The chat with us button is still there for me too, right at the bottom, not sure where it was before
Mines gone now, it was there the other day.
A/B testing or not I actually think itâs disgraceful to hide it the way they have. I know how to access the chat because I spend so much time lurking on here but if i didnât Iâd be a pretty irritated customer right now.
It just doesnât make sense to me, in a time when all the legacy banks are adding a chat service to their apps, the bank that pioneered it are hiding theirs, itâs ludicrous. Itâs not like there is another reasonable way to contact them. Iâve never phoned nor have I emailed(I sparingly use the chat) but from stuff iâve seen online, response times on those options are ridiculous and itâs not like you can go in branch in an emergency.
I love Monzo but disagree with this in itâs entirety, as a bank you should be easy for your customers to contact, the chat button should always be there. Tech savyy people will find it, however, the majority of people are terrible with technology or donât have time to jump through your holes. If youâre getting too many wasted chats where people want to do something they couldâve done themselves in app then Iâd say the usability isnât is great as you think it is.
In my opinion, people could easily leave you and switch away if you make it harder for them to ask a question
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To put it bluntly, it is an incredibly stupid idea. Whoever came up with it needs to take a step back out of their work bubble, and imagine themselves as a consumer. As mentioned upthread, I can contact a legacy bank easier. There is zero defence of it other than âwe cant afford to offer supportâ IMO.
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Yep, all this will cause is users problems to go unresolved, rather than users finding solutions in the app.
Until the help is truly self service (i.e, theres a meaningful way to guide myself through the actions I need to take) the contact button shouldnât be hidden as hard as it is.
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An easily accessible chat function isnât the cause of an over contacted cops team, in the same way making it harder to âchatâ doesnât fix the root of the problem the customers are having.
I get that itâs a test but I hope monzo tests some actual âfixesâ once staff and resources are back to full capacity.
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Thereâs isnât a capacity problem at the moment, though. Theyâve plenty of COps now for dealing with incoming queries.
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I was more thinking about the capacity of the teams who might be able to create actual fixes in app, be that more intuitive self servicing options or whatever, rather than the capacity of the cops team.
The current method/test here me reminds me of a boss I once knew who removed the comments box from the office due to too many negative comments rather than fixing the issues that spawned them.
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Maybe with a chat with us button at the bottom of every article, but itâs clearly not working , look at all the canât find chat threads recently.
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Indeed, as one of our clients at work said a few weeks ago when we were doing a workshop with them âif you make it easy for the couriers to comply with process, they will complyâ.
Following the same logic, if you make self service support simple and clear, customers will use the self service support.
If you just add more hoops to jump through, people either leave or just wallow in dissatisfaction.
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To add to all that, itâs one of those types of changes that comes with the wrong measure of success too - âwell since we removed the Chat button, support queues have been down by 50%!â
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Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!
Surely nobody at Monzo is silly enough to use that as a measure of success.
This is something that bothers me because success really canât be measured. Iâve seen on threads before, if you donât like it vote with your feet and leave. I donât think that that works, Monzo wonât know why you left so itâs a silly statement, however, what actually are they testing here? How do they possibly see any other result apart from this?
Thereâs nowhere to leave feedback and nowhere to complain! Why is that? BECAUSE THEY HID THE BLOODY BUTTON!
I guess that actually youâre right that the only measure of success is a decrease in support queues.
You canât measure whether somebody found what they wanted or gave up trying to speak to somebody.
You canât measure whether somebody left Monzo because of it.
You canât measure whether somebody was p***** off because of it
What are they expecting as results?
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Just to be pedantic, you can measure those kind of things 
You can track peoples flow through the app, what they interact with, what they look at, how long they spend there and you can map this into a flow. Based on this you can learn what type of person they are and assign key demographics to each user.
We do this on our websites to work out brand loyalty, if theyâre likely to return, if they look a loads of living room furniture (for example) theyâre planning to redecorate that room and so on⊠This is how you learn what is and isnât working and how you can do targeted advertising.
Itâs mind-boggling how much data you can gather from simply tracking user behaviour.
