This week, I’m so happy to say we’ve got one of my favourite people at Monzo in the Hot Coral Hot Seat™️!
Leah Templeman (@leah) is one of those all-around awesome people for whom any particular job title just doesn’t seem to state enough about just how much she does and how much she brings to the company. In the past, she’s been our Head of Operations, more recently she’s done an incredible amount of work for our COps Scalers team (the team that helps all of our COps do the best job possible, addressing things like productivity, and improving tooling) and she has now become our Interim VP of People!
As I mentioned in a previous post, Leah was one of the people that did my interview way back in 2016, and she was also the first person at Monzo I ever spoke to, when she called me up after my initial application She immediately set the standard of the company I very quickly found Monzo to be - a company that cares about both staff and customers on a very deep level. I legitimately cannot imagine what this company would look like without her!
Leah has been here at Monzo since all the way back in February 2015 - she’s currently working on building out our awesome People team… and as for a Fun Fact, it’s a pretty cool one - Leah won Gold at the European Championships playing Lacrosse for England! Amazing!!!
Alright folks… Get your questions in, and Leah will be here later in the week to answer them!!!
Hey Leah this Q&A is going to be quite interesting to see along with all the others
How does it feel to have your name written on most of Monzo’s mock app screens, Monzo card’s etc. Do you feel like you are famous in a way? You must feel proud to have your name all over such an amazing bank.
Also as you are most likely very busy during the day, do you happen to have a routine to keep you productive and not too worn out?
Do you sometimes look back and think what an incredible journey Monzo has been on so far? How do you feel knowing that Monzo is only really just getting started?
Monzo’s support is second to none. Do you ever think we’ll see legacy banks care as much as Monzo do about their customers?
Also related to support, are you currently integrating any new ways of making COps more productive so our questions get answered even quicker through in-app chat?
What feature are you most excited about Monzo releasing within the next 3 months?
Could you give us a bit of a pen portrait of Mondo Monzo in early 2015? (How many people were you? How long had the company been going? Where were you based? Etc) - it’d be fascinating to hear about that time!
Also, how did you come to be involved? Did you have a personal connection with one of the co-founders? Or did you, ahem, leave another company with Monzo folk? (Feel free, of course, to elegantly ignore anything you can’t / don’t want to talk about, of course!)
Finally, given your marketing fame, have you ever had any unsolicited messages or payments etc through?!
On that note, I wondered whether she was related to John Appleseed, but I guess this Q&A clarifies that she’s a real person! Apologies to Leah … I didn’t realise!
Hey Leah! I remember meeting you at one of the first user feedback sessions in 2015 and it’s fantastic to see how far you’ve come since!
My question is on how you have overcome the challenges of scaling your COps team so effectively. It’s amazing to see how great (and personal) the service continues to be despite the rapid growth of that team!
Hey Leah, as some others have said, you are sort of famous from being in so many promotional shots. And because you’ve also been around since early on (certainly the whole time from when I joined in early 2016), and were shaping the customer operations, I always think of you as the friendly face behind Monzo.
My related questions: what do you miss most from those early days (late 2015/early 2016), and what is the best part of the working at Monzo now that wasn’t there/possible in the early days?
I’m not going to lie, I kind of love having my name on our app screens. I had to pay @hugo a lot I’m super proud to have been part of the Monzo journey, and so, for me, the more people who know about it the better!
I am pretty busy during the day (and feeling really bad my answers to this are so late!) and that has, at times, caused me pretty big issues. Last summer I got so stressed out that at one point I had to take a week out to help gain some perspective again. The team here were all incredibly supportive and the whole thing reminded me why I’m so lucky to work here I also got some much better strategies as a result! I now make sure go for a run at least a few times a week. I’m keen to start something I did last summer, now the days are long again, where I try to run at least a mile every day. It only takes a few minutes so there’s always time, and it makes me so happy Now the team is much bigger, I’m also much stricter about not working in the evenings and over the weekend, which had made a huge difference.
Any more questions, let me know. This doesn’t count as work so will check in tomorrow
All the time! It’s crazy to think of what we were doing 3 years ago (just starting to think about launching a prepaid card…) and where we are now! I feel so fortunate to have been part of that journey. In terms of Monzo just getting started… Honestly, it depends on the day! Most of the time, really excited. There are so many cool things we can do. Some of the time though, a little bit overwhelmed. I feel like getting this far has taken so much hard work, energy and emotion - and it’s going to take even more to keep going on this trajectory. But that’s why we keep bringing in more amazing, energised, talented people to get us there
For Monzo’s support… I honestly don’t know. I think there are a lot of people who care deeply about customers and customer experience at legacy banks. However, I think where Monzo does better, is that everyone in Monzo cares deeply about customer and customer experience. It will take a long time for a legacy bank to be able to say that’s true I think.
@luba@francisco_araujo and the team are working on a whole load of projects to make sure questions can get answered even quicker! A big focus area at the moment is trying to make sure our help section is easy to use and search, so in most cases you’ll be able to resolve any issue you might have without even speaking to us However, we love talking to our customers, and know there will always be problems you can’t resolve without us, or you might just fancy a chat So we’re also working on improving the tools our wonderful COps use to ensure our customers get a response as quickly as possible! Whilst we’re experimenting with various different ways of working, we’ve also introduced an “urgent” option, to make sure that even when the queues are building, as we introduce new things, people who need a response immediately are still getting the service they need
The feature I’m most excited about is definitely joint account! @jonas and I got early access last week and we’re so excited! We put off getting a joint account because it involved going to a branch of a legacy bank… And now we finally have one! I think it will make a big difference to a lot of people using Monzo
Thanks so much for the questions! Let me know if you have any more
It also makes me laugh when people think I’m a made up person! When we first launched Monzo prepaid card we used to do card handout events in the office and so I spoke to everyone personally who got a card at the start. I think that level of personal interaction is really great, and a huge part of what makes Monzo special; in some ways I feel like having a real person’s name up on our website is a continuation of that. No need to apologise @vitaminj
♂
this Q&A is going to be quite interesting to see along with all the others
You must feel proud to have your name all over such an amazing bank.
,
I also got some much better strategies as a result! I now make sure go for a run at least a few times a week. I’m keen to start something I did last summer, now the days are long again, where I try to run at least a mile every day. It only takes a few minutes so there’s always time, and it makes me so happy 
Now the team is much bigger, I’m also much stricter about not working in the evenings and over the weekend, which had made a huge difference.
However, we love talking to our customers, and know there will always be problems you can’t resolve without us, or you might just fancy a chat 
