I suspect there’s a drive to cut CS costs and it’s backfired a bit
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Certainly could be. I imagine the reluctance to hire a lot more cops could also be down to costs
Did someone say they’re reluctant to hire COps or are you guessing?
2 weeks ago I had a reply to a non urgent chat in 2 minutes so there seemed to be enough then.
Definitely just guessing.
It’s more that, if you’re trying to drive down costs, you’re certainly not going to have much excess capacity.
They’ve been massively hiring in recent months
How much extra capacity should you have though? I’m sure they planned for the increase caused by the ad campaign but the other issues can’t be planned for and the timing of them couldn’t have been much worse.
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True, Im sure they have been / were swamped by the outage on Friday , just as any customer support would have been.
I had a response to a double charge query marked as urgent within 9 minutes on 25th May , which was entirely acceptable for me , however if you have a problem and its not getting answered I would imagine it is incredibly frustrating.
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It seems that the issue isn’t necessarily the number of COps etc it would seem more to be the consistency of the wait times and quality of answers
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I’m happy to say I am guessing and am happy to be wrong but it’s based on previous topics about this. Before i’ve mentioned hiring more staff might help and Monzo have mentioned they are hiring but are more looking into software solutions so cops can answer more questions rather than hire more cops. So I think there is somewhat a reluctance to hire more people and they would rather have more software solutions/reduce need to contact cops, neither of which is a bad idea.
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They aren’t going to say it openly I imagine
Yes, neither are they going to say the beast in the basement has reduced the number of staff because it was peckish
That isn’t true either
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They just recently closed the job opening on the careers page for COps in their Cardiff office but re-opened applications for remote COps.
I’m sure they have a constant flow of applications for COps and can hire as they need.
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They have an Office in Cardiff which is all for customer support staff to work from. They also have an office in Las Vegas and one in London which I believe also have a good number of COps.
Indeed we have at least two of our fellow community members join the COps in the last few weeks, so it is continuing
In addition to that I see a number of changes, like being able to change email address in app, being made to save contact with COps where possible
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I couldn’t agree more - I was just highlighting the point 
I also agree with the point that they’re seemingly trying to reduce costs/increase revenue (purely speculation) through their current business strategy.
- Monzo plus (give us money for a noncompetitive feature set!)
- Turning off card top-ups when they said that they wouldn’t
- Fees for paying in cash
- Rumblings of a fee for business accounts
- A complete lack of any visible progress on the core platform, marketplace or new (useful & free) features
It seems like Monzo’s found some form of a hole in their finances/financial plans - I’m not saying that they’re about to collapse, I am saying that they might be looking to increase profits/decrease their losses and cutting CS quality might be one option that may be backfiring.
And to draw the comparison to Starling again (sorry)
- Their app is going from strength to strength
- The UI is actually useable
- The business accounts are free
- They’ve just launched their Euro accounts
- They’re providing stable banking services to multiple large names (including HM Government, Mastercard & NatWest)
- The marketplace keeps expanding
- You can pay in money for free at the Post Office
- Card top-ups still exist (for people who want that)
- The support actually answers you
Don’t get me wrong, Starling are not perfect, but if we’re talking about voting with our virtual app-based feet then I need to grab my virtual coat and go for a walk.
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If it suits you Peter go for it ,
Every business looks to increase profits and decrease costs , thats the nature of a successful business isn’t it , both Starling and Monzo are burning through money at a rate of knots - they are start ups, if they were both making profits they wouldn’t need the extra monetary input they are both getting
for me I prefer the Monzo UI , whether that will change when its changed who knows
I dont want or need a business account
I dont want or need a euro account
I dont pay money into either app , I spend it in a bar when / if I get it
I can transfer money into Monzo no problem not bothered about card top ups
The Monzo support actually answers me when I have a query - when there is a major outage ( for Monzo ) no customer support would be able to cope
Dont get me wrong Monzo are not perfect , what business is ? 
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Thanks Ian - I hope that you’re having a good start to the week!
Yes, this is true - but a lot of businesses are able to do this without directly negatively impacting their user base. Other unnamed banks, businesses, local Cafés, tourist attractions, bus companies etc - find ways to supplement their product in ways that complement their core business.
I’m interested to know whether this is just the main home screen or the majority of the app? I agree with you for the main home screen (the old one… new one’s not great at the moment but it’s a WIP), Starling’s is a bit weird. As for the rest of the app, I’ve said for some time that Monzo keeps just putting buttons wherever they fancy on that day, depending on the cycle of the moon and direction of the wind etc, with no sense of consistency or thought put into it - unlike a lot of other apps, not just banks.
Yes and no (in my opinion) for one, these incidents are happening with alarming consistency (April 17th, April 25th, April 27th, May 10th, May 25th, May 30th, June 1st) and appear to be avoidable in a lot of cases where it is a defect in Monzo’s core platform. I’d also say that other customer support teams can and have coped with high demand:
While I’m having a go at Monzo I may as well have a go at Starling as well, iirc over on the Starling forum (before they shut down because of all of the negative feedback 
) there was a… weird bostful interaction between the Starling CEO and (I think) yourself. This showed a bit of a strange culture at Starling which I don’t particularly agree with.
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Well, I had a transaction declined on Saturday with no reason given in the app (it was a POS transaction, I have more than enough in my account, it’s not pay at pump either, although I have more than £100 in my account anyway). As I’m tecnically in the middle of a support thread (although I’m not actually expecting Monzo to respond to it) I can’t mark this new one as “urgent”. It’s now 2 days later and I’ve not had a response.
Really, they need to allow multiple threads, rather than one long continuous one, especially since the support staff don’t read previous messages at the best of times.
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Instead of speculating about Monzo’s ongoing finances, why don’t we just wait a month for the actual annual report due in the next month or so.
Monzo isn’t ashamed of stating of wanting to make money from customers. @tom has been very adamant about it. Do I agree with all the revenue streams Monzo are going for? No. Does it mean Monzo will collapse because they want to make money? No.
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I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear enough - I’m not saying that they’re going to collapse and I’m not saying that they’re probably in any particular financial trouble (compared to many start ups at their stage).
I’m just saying that all of the outages, poor quality support, lack of features and lack of good UX don’t seem to be very worth it any more especially now that they’re trying to go down these revenue streams.
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