It’s been a whole 4 years since I last posted but don’t worry I’ve been busy building the bank and not intentionally ignoring you all
I’ve stayed working in our Customer Operations team throughout my time here, and I now lead our ‘COps Product Partners’. The team’s mission is to enable Product and Ops to work seamlessly together . We build and manage the processes COps use to support or protect our customers, manage the Ops side of changes like product launches, and work with product teams to share insights into customer experience to help them design effortless experiences.
One key role of our COps teams is to support customers with what we call ‘disputes’, but in less bank-y language is when you have an issue with a payment and need help returning your money. This covers quite a broad range of situations including cases where you’ve experienced fraud, been scammed or haven’t received what you expected from a company.
We know these can be some of the most sensitive situations you have as customers who keep your money with us, and therefore it’s important we think carefully about the experience we create around it.
We would love to take inspiration from great examples you’ve seen as a community of companies helping to fix an issue when you’ve been left out of pocket . This could be from another bank or financial service, or directly with a company themselves.
Answering the phone/chat promptly, reimbursing funds in dispute immediately while the financial institution investigates and having front line staff trained to deal with such issues without having to pass it on to specialists would be a good start.
That has been my experience of other financial institutions.
With non banks, an organisation taking ownership and speedily resolving the issue works well…
I’m too English to do a lot of complaining but once at Uni I saw an advert for Red Bush tea that said it was delicious, so I bought some and after a night out we drank it, universallly agreed it was terrible and then someone noticed a number on the back to call if you ‘weren’t completely satisfied with this product’.
So at 2am we called it and somewhat surprisingly a very nice person answered, listened to my drunken ramblings stifled with giggles in the background, and sent me a £10 voucher (for PG tips I think was the company?).
Tbh even I’ve lost track of what this is an example of but I thought it’s a good story of incredibly customer-centered customer service
We were asked for examples of good customer service. An organisation dealing with an issue promptly and efficiently is good customer service.
I’m sure Monzo has examples of good customer experience. I’m just mentioning the kind of examples I’ve had with other organisations who have been proactive.
Amex have given me some of the best customer service in this area. An item I ordered didn’t arrive (below the £100 typical threshold for CC companies to really care) and they were so responsive. Immediate response to the chat, really emotionally intelligent handling, they believed me and refunded the money instantly.
PS I work in Procurement and Contract Management so I am a professional complainer and always take note of how issues are handled.
I’d like to give a big shout out to Zen (ISP)
Their service has been very good generally, but on the occasions I have had to call them, I’ve been connected to someone (UK based) within 5 minutes, who has understood my issue and been empowered to resolve it - on one occasion spending nearly half an hour on the phone talking through debugging my own equipment.
I have to give props to American Express for this one.
I once purchased a SIM-only handset (OnePlus 3T) from O2 for a few hundred pounds, and ended up returning it. After a week, O2 still hadn’t begun to process my refund. Rang Amex, they picked up instantly, and just issued a statement credit to my account for the full amount.
The best bit was the very ominous “Don’t worry about anything, Mr. Fast. We’ll contact O2 and remind them of what their agreement with American Express involves.” at the end of the call Brought a mental image of the COp wandering over to O2 with a lead pipe.
I get why businesses don’t like accepting them, but as a customer, I really do appreciate the approach of “nobody fucks with our cardmembers”
Would totally agree with the other responses praising Amex. Whenever I have raised a dispute they take it seriously, believe what I’m saying and refund the money immediately. As a result, I now use my Amex card as my first choice payment option.
I think Amex is probably the best customer service I’ve had. Perhaps Apple also.
Amex:
My card was used fraudulently for a small sum on Amazon. I contacted Amex chat via the app and had a response in <2 minutes asking me to call an anti-fraud number.
I called the number and waited <30s before I was put through. 5 minutes later my card was cancelled, charge refunded and a new card ordered. Unbelievably quick, professional, none of the ridiculousness answering endless questions.
Contrast that with… other banks… where getting help is a 3 hour ordeal of endless hold music and transferring between departments. Monzo is okay in that regard, but the waiting for a reply as your case is passed between teams is frustrating.
Apple:
Charging cable stopped working. Went to the store, they apologised profusely, asked to take it so they could investigate and gave me a new one off the shelf. In and out in under 5 minutes.
Next day I got an email saying the problem was an issue with the connector and that they’d passed it on to the responsible QA team.
I think the common themes here are ease of access, and speed. These interactions had no qualms about refunding, replacing, whatever. In addition the issues were handled by the person I first spoke to, rather than being endlessly palmed off.
Everyone is saying Amex and I would have to agree. They reply instantly and the person replying has the tools and the authority to sort your problem out right there. No “I will need to pass you to a specialist, who is not there right now, sorry…”.
Monzo used to do that level of service too, but they’ve made it clear over the years that they cannot afford to offer it anymore.
So, at the risk of sounding like a d-bag (just trying to get to the point), what’s the point in this topic? What can Beth take from this feedback that will improve Monzo?
I don’t really care about fast resolutions - those only really matter in emergencies in my opinion.
So just like Monzos, “leave a message” chat style system, my vets and all sorts of other places now offer this too and I think it’s brilliant.
It’s just the most convenient way for both parties and I’m not stuck in a call queue or even needing to find a quiet area / time to make a call. I just fire off a message and crack on with the rest of my day.
From here the must haves for me are:
A straight forward verification process
The same person manages the case throughout. Or makes sure the other person fully understands the entire situation and what has took place before handover.
They’re proactive with updates and “check-ins” rather than me having to chase
They actually listen to what you’ve done/tried rather than force you to go through a script they clearly have
Yup. Think you’ve hit the nail on the head there. Frontline shouldn’t just be palming you off to a different team depending on the minutiae of what the problem is.
Sure, complex issues may need handing over. But common, everyday things shouldn’t require hours of waiting for some blessed team to handle it.
Fraudulent transaction - sure pass it over to FinCrime, but just get on with that they’ll end up doing anyway, cancelling the card etc.
Need to make a large payment - get on with it, automate it, whatever. Why does some special team need to deal with it?
Thankfully I haven’t had to contact Monzo support many times, but I’m sure there’s other examples where you’re told you’re being passed to someone else and you just think… why can’t you deal with it?
Having these hugely specialised teams just makes knowledge siloed and increases frustration as dependencies fall upon a small group of people rather than everybody being empowered to handle them.
but don’t worry I’ve been busy building the bank and not intentionally ignoring you all 
. We build and manage the processes COps use to support or protect our customers, manage the Ops side of changes like product launches, and work with product teams to share insights into customer experience to help them design effortless experiences.
. This could be from another bank or financial service, or directly with a company themselves.
Brought a mental image of the COp wandering over to O2 with a lead pipe.
What can Beth take from this feedback that will improve Monzo?