It possibly is run like it is to save money but that is hardly surprising as they’re a small bank and most people don’t pay for their accounts so the money has to come from investors, business accounts, interest from loans and obviously overdrafts, and now plus.
I’m sure as they grow and income increases, support will improve.
It’s a tough balance, like you said - give the customer a minute to reply to see if you can turn it to ‘live’ chat but there is no point in COps sitting around waiting when other people need help.
Likewise saying things like “My card isn’t working” is very vague, so if you give little information and short non-descriptive replies you’re likely going to drag the process out. I work in tech and it’s far too common that people don’t provide anywhere near enough detail for me to work out what the issue is. They often expect me to be able to see what they’re seeing or have miraculously been sat over their shoulder when it happened.
I believe this is why the automated bots were introduced. I saw a post that said a lot of COp enquiries were tied up with back and forth trying to get detail from customers. I think the most common was starting a message saying “I need help” instead of saying what the problem was.
I wonder if they did implement a couple of minutes wait if it would help the perceived huge time lag in responses.
I know what you mean, but at the same time, you work in tech. You know what to provide, and while it might sound obvious, its not always obvious to many people.
I contacted cops at 8.09am about my monzo.me link and got a reply at 8.27am… and future replies in 2-5mins
I only mentioned my tech background to give an analogy, but anyone should be able to learn that detail is key to fast resolutions.
This applies to any situation not just support in the Monzo app.
Imagine you’re in a rush and you nip into Costa and simply say “I want a sandwich”. It would be wrong to then complain that it’s taking too long because the server is asking questions about bread, filling, condiments and so on. You could have said all of this at the start and saved yourself loads of time and effort.
(Please don’t make me think of more analogies 
)
You’d be surprised. Your analogy the server isn’t going away after every question for an house it’s a back and fourth conversation.
I get where your coming from but people are people not robots. They don’t necessarily know what’s needed or what the options are or how to do certain things needed for information.
To build on this when I’m at subway I don’t want to have to wait an hour between getting my sandwich toasted to then being asked what salad I want added.
I get what you’re saying about providing as much information at the beginning but some people don’t even know where to start. If I’m having an issue and the cust ops agent asks me a question or for more details, I’d expect them to stick around for the answer and respond right away. They might not be able to sort it out immediately but at least the customer doesn’t feel like they are being ignored.
That being said all my experiences with Monzo’s customer care has been great but I can definitely sympathise for those whose experience has been different.
We’re just going to keep going round in circles with this 
It wouldn’t make a difference if the server needed an hour between each question because there wouldn’t be the need for so many. Further to this because they’re tied up with one vague customer this is having a knock on effect to all the others in the queue. This again contributes to the wait time.
I highly doubt COps expect log files and complex error reports but all I’m saying is starting a support query with “I need help” isn’t good for anyone 
And that’s why we have chat robots now (though I’ve yet to encounter one myself).
I always try and make sure my first message says exactly what the problem is and includes relevant info. But having just come from the merchant info thread that has reminded me that even then it doesn’t always work 
(My last major interaction with COps was regarding a webstore that kept coming up with a physical address and I asked if it a switch could be flipped to mark it as ‘online only’ because seeing a map of Austria was very confusing. Initially the COp didn’t grasp what I was saying; then I shared some screenshots of the transaction I was querying and of one giving an example of what I’d expected to see, so they explained why the two were different 
; finally they suggested that (a) they determine from the merchant coding if it should be an online transaction or not, (b) there may well be a physical shop at the location too. At which point I gave up pressing the matter any further).
But I digress. Your point is on the money (as it were). It would help it at the very least people started with “Hello, my problem is…, can you help?” rather than just “Hello, I need help.”
