I know they are short on revenue. But as a customer I don’t see that as my responsibility. It’s their problem not mine. I occasionally buy their ‘sorry to do this but it costs us money’ thing, but I just can’t live with a bank that tries to hide it’s customer support line from me. It just makes me feel like they don’t trust me and that if I contact them it will be a waste of their precious time.
Well. There. I’ve reacted and I’ve switched, and I feel better for it.
Although I’d point out it’s the last straw rather than the only factor. The long wait times, the automated nonsense that starts the chat play a part too. I just want a bank that’s easy to contact and which welcomes customers to speak to them and it seems that’s no longer Monzo.
By way of comparison, I thought I’d have a look at some other banking apps to see how easy their support/help/chat/messaging/customer service functions are to find.
Here’s what I’ve found from the ones I have.
AMEX: Help icon at top right of app Barclays: Help icon at bottom of app Halifax: Support icon at bottom of app
Mettle: Account icon at bottom right > Get Help NatWest: Help icon at bottom of app RBS: Help icon at bottom of app
Starling: Menu icon at top right of app > Help Tide: Support icon at botton of app TSB: Menu at top left > Help Centre
Essentially, getting support in banking apps appears to be universally easy for the non-Monzo apps that I have installed on my iPhone.
Just for comparison I have had to wait long times to get a response from Starling in the past. Worse still when they responded I couldnt reply as I was not my phone at the time and they closed the chat and I had to start again.
So as a premium customer please may I say: I reallllllllly hope not.
Monzo was built on accessible banking for all and if there is an issue with chat we should all have it. I don’t want a second class customer service to exist. If there is an issue let’s lobby for better together.
Some of them are furloughed, or were. And the Vegas office closed, which was where the out of hours support was supposed to come from.
But it’s also feels from staff responses that this is a long term strategy to reduce customer service and therefore increase profitability (‘create a sustainable business’).
Maybe a few additional words could be added there. I’ve seen no aim to reduce the actual service itself, just be able to cover it with as few people as possible and to automate in every way possible. This is inevitable as customer numbers and issues grow otherwise you’ll have tens of thousands of COps
Other FinTech banks and institutions will have to look into this as well in time. Maybe Starling have grown just slow enough to keep up or have had customers that have fewer problems or other magic fixes, but will that scale if they move from a million customers to two or three million? We shall see
I dunno, i just hold an app only bank to a a higher standard.
They dont have branches or even reliable phonelines for contacting when you have issues so should be extremely easy to contact with chat.
I get they arent profitabale but cmon they really need to focus on providing a good service if they want to grow and become profitable.
I was trying to persuade my mum to move over to monzo as her main bank instead of just a holiday card, if i dont have trust in that she can get the appropriate customer service when needed then ill tell her not to bother