All totally fair points Dan. I guess my issue is that I don’t see what value a front-line COp adds to this process- all they’re essentially doing is gathering data upon which a decision is made.
I’ve written my thoughts in a slightly more in depth manner here
I’m hopeful that as part of Monzo’s push to reduce chat inbound, they will review things like this which require users to contact support.
It makes no sense to me that I have to go through the live chat to raise a limit. The user journey (in my view at least) should be this:
I have a button on my limits page saying 'Request a temporary limit increase"
I’m presented with a form where I fill out the details: How much, to who, why, what date etc
I submit the form and upload a selfie with ID
Ideally this is then automatically approved. If Monzo feel a human always needs to be involved, the COp now knows that they should have everything they need to make a decision without going back to the customer*. This should lead to a guarantee-able turn around time for these requests.
*Obviously there will always be cases where someone fills in “None of your business” or similar to the Why question, but that’s still a pretty clear reason to decline.
glad its sorted , Ive raised my limit 3 times, once was a nightmare , the other two times subsequently were very quick ( within the day ) , Ive never seen this" I cant make payment" button which presumably advances the request up the queue ???
did you use it ?
Surely you should also be told in the self help advice what you need to tell the cops ie ID …why …how much …when etc to save multiple contacts to chat
Thanks Ian, relieved is an understatement - I’ll be having a drink tonight even if it’s a school night!
I think it’s the preset options that chat bot comes up with when you open a ‘fresh’ chat. Problem for me was I was already in a chat and therefore didn’t have such options! The system is flawed to say the least.
The inability to have more than one conversation really is a drawback. Building their own chat was a reasonable choice, but they really ought to finish it so it works effectively for the customer.
I hope everyone who has been affected by this issue, and may be affected, takes note of this (and not just Jai). This is about as clear a signal as you can get that people in Monzo want to help resolve the issue, but they need evidence that it’s worth working on as a priority.
It’s something I’m familiar with from my own job, where we know there are some things that service users have problems with (deliberately vague, I know; sorry) but we can’t fix them until they actually complain about it. “No, it’s fine. I know you’re trying your best. It got sorted in the end”, they say, even when I’m practically crying at them to take their complaint that one step further than talking to me
It’s also something I experience from a different direction when I come in to the office one week and find there’s a minor but annoying IT issue that everyone is trying to work around. “Have you reported it?” I ask. : So I end up reporting it myself and then almost forcing as many colleagues as I can to do the same, so the service desk can prioritise the fix.
Yes, but this means (as with cheques) that the few people who genuinely do rely on Monzo (and only Monzo) for the entirety of their finances continue to suffer a seriously sub-par experience as they are never numerous enough to prioritise.
However, there should be more than just a customer numbers metric on this - to account for the severity of the potential problems caused by the current approach and also the need to look after Monzo’s most loyal customers.
I hope this topic is revisited with those ideas in mind.
Can’t it be possible to put in an article, which details everything you need to supply. Along with a button to chat which then marks it as high priority, sends it to a team of people who can deal with it there and then.
Of course anyone abusing the feature to get to the top of the list can then have the request manually downgraded.
100% agree here. Sometimes I don’t want to wait around and it’s not vital that I sort it right this second.
I will use Lloyds for this purely because if they have limits for transfers which I’m sure they do, if I can’t do it in the app, I’ll call and if I can’t get through, the branch is a 5 minute walk away and I’ll go and talk to someone face to face with my ID and get it sorted.
The first step is the same as with Monzo, you’re relying on an app and their procedures that are in place to stop fraud etc etc. I get that. But trying to escalate is tough. With Lloyds (or another high street bank) I’ll sit in your branch until you fix it which for something this simple, will not take all day.
I had grief with this too in January when I was wanting to pay off my mortgage. I messaged in advance and was told what I’d need to supply but could only do it 24h in advance, so on the day before I supplied exactly that, but made the error of pulling the needed money out of a savings pot so that it would land the same day. Turn out they couldn’t or didn’t want to increase my spending limit until the pot money landed in my main accounts, which it did at 3pm on the payment day and I messaged promptly, but of course I’m now at the back of the queue again, wait again, and I’m replied to only in the morning, when the amount I need to pay has changed because of daily interest and I need to submit another selfie and wait again!!
Surely for some things, once you’ve waited once to be served, when you’re replying to a question, you should be put at the front of the queue. Or your query should be flagged as time-sensitive? Waiting 2/3rds of a day every time you send a message was just infuriating!
I strongly recommend you consider raising a complaint yourself. There was an opportunity given you messaged in advance to make you aware that you needed to have funds in place before requesting a raise, and some of your difficulties could have been avoided.
In any business you have to make conscious choices to have processes “sub optimised”, but I think when the alternative is “it’s fine because those customers can do [insert process] with [insert alternative bank]” is a bit of a poor excuse.
Monzo have made a huge push to get people to see their account as a “proper bank account”, and not a spending account - but there’s just some simple banking functions that it does not do well. It’s about time they got some love.
I’ve said it before on here, but I really think that any business needs to avoid “driving their customers towards competitors” as much as possible, within reason.
Practically, this might mean not building support for some fairly niche features as the resources would never be worth it and only a very, very small minority would use the feature. But then there is also a list of features which a data-driven analysis might reveal to be seemingly not priority, yet customer expectations might dictate them to be “core features” that you need to compete effectively in the sector.
Without going off into a tangent and getting too specific, in the British banking market I would argue that this means, generally, things like 1) some sort of way to reasonably pay in cash for free and 2) the ability to withdraw cash without using an ATM, either through Post Offices or some kind of agency banking arrangement. Cheques are controversial but decent support for them would arguably feature too.
Conclusion: ‘We answered it in 24 hours therefore we don’t see an issue.’ Also not great being passed pillar to post on the chat by people who can’t help.
oh I agree still very frustrating , but I seem to recall somewhere on the forum that complaints are put in order of priority when they are costs to the particular complaint , I got £30 for my complaint , which was actually put as a complaint by Monzo , not on my initiation , which was then allocated to “costs” for problems with " increased limits " , you raising an official complaint has cost monzo another £25 … which moves it up the friction list hopefully …fingers crossed
Yeah maybe I’m being a bit unfair, probably still peeved off with the whole experience if I’m honest. Providing the feedback goes towards helping in some way then it was worthwhile raising the complaint. Although you can probably what my response would be though if someone familiar asked ‘should I use Monzo for X big purchase’
Not unfair at all , its extra stress that you dont need from your bank …seems to be quite hit and miss , as I said out of 3 goes two were very efficient , which is quite indefensible really (66% success ) with big financial commitments and the stresses involved with those commitments if Monzo want to convince people to “full monzo”. I would encourage everybody to make an official complaint in this particular type of transaction if it doesnt go smoothly
: So I end up reporting it myself and then almost forcing as many colleagues as I can to do the same, so the service desk can prioritise the fix. 
Also not great being passed pillar to post on the chat by people who can’t help.