Not taking sides here, just explaining 
So Monzo could learn from this that 18-24 year old males, from the North West, which make up 52% of their user base are likely to look through on average 4 articles before contacting support. Of those tracked 92% found the answer to the solution they were looking for in the articles.
We also found that people contacted support after reading these articles [list goes here] so we should look at improving these.
What they can then do is create pots (yes like the savings ones) to separate these users, so they can set up rules for how the app looks. So technically power users could have a very minimal app whereas less tech savvy or newbies could see a lot more stuff to help guide them.
I obsess over this kind of stuff in case you couldnât tell 
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You can also look at the number of customers either becoming dormant or switching away and those switching in. If people leave Monzo more than normal thatâs definitely a bad sign, although not directly pinnable to this change
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Yep 
Monzo already have a lot of our personal data so once they start merging all the layers together they can build up some very in-depth profiles for each user.
Like if you start posting lots of negative comments on here they might have an algorithm to switch you to a different pot which means youâll then be allowed a loan 
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As a developer myself I fully appreciate the use of A/B testing and the kind of analytics you can do with minimal information. Removing features is a necessary evil, and every app, system and interface should constantly be refined and tweaked to make things run as smoothly as possible.
But all tools have a positive and negative effects. But at best this was poor use of A/B testing. At worst this was unethical. You wanna move the chat button, encourage people to use the self help docs more? Sure! but either make the chat with us button more obvious or have a UI to tell people where you moved it and why. By not doing this you are causing harm to the customers who need you the most in their time of need.
Thatâs the argument people are making here - not that you canât move the button, not that you shouldnât encourage people to use self help, the point is you shouldnât A/B test on something this critical to peopleâs finances and therefore livelihoods, especially without any context or communication.
Its honestly surprising to me that no one caught this internally first? This isnât how you should be doing things. Either no one flagged this as maybe an inappropriate use of A/B testing, which is bad and you need to work on why no one considered the repercussions of this, or someone did and no one listened, which is much worse. And given the Current Situation peopleâs finances are at risk more than ever. You should have pulled the plug on this already, but if you havenât do it now and do better next time.
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âDisgracefulâ, âLudicrousâ, âStupidâ, âPoorâ, âUnethicalâ, just from the last few replies
I know that we are not meant to be tone-policing, but I really donât find it a very positive experience reading through threads on here, and this seems the worst example right now, where such words are bandied around
Many people want (or expect!) more involvement on here from Monzo staff, but I cannot imagine they are encouraged by reading that either, especially when lots of them are in uncertain or busy circumstances themselves right now
You do not like this, fine, but just express that and move on maybe?
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I chose my words carefully to express my concerns - not to be emotive but to be pragmatic - and I stand by them.
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Right here "The Stalker Ex" is a prime example of why itâs imperative people should be able to contact customer service without needing to search endlessly like the mouse looking for cheese somewhere in the maze.
I didnât want to say it on that thread because I didnât want to take away from the seriousness of the help being requested but customers MUST be able to get hold of their bank without delay and without having to jump through hoops designed to keep them away from CS.
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Given the context that each of these words were used in within this thread; I donât think any of them are used innapriopriately, or in a way that is overly negative. I feel that the feedback given in all the instances is fair and while it may be critical of Monzo, I donât find the words used to be âa negative reading experienceâ for anyone. The tone and language is polite, and points made clearly.
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Personally disagree, people are voicing their concerns on a feedback forum, most of which is constructive criticism. Itâs healthy to have a back and forth, and itâs also good for Monzo to know who and why people may feel a certain away.
Nobody(at least in the last couple of days) is telling Monzo theyâre being unethical or disgraceful without a justification for doing so. If they werenât justifying then Iâd agree.
Otherwise whatâs the alternative? We all just move on and then Monzo doesnât know what to change because they donât what peopleâs thoughts were in the first place?
I guess weâre not supposed to tone police for a reason, i know its easier said then done but you just have to read it for what it is.
Like most on here, I love Monzo, but it doesnât mean that we have worship everything they do
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