One of the ways that support desk metrics can be improved is to work hard within the app to make it as difficult as possible to find support. I think the Monzo app has succeeded with this goal pretty well.
Redirecting to knowledge articles is great… but you need to know when action should be taken. When the user has exhausted articles.
When eventually gaining access to chat support, then the support request should be responded to within a few minutes. Chat is not chat if it takes hours or even days for a response to come through. If I walked into my bank and stood at the queue… and then spoke to the teller and asked a question… and then stood for hours waiting for a reply, I might be rather unhappy. I suspect that I am not actually at the front of the queue asking a question. In reality I am probably in a queue with 100’s of other customers. In that queue of 100’s of customers are probably many many customers fiercely frustrated but the queue provides no avenue to escalate… which is great for support metrics - zero escalations.
Looking at my phone for a chat response without any form of indication of whether I will receive a response within 1 minute, 1 hr, 3 hrs, 1 day… is very poor. Monzo can do a lot better.
This might be the case in the ideal but it’s not in the real world. Monzo are not alone here.
Monzo should be hiding your ability to escalate. Giving a customer that option would be completely pointless.
Yes, support should and could be better. But it’s never going back to pressing a button so you can ask them anything you like, for any reason and getting an instant response.
I am responsible for Global IT support at a mid sized company.
I want users to search through the knowledge base for self help fixes before they speak to one of our agents. I get that. The UX bias needs to be there.
After I have put these boundaries in place and the KB has not helped, I do not want users to believe that they are ‘chatting’ when the real user experience is more equivalent to a slow email exchange.
It is easy in IT to treat end users as dumb and an evil we need to deal with.
It has harder in IT support to put yourself in the position of a person that has a genuine issue and that deserves a timely response.
Ultimately, if Monzo do not provide an adequate service - as measured by the users - then they will go to another online bank that do.
It would be silly to suggest that Monzo are intentionally providing bad service. They have barely turned a profit, their most recent profit figure would be considered a rounding error at many banks. Any increased recruitment in CS would likely eliminate all profits…
I think this is more about managing expectations. They need to stop referring to it as “Chat” to begin with. Perhaps replace with “Messages”, and change the UI to look less like a chat and more like an inbox/outbox type experience.
I don’t know what the solution is, but it’s certainly not hiding the contact options. I can think of few ways to anger customers more than this. Bad UX is one thing, bad UX intentionally, in an attempt to reduce support demand is quite another. It feels so wrong.
And yet they have 10 million Personal Customers and 400,000 business accounts, so I’d say the users speak for themselves. These people are fine with Monzo’s support. (or at least not shouting about it on an online fourm).
If you’re not happy with the support, that’s fine. Go switch to a different bank. No-one is forcing you to stay with Monzo. It’s not a lifelong agreement that you must now be with Monzo until you die.
Starling Bank, first direct, Chase UK, NatWest Group, LLoyds Group and a few others all offer 24/7 support. You can go switch to them.
And I fully agree with what Carl is saying. If a user needs help, Monzo is not locking you out of support. They’re just trying to keep chat available for the issues that actually matter. Dougbain, surely you can see how this is making support better for everyone. It also means that you don’t have to wait around for hours to get a response for a simple question, when it can be quickly answered by a self-help article, allowing you to get on with your day.
Once again, plenty of people (over 10.4 million combined) are fine with Monzo support as it is. If you’re not happy, then switch.
Hi patrice58. Having just read the bit that you’ve highlighted, my wording was not that great. I was just trying to imply that they could move away from Monzo if they wanted to.
So was Starling from 2017 - 2020. Monzo will get there soon (hopefully).
edit: I meant Starling was only profitiable from 2021, whilst Monzo only became profitiable in 2024. They all went through their phases of being unprofitiable.
Absolutely. But they’re also assuming that Monzo is offering 24/7 live chat, which nowhere on their app or website does it say that they offer.
I’ve fairly new to Monzo (just over 6 months), so I never knew what support was like back in 2016/2017.
I do agree that it could perhaps be better than it currently is, but at the same time, as you say, they’re just trying to get more profitiable.
(I’m not trying to go against either of you, I fully agree with what both of you are saying)
Let’s hope so, but that will involve improving customer service, which will require feedback from people like the op (and us). Honest feedback is important. I’m sure that Monzo has no interest in only hearing the opinions of happy customers and “fans”.
Starling chose a very different path to Monzo, they are difficult to compare these days.
That is not what has been said. They don’t need to offer 24/7 live chat.
It’s fine either way. This forum is already too much like an echo chamber, largely dominated by the same half a dozen people, all repeating the same opinions, again and again.
Different opinions are brilliant. We need more debate on here. Your views are very welcome!
I have a no real input on this, myself, because every time I’ve needed support it’s been great, and I’ve never experienced any problems with it.
Is it slower than before, yes. Have there been some cases where the messages received by people (and shared in screenshots on here) have been outright dumb - yes.
Is this customer service as it stands, going to stop Monzo increasing its profit, probably not. User numbers are going up.
Monzo do need to improve support quality, and I believe they’re working on it - but I could be wrong.
However, the one thing I will say, and always say - is… if you feel the support has been bad, useless, or you’ve been given the run around - raise a complaint. Monzo will only improve if it realises it’s getting lots of complaints about it & costing it money as goodwill payments
