Monzo Staff Weekly Q&A - Jim Amey (Night COps Captain)

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Note : All Monzo Q&As to date can be found here :grinning:

It’s Remote Week here at the Monzo Office! What does that mean? Well, it means it’s 11pm here in the Monzo office and I am sat here with all my lovely remote people!

Yes, 43 of us remote workers have descended onto Monzo headquarters leading to lots of rambunctiousness, confused stares from the day team (who are these people and why do they all look vaguely familiar?) and midnight feasts :hamburger: :pizza:

One of those people is our very own James Amey @Jim1701 - Night COps Captain - in fact, Jim’s squad is called Starfleet…making him Captain Jim of Starfleet!

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HOWEVER!

Just because it’s Remote Week doesn’t mean you aren’t subject to the RULES! It’s catch up time.

Read 'em and weep! (tears of joy at how many people have spent their time answering questions for all you lovely community folk)

Week 1 : Chris MacLean, Customer Operations & Vulnerable Customers :santa:t2:
Week 2 : James Nicholson, iOS Engineer :green_apple:
Week 3 : Tara Mansfield, People Operations Manager :woman_technologist:t5::man_technologist:t3:
Week 4 : James Routley, Backend Engineer :hammer_and_wrench:
Week 5 : Hugh Wells, Customer Operations :policeman:t3:‍♂
Week 6 : Naz Malik, Technical Specialist :computer:
Week 7 : Fred Morgan, COps Squad Captain (Calls & Social Media) :telephone_receiver:
Week 8 : Emma Northcott, COps Scaling Team :balance_scale:
Week 9 : Jarno Wolf, COps Financial Crime Specialist & Squad Captain :wolf:
Week 10 : Maria Campbell, Head of People :woman_office_worker:t2::man_office_worker:t4:

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Jim describes his role as “Making sure new night COPs feel at home and that smiles are being put on faces” and one fun fact about Jim is that he’s in an Oscar winning film!

Jim’s favorite thing about working at Monzo : "The way that everyone will help out another person if they need a hand, from rescuing an iPhone to just needing someone to listen to you vent "

Also a bunch of us went to The Crystal Maze today and I’m fairly sure that was Jim’s idea. I’m not sure how that relates to the Q&A but it was awesome, and I just felt like you should all know that.

So get your questions in!

What IS a Night COp Captain? What do they? Why is, and where? And other such lines of questioning!

Jim will be here on Thursday with all the answers, to life’s most mysterious questions… But you need to ask them first! Go, go, go!!

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Two questions from me!

  1. What do you find are some of the most effective ways to keep team morale up during the night?

  2. From your experience, what’s the big difference between the sort of queries you get at night vs in the day - are they lots of people on nights out/people overseas?

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What was the Oscar winning film!?

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What is the most unusual query you’ve seen on your shifts as a Night COp Squad Captain?

(Also, big up to you - have no idea how you Night COps do it!)

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Hi Jim :wave:,

Are you a pineapple on pizza sort of guy? (:pineapple: + :pizza: = :question:)

As a Night COp, what sort of hours do you do and how do you keep going through the night? Lots of coffee?

What feature are you most looking forward to this year from Monzo? :monzo:

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Jim! What does a squad captain even do?

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Who’s the best Star Trek captain, apart from yourself?

What’s your secret to keep yourself up at night?

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Assuming there are fewer chat queries at night (which might not be true?), does this give the night COps team time to do other tasks that day COps don’t do?

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Is it Wednesday my dude?

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With Monzo opening offices abroad in Wales and US (Vegas?) will the Night COps teams be based on London times, or will US Night COps be based on their own local times?

e.g. When you call at Day in UK when it Night in US would a US COp answering be a Night COp (due to Head Office time) or a Day COp (due to their local time zone) and visa versa when Night in UK and Day in US.

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Contentious, maybe?

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No. Contentious to call UK a nation when the people of Wales wish to exert their national identity.

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I still don’t think Wales is abroad. At least, not just because some of them might want to be.

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Keep this on topic with questions for Jim please folks! :grinning:

If you wish to continue debating whether Wales is considered to be abroad or not, please create a new thread on that topic :+1:

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If morale seems to be low at the beginning of the shift, what sort of things do you do to get the team motivated for the rest of the night? :sunglasses:

Ohhh and

What % of people on average would you say tend to seem drunk when they come for support at night?

And…

Do you know any COps that have been asked to give out their personal number? Has that ever happened?

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Hi Jim,

Do you do a complete day/night reversal (get up, go to work, then stay up for a while before bed) or do a more traditional night shift (get up hours before work, and then go to bed as soon as you get home)?

And do you think that Wales is abroad? :wink:

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What is the split between office-based and home-based COps on the night shift?

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Whats been your favourite thing about remote week so far!?

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Sorry to cut in but I just wanted to say that this “remote week” is awesome. You all must be having so much fun.

Go Monzo :muscle:

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Great questions!

1: In general just being chatty and just making sure that people know that you’re around to talk too I find is the biggest morale booster. Monzo has done a fantastic job of finding people for the night team that enjoy the later hours so the real thing to combat is the isolation that comes with being remote, we have scheduled ways of doing this (half an hour stand ups with anybody in your ‘squad’ that is working where you can talk about work or just life) and unscheduled (Posting pictures of my puppy to make people crack a smile)!

2: Overnight I’d say we tend to get many more queries related to things like currency fluctuations, places not accepting our cards (usually as they don’t accept Mastercard), ATM fee queries and of course people who have maybe had a little too much to drink.

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