ll give Chase a go but as soon as I get scripted answers I’ll be out

2 Likes

From the FT this week:

Chase will initially offer only current accounts with a rewards programme, but intends to quickly expand into areas including personal lending and investment, and eventually even mortgages. “In the current conditions there is a massive oversupply of mortgages and lots of providers . . . but to be a full service bank and have consumer trust over the long term it is an important product line,”

Sounds like it might take 3/4 years for some of these products to appear

3 Likes

To be fair, every single bank will be scripted. Monzo is awful for customer service (in my experience) so it just all depends really.

They haven’t launched yet and the support may well work.

4 Likes

My gripe with Monzo’s support is basically the inavailability overnight. I would like to be able to leave a message, even if I can’t expect a reply until the next day.

Generally when I have needed it, the support itself has been good. That’s the most important thing. The same is true, in fairness, for Starling - they have always given me cogent responses. I’ve even had to contact Revolut support in the past and, once I got past the chatbot, it was pretty good. That was a few years ago though.

4 Likes

I may well be pleasantly surprised. And it’s usually not the scripted nature of support that I have a problem with, it’s more so that they’re so keen to send me a canned response that they don’t bother trying to understand the issue (or can’t)

Happened with eBay recently. I asked when my bank account would be verified and the agent said “I understand you would like to know how to verify your account?” Not sure if they even meant bank account. I explained myself again and was told that it just takes a day or two

A day or two later I had to Google it myself and found out that there was more I had to do and I could only do it in a browser

This is the sort of thing that puts me off

2 Likes

Absolutely, I agree with you there!

This seems to come about from putting the support agents under unrealistic pressure to respond to a certain quota of customers per hour, and “close” the ticket (even if it actually leaves the issue unresolved).

Hopefully Chase isn’t like that.

1 Like

Overseas customer support can be very good, but like UK support, it depends on which agent you get. It definitely wouldn’t put me off from signing up.

1 Like

True, it’s all in the training and business structure.

If the business is supportive to those providing the support to customers, support is always better.

It just often seems to be the case that offshore support is support that isn’t so good precisely because the very fact they’ve offshored support in the first place shows a heavy focus on cost pressures. This often goes hand in hand with the sort of quotas and poor experience I’ve described. Not always, but often; it’s not the fault of the overseas agents themselves.

1 Like

I wonder how many have to be in the UK as a % of support to call it UK support, if it goes poorly could there just be some sole gaffa sitting in a shed in Edinburgh just to be able to say “UK Support”

When I read UK support I didnt read it as “some uk support but more than half outsourced abroad”

2 Likes

Me too - I initially read it as fully U.K. based support. Like, say, Metro Bank.

This does seem a bit disingenuous from Chase.

2 Likes

This seems typical for American companies tbh. They are used to far far more lax rules on advertising and promotion for example.

I am curious what the ASA would think the % of uk support need to be in the uk before its false advertising, more than half isnt great.
I need to start a company up where we have 1 boy in a shed taking calls for any banks out there so they can all say they technically didnt outsource all their uk support even though he would be the only uk based guy they have.
And suddenly “Support Gaffa in a Shed LTD” is born :smiley:

2 Likes

True, although to be fair to Vernon Hill he didn’t try to pull anything like that with Metro Bank!

Their branding may be typically American in it’s brash nature, but they do keep all their promises.

1 Like