Techies - always going on about servers 
I had the bot last month and I thought it was a great idea. Apart from anything you get a message that your message has been sent instead of just a void where you start wondering
But then what happens if the user doesn’t respond for 25-30 minutes. Should the COps not try and solve another query in that time? If I told my boss that I can’t work on anything else because I need to wait for the other side to reply, I’d probably be fired. Granted I agree that when a reply is sent very quickly, it makes sense to jump back on that thread and continue to try and solve the issue.
It does also appear that a lot of the wait times are linked with needing to speak with a specialist team - I wonder if something like this could be changed. Does the customer need to know exactly what has gone wrong (down to the technical stuff) or is just providing a simple answer with an intended time frame a better option.
I’d have it time out like any other web based chat help system.
The point I was trying to make is that once staff engage with a customer they shouldn’t then go radio silent. If a member of staff in a high street bank, shop, bar, airport check in desk, wherever, walked off mid conversation with me I wouldn’t be happy. Part of it I feel is down to manners and the customer experience.
I expect the same level of service from my online bank as I would from visiting my high street bank and talking to someone face to face.
But then you’re reliant on someone having all the information they need (which they may not know they need) at the point in time they send the help request.
I don’t think anyone is disagreeing with that point - I think it is a big problem that CS is slipping again and the form in which CS is taking needs tweaking.
However, I don’t think it is a simple fix.
Of course not, but that is inherent to a face to face conversation. There are natural problems that you meet when you try and use something like a live chat. I agree that once someone is assigned, they shouldn’t just go away, especially if the user replies within a short amount of time.
It just isn’t possible though, there are inherent barriers to both. Hence why for a bank that has branches, the customer service for the most part is done over the phone.
Am I the only one who doesn’t want live chat?
Most of the time I’m at work, so I send a quick sneaky message and then I’ll check back later. I don’t want to be sat there “texting” because I’ll get in trouble. Just like being sat on hold for a legacy bank.
If I need a quick reply, I’ll call or use the urgent chat which I do find almost instant.
I think it is, and it has been with my own experience with Monzo’s chat system.
The key I believe is to set and manage the customer’s expecations. I don’t expect staff to be able to solve all propeblems right away espcially if they don’t have all of the information, but if they ask for more details they need to hang around for the response.
If they don’t get a response, time the chat out to be continued later, if they do get the information they asked for they can either then fix the issue or tell the customer what happens next, i.e. it’s being escalated but also give a time for when they can expect an update.
Maybe if an “Urgent” Help request turned it into a “live chat” and a non-urgent request remains as a more e-mail based system? I haven’t personally been affected by slow response times so can’t say I have an emotional view either way.
But it isn’t the same as going in and speaking with someone face to face. You’re digitalising the conversation which allows for various things to crop up that wouldn’t happen face to face.
If a COp is waiting on the chat they’ll leave until the further information is provided (I do hope there is a small amount of wait time to allow for someone to actually respond but you get my point) - the problem is in picking that person back up. If you give a time scale and then that is broken, I would argue it is worse than leaving the problem open.
If you have a request come in, a COp responds within say an hour, but the user either doesn’t see it or takes 3/4 hours to respond, I don’t know whether the COp should be sat there waiting for that reply to come in - I’d say wait 5/10 minutes to see if they are writing a reply and if not, go to the next ticket.
I have called legacy bank CS and been told that they will look into and call me back [insert random time and date here] and never got the call and then have to call and go through everything all over again. At lease with the thread style chat, it is still there ready and waiting.
I’m not saying that it has to be a timescale for it to be resolved, just a timescale for an update. That could even be just to say they are still trying to find the crux of the issue.
Timescales are better than radio silence. If the timescale is broken at least the amount of lapses should be able to be measured by team leaders and an action plan can be put in place to reduce them going forward.
I think this is ideal. Put the onus back on the customer to respond quickly to get their issue sorted out.
As people have rightly said it’s all about setting expectations but also managing them. But also having the correct framework and processes in place so that everyone is efficient in terms of use of time. For example if payment teams only work on certain days make people aware that they’ll answer first thing Monday morning. So they’re not waiting all weekend for an answer
