Monzo in the media

Maybe so. Find it all quite draining at times. Might stick to just updates to the Android teardown thread :wink:

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The last one in there isn’t very good :rofl:

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Im in the same boat as @N26throwaway and thought wow this really great from monzo being the trendsetter here and doing change for good.

Until i got to this quote…

“In a moment of desperation, I used the in-app messaging feature. I was kind of astonished and incredibly impressed that almost immediately I was contacted by a support worker who told me they were sorry I was going through a tough time and they wanted to know if there was any way that they could help.”

Now unless theres a way a user can get priority queue skip when these things are mentioned in chat? i cant see how we can sing praises here if the customer support team take 6+ hours to get back in a moment of need

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Chat isn’t always hours and hours.

And maybe there are key-word triggers.

Just because people get those chat times and shout very loudly about it, doesn’t mean that’s always the norm.

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I took it to mean that a keyword triggered something and that’s why it was so fast.

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^ this.

Most customer support systems try their best to figure out a theme and pass it to support agents that either prefer that task or are assigned to it. Never mind a company focused on iterating on customer support efficiency.

It’s highly likely that the presence of certain words pass the ticket on to a different team, are auto flagged as high priority or otherwise.

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Monzo has a help article about this, and it goes directly to a specialist - given that it goes directly to the team of 20 trained individuals, I’d expect a pretty quick reaction to someone using that mechanism for support. Comparing it to first-tier support is a little unfair, in my opinion, as that form doesn’t need triaging - it’s a cry for help and would be actioned.

Given that chat remains accessible for those identified as “needing access to it”, I wouldn’t be surprised if that doesn’t then trigger the criteria to display that information front-and-center when clicking the help button.

A quick Google tells me that:

  • For Lloyds their financial abuse team is telephone and branch only, and you have to call them - they also aren’t 24/7;

  • For RBS their financial abuse team can be contacted initially via a contact form, but they’ll ask for a time to phone you;

  • For Nationwide their financial abuse team can be contacted via phone or in the branch, only during working hours, excluding Sunday.

I personally think the article was more balanced than it needed to be, given that the high street banks don’t seem to offer any mechanism beyond visiting face-to-face, or calling. I’d suggest that Monzo’s approach is far more accessible in these scenarios for those that need it.

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I’m a little confused here. Isn’t this just for getting things in place? Or would you have to go through this flow to use the code word too?

The wired article as I understood it, made it sound like you just chat in app and they reply instantly. Nothing in the help articles or in the wired article suggests that the agreed upon code word fast tracks them to the right team so police can be called. That’s why I’m under the impression you would have to wait like everyone else for the frontline agent to see it. Would be nice if someone from Monzo could clarify, @Dan5?

I’ve gone through one of these processes so that Monzo is aware of my needs, and I don’t see any such trigger, though I still have chat. I last contacted them to complain about Apple Pay still missing from Monzo.me, and it took close to 12 hours for someone to get back to me despite being estimated 8.

Perhaps those who report financial abuse do get a trigger to skip queues, but wouldn’t that ruin the point of it being traceless?

Agreed. Personally I use a combination of shortcuts on iOS and keyboard text replacements to send a distress message out to various trusted people along with my location and have it then erased locally from my device. So it’s nice that a bank is taking a similar idea to help protect vulnerable customers from financial abuse.

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How was that a genuine use of COps time? A quick look at the forum would have told you there is a topic dedicated to it.

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An employee from Monzo told me, on here, I’d be better off complaining about it in app. They don’t pay much attention to the threads on here. :man_shrugging:

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Well I hope your “complaint” was worth the effort.

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It took two seconds, so yes. I was reassured they’re working on it, which is what I’ve been asking on here for a while and received no answer. I’ve occasionally bumped the threads on here too. There’s been no update for close to two years now.

It’s a feature I used to rely on and valued a lot and it’s a feature Starling still offer. So I would think my complaint is a valid one.

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I’ve read it that it’s about setting it up. What happens beyond that, I wouldn’t expect to be public knowledge. That kind of defeats the purpose, right?

That was my point. Monzo have admitted that customers who’ve been identified as fitting criteria, will see chat all the time.

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Ideally. I know some registered vulnerable customers don’t see the chat, including long term members confirmed on here.

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Probably took as much time for him as it did for you to write your “comment” :roll_eyes:

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Would be happy to know that monzo do pick up triggers on chat and push people in proper distress like this up the queue.

Hope it didnt come across as the opposite in my previous points. Was more so pointing out i wasnt aware of monzo alerting this to be the case and i would consider myself a power user on this forum daily over the last year or so?

What point is a useful feature if its not wildly known.

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I doubt they’ll want to publicise it too much as it will lose its effectiveness.

“Financial abuse. Partner hurts me. Hi, why have I been charged overdraft fees?”

Etc.

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People like that (If they exist) should be penalised and blacklisted. Exploits like that ought to be written as forbidden as a part of the terms of service, in my opinion.

Because in all honesty, what’s stopping people from using this feature in an attempt to fast track support requests already?

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I agree 100% and hopefully very few do it or they get weeded out early to keep it for people that need it.

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