Starling Feedback

But we know the customer numbers…and throughput* is higher at Starling.

It’s not bad, it’s not good, it just is…

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I will refer you to your previous posts and leave it there :slight_smile:

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You mean the number of people who get an account, realise what a mistake they made, then close that account? Wow, who knew?

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Starling have business accounts, so won’t that skew the average? - The average balance in a business account will be far higher than what most people have in a personal account.

You got me! Haha

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Dunno…neither do you…

No that’s not what throughput means. But you’ll get there one day :wink: :smile:

It looks like the censors are out at Starling community, this time deleting their own loans announcement presumably due to too much negativity in response.

Anne has been rolled out again (this seems to happen whenever they want people to shut up) and given some vague response about protecting the people and staff, but I read that entire thread and there was nothing remotely offensive. The only thing could be staff getting upset about negativity, which would be rather thin skinned and pathetic.

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Looks like more rigorous moderation over on the Starling forum.

The original post – https://community.starlingbank.com/t/loans-how-to-video/8702 – had a number of questions and comments and was then suddenly disappeared.

This was noticed and a thread opened to ask what happened – https://community.starlingbank.com/t/another-post-deleted/8710 – resulting in a personal response from Anne Boden herself, stating:

Dear Community Members

The Community is intended to be a safe place for people to discuss the the wonderful world of FinTech and new ways of banking.

I founded Starling so that people could benefit from a fairer bank and I want Starling to be inclusive. However, I have every intention of keeping the community a safe place for our customers and staff.

Regards

Anne.

WTF is that for a response?

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But they say that censorship only happens on the monzo forum.

image

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Were there dodgy gifs?

I frequent both and I’ve seen some moderation on the Monzo side, some overzealous, but it has nothing on what goes on over at Starling’s community. It’s really quite sad the way they manage it.

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Nah. I’m not registered there.

There were no offensive gifs, not even remotely. Much respect to @Demmedelusive but he seems anti-gif in general (which is fine), and very anti-criticism in general.

Edit: the gifs/memes, where posted, were more mocking of the fact Starling ignore customers, etc. :roll_eyes:

Online communities aren’t a cultural fit for every organisation. Maybe Starling should close their forum and find another way of engaging customers that works better for them?

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The closed off nature of Starling isn’t great, in my opinion, but if you go in with eyes open that’s one thing. But to have a community and brazenly remove negative criticism (and suggest there’s an underlying issue such as upset people as the reason - which I doubt, this isn’t their first time doing this) just goes too far.

I have lost a lot of respect for Starling lately and it has purely been through their own actions.

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I used to root for Starling before Mondo was even on the scene. It’s upsetting that a lot of their current woe is self inflicted. My main account is with Monzo, but I’d rather two strong (preferably differentiated) challengers.

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I honestly couldn’t call Starling a challenger at this point, unless we’re basically saying every new bank is a challenger. The service is legacy, the thinking is legacy, and while the app is modern it’s not improving fast - legacy banks are catching up and some even providing a better service. :zipper_mouth_face:

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To be fair, they have decent tech, the app’s not bad, they are agile (insofar as they can respond quickly when they feel compelled to - joint accounts refers)… But ultimately this comes down to culture for me. The reportedly poor customer service, end of innovation as well as their approach to the community speak volumes, I think.

Get a management team that gets it and they will go far - until then, it’s like they’re sitting inside with the blinds down, not understanding what’s going on in the real world… :slightly_frowning_face:

Poor the 'ling.

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I agree to an extent, and their backend does look solid so I can’t comment on that. But if you really get down to it, they’re not exact hitting it out the ballpark with app development, and I’m not just talking feature wise. The apps ship with bugs that really should never occur, there are issues that they just don’t seem able to fix despite multiple attempts (which other apps don’t seem to struggle with), and some design decisions are nonsensical.

There’s so much you can put down to innovating and moving quickly, and I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes so I’ve avoided saying too much, but sometimes app releases are like amateur hour dev and QA wise. :zipper_mouth_face:

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