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.
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!
