Good news, everybody!
With thanks to @glasgow for noticing these were out (and raising a bug report because you can’t see them in the app), Monzo and Starling are now part of the regular customer satisfaction survey run by the major banks:
https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/personal-banking-service-quality-great-britain-august-2020
Some really interesting data to delve into, but:
- Monzo top overall, with Starling second. First Direct rounds out the top three.
- Monzo best app, with Starling second
- Starling best overdraft (unsurprisingly) with Monzo fourth (a bit higher than I thought they might be, actually).
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Thanks for the spot, @glasgow! This should update with the weekly app rollouts today/tomorrow.
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I’m always amazed how well Metro Bank do. It always seems cheap and garish to me but apparently all good with their customers!
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My biggest takeaway here is that I would have expected Monzo & Starling to win Online Services & Mobile Banking by a much bigger margin.
I guess so few people have more than one current account that there’s very little comparison going on though, so maybe it makes sense.
Good news all round though!
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I can’t believe Nationwide’s online/mobile banking is that high, compared with other banks like Barclays who generally have one of the better traditional bank online/mobile banking.
Likewise FirstDirect, the online services and mobile banking are a nightmare to manage login wise and the services provide nothing special.
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Interesting how this data set compares with the MSE Survey…
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Was just thinking that. This puts the MSE poll in perspective.
Congratulations Monzo on such great results.
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The thing with the MSE poll is that if it gets into one or two online communities it can skew the whole thing. So if there’s a thread on here that can really bump up Monzo numbers. Similarly, if it’s not noticed on here but the Facebook anti Monzo militia (I think that’s the right term) mobilise their members they can really throw Monzo under the bus.
This survey, though, feels intuitively right - but regardless of my feelings it’s run by a proper polling / market research company so will be significantly more robust than MSE.
(But not my forum polls, obvs)
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The MSE results are much more recent, with far fewer people, over a shorter period of time. The CMA survey was done by IPSOS between July 2019 and June 2020.
Had i been surveyed in July 2019, I would have said monzo was amazing, best app, best service by far. Tomorrow i complete my switch out from monzo and will no longer be a customer having seen things drastically turn for the worse in the last 12 months.
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Not bad for a failing bank that’s going out of business… or so I’ve been told
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Let’s not forget that, whilst the MSE ‘straw’ poll is reported in the media (MSE being a respected consumer authority), it’s this CMA poll which is official and is posted in all the banking apps and branches.
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Yep, particularly when you think that the likes of HSBC and First Direct are basically the same app. It would be interesting to know what drives these scores.
Still, it’s very good news and well done for monzo.
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I read it as a simple “Do you recommend this bank’s app?”
Vanishingly few people will have experience of more than one app, so it’s pretty hard to answer that with no, as all the major banks’ apps are at the very least functional.
I would have recommended RBS’ app up until the moment I opened Mondo for the first time.
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Oh absolutey - I think the polling company contacts 1,000 customers per bank, representative of the users of the bank.
Which is far better the 152 people replying to the MSE Email.
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Congrats Monzo and the team 
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152 MSE and kind of captive revolting audience, against 19000+ CMA? I think I would put more trust in the later one.
I love MSE for tips and some quite good pointers, but the average level of responses on their forum is… If the MSE participants in the poll are a cross section of that, I rest my case.
Ha yes. Some people are helpful on the MSE forum, but mostly the regulars are like this:
Patronising and childish.
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To be fair that view is also fairly accurate of here in some threads!
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