What can first line support actually do?

I don’t mean for this post to sound overly negative, and I’d like to preface it by saying I’ve contacted support a few times over the past few weeks and always had my issues resolved.

However, my question is around being transferred. Every time I’ve contacted support they’ve transferred to a specialist to resolve the issue. EVERY TIME.
This was for:
Removing gambling block
Starting a chargeback
Error on making a payment in app

What can first line support actually help with? Or do they always pass it on to someone else? Is this an efficient form of support? Where I work we focus on upskilling our agents as much as possible so the customer isn’t passed around, and we’ve found this improved NPS scores massively.
It would be nice to see Monzo train their first line staff to resolve more issues on the first customer contact.

Has anyone else had weird issues of being transferred when the query was relatively simple?

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I think for most things they just divert you to the correct team, they most likely help with the basics as I’ve been told the same for near enough everything however the front line support could remove my gambling block, they just wanted to know why I wanted it removing and asked some random questions basically like checking I’m not a addict.

So they’re more of a triage than support?

Funny as they’ve just transferred me for this issue. All I said was please remove the gambling block, boom, please wait while I transfer you.

It’s pretty bad as an experience to get a response and then just an indefinite wait.

There are some things first line support have helped me with but I agree that the threshold for what it takes for an issue to get escalated to a “specialist” is far too low.

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Perfect way to phrase it, thank you.

Ahhh, I’m not sure why that happened unless some first support team have more powers than others?

Basically I got asked the reason, which was I’m looking to buy something but the website is declining my payment as a gambling one when it’s not a gambling site. Then they asked for the site and unblocked me.

Weird the discrepancy eh?

This was mine, the first person was able to do it image|281x499

However when I had a error, I got transferred to 6 people to be told I reached my limit :man_facepalming:

There’s definitely something going on with different levels of customer service and training.
This should really be a persistent experience as much as possible.

I imagine it’s just one click of a button to enable or disable something so I don’t think it’ll require much training in my opinion

Yeah I imagine the process is simple enough, but the evidence needed to disable the block is a bit more complex?

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They havent heard of resolving issues at first touch. I agree with the OP. I haven’t contacted support very often but when I have it’s been transferred.

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I don’t understand why monzo make this visible to the customer. The process should be

Question :arrow_forward: Answer

And not

Question :arrow_forward: Not an answer :arrow_forward: Answer

I understand that, on a phone call, you have to explain these transfers but the messaging system should be seamless. I don’t see any value in publicising the fact that you have a load of teams that are incapable of helping the customer.

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And especially not

Question :arrow_forward: Not an answer :arrow_forward: Not an answer :arrow_forward: Not an answer :arrow_forward: Answer

Which I have experienced several times!

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It’s like calling for technical support at a company spending 30 minutes explaining what is wrong only to be told that they will pass you to someone else where you then have to explain again even though you selected technical support on the avr at the beginning.

Total waste of my time and their resources

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It is a bit disappointing to see this isn’t an uncommon scenario.

I recently went from Question → Not an answer (being passed on) → Not an answer (being passed on) → Semi answer (still being passed on) → Answer

It was because I got an email saying my interest saving pot rate was going down, but i haven’t owned one for a year or so. So i was querying why I got this email.

It would be interesting to learn how COPs are laid out (such as what departments) that means such a scenario not only happens, but appears common.

It’s not just a bad customer experience, but I can’t imagine it’s a very enjoyable role for support just being able to pass people on all day.

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Also, it’s started to effect my use of the product.

For example, I don’t gamble ever but I don’t want to turn on the gambling block in case something that isn’t gambling gets accidentally blocked. If I had greater confidence in support then I would enable it as an anti-fraud measure and not worry about it as I would feel I get get unexpected declines (or even removing it) sorted if necessary. I don’t feel that with sufficient confidence at the moment and that’s a shame.

It’s worse that that though

It’s Question :arrow_forward: Not an answer :arrow_forward: Not an answer :arrow_forward: Not an answer :arrow_forward: DURING THIS TIME YOU CAN’T CONTACT US ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE AND WE WON’T RESPOND TO ANY QUESTIONS YOU ASK :crossed_fingers:Answer

At least with someone like Lloyds you can ask other questions if you’re waiting for an answer back about something else

I know it’s been said here before but it was huge mistake when Monzo switched to their own in-house chat system.

I don’t blame them completely though, it’s endemic amongst tech companies nowadays that customer service is an email and a few days waiting time between responses.

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This seems to be more common now for a lot of companies, to have low skilled call handlers who can do very little except pass issues to a non customer facing back office team.

Probably looks good on the stats to have issues answered so quickly even if they are resolved so poorly.

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If this is why it so often happens then it doesn’t make sense. It’s very disingenuous to count a problem as “solved” when all you have done is tell the customer that someone is looking into it.

That doesn’t mean it’s solved at all. They should be counting time taken from initial contact to full resolution. Anything else is meaningless.

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