So, Starling just topped MSE’s summer poll on Banking Customer Service. MSE do this fairly regularly (twice a year?).
What’s interesting is that Starling and Monzo is so far ahead of everyone else. Is that more because they still have relatively fewer customers than the other banks and everyone using them are very ‘brand loyal’ so they’re more likely to give them a ‘great’ rating’ when they’ve not actually needed to contact customer services anyway?
I think a big issue with the MSE surveys are that all it tells you is the rankings of banks amongst hardcore MSE followers. It’s most definitely not a representative survey of the population (and the number of responses vs the UK population is tiny – roughly 0.01%). How that impacts the ratings/popularity of the new banks is an open question, but it almost certainly does.
Who you’d hope were generally better informed than the mode, so it could even be a more informative snapshot as far as neobanks go, as they’re likely to be overrepresented
Android got the changes to Spaces several weeks before iOS did, so it would appear that it isn’t unusual for one platform to get a new feature before the other.
Monzo let you freeze your card instantly in app vs High Street Bank who makes you phone up and speak to customer service
Even if HSB answer the phone really quickly and are very polite, I’d argue that monzo provided the better customer service, even if I never actually spoke to them.
davidwalton
(Award Winning Hot Coral Analyst)
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Tell me about it… and goes that extra mile by showing users what they could have won if they were on the platform in Labs:
Doesn’t sound like you’ve ever spoken to them then. On the phone their sole job appears to be to push you to other support channels rather than help you. It’s not like they offer telephone account servicing in any way. My personal experience and a family members also. This isn’t just for Monzo though because Starling is the same in that regard.
At least if you called a more traditional bank they’d actually do what you needed them to do. With HSBC and RBS you’d just need your voiceprint set up and then you’re authenticated to a fairly high level in terms of account servicing.
Plus you mentioned card freezing, I think most of the high street banks have been on that for a while now and some even offer instant notifications which is always a bonus. Not quite as instant as Monzo or Starling though.
On the topic of Starling’s long-awaited credit card, Boden told AltFi that the bank is now actively in-testing with an SME credit card, but declined to comment on when it would launch.
“We have built our own card processor, and we have a huge amount of technology available to process card transactions.”
To be fair, the days of whatever company they were using in the past where it always went down seems to be way in the past now. It hasn’t happened for quite some time.
I noticed Starling have had a bit of a social media campaign aimed at existing Tesco Bank customers this morning. Nothing major just a ‘Tesco Bank Customer? You could open a new Current Account while you’re having a coffee’ post or two on various platforms.
I wonder if @Gaoler is referring to the fact that the interchange fee on business credit cards is not regulated and so often much higher (3–4% I think) than for personal cards.