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How we got customers to sign up to Monzo in the early years

tomblomfield.com

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Re: How we got customers to sign up to Monzo in the early years

#21

Post by klelatti »

Nextgrid wrote: post #6

Good old Monzo times. Sadly, in my opinion the company took on too much investment and was now bound to deliver tech-company returns with a product that fundamentally isn't compatible with them. This led them to become yet another bullshit "growth & engagement" operation and ultimately killed the appeal of the product, all while competitors such as Starling Bank stepped up their game and delivered a very similar prod…

A bit ironic given Tom literally worked for Starling at the beginning. A bit odd that this doesn’t get a mention.

Re: How we got customers to sign up to Monzo in the early years

#23

Post by varispeed »

rand49an wrote: post #11

Sadly closed my Monzo account down recently after applying for a joint account with my partner and being denied with no explanation (both long term users, good credit etc). Apparently a common story. Opened a Starling account and got one straight away. It's a shame because the Monzo user interface is miles better.

Starling is no better, you were just lucky. I found Starling customer service appalling. Basically "go somewhere else if you don't like it".

Re: How we got customers to sign up to Monzo in the early years

#24

Post by jtwigg »

Earlier this year my partner and I switched our joint account from Monzo to Starling simply because we both hated using the Monzo app. Navigating the app feels unnatural to us and probably due to how infrequently we use it, we never learnt to live with it. Last week I finally closed my personal Monzo account as I only used it for one small DD a month and much prefer the Starling and NatWest apps.

Re: How we got customers to sign up to Monzo in the early years

#25

Post by Cxckers »

jtwigg wrote: post #24

Earlier this year my partner and I switched our joint account from Monzo to Starling simply because we both hated using the Monzo app. Navigating the app feels unnatural to us and probably due to how infrequently we use it, we never learnt to live with it. Last week I finally closed my personal Monzo account as I only used it for one small DD a month and much prefer the Starling and NatWest apps.

I made the same switch due to Monzo refusing me and my partner a joint account. Starling had no issue with giving us one

Re: How we got customers to sign up to Monzo in the early years

#26

Post by deeptote »

Given Monzo's hiring practices, I'm not sanguine about the future of this company.

I myself went through their interview process not long ago and to say it lived up to the sentiment of the glassdoor reviews is putting it mildly. Several rounds, silly armchair-psychologist behavioral questions, and the interviewers made it blatant that they didn't want to be there. Did my last interview at 4pm one day, got rejected by 8am next business day. I've gotten offers from Google, Amazon, etc so I know I interview well, not sure what happened there but really got the vibe that their employees are never quite sure if they're doing well, and management likes it that way.

They're a bank struggling to market themselves as a tech company.

Re: How we got customers to sign up to Monzo in the early years

#27

Post by varispeed »

jtwigg wrote: post #24

Earlier this year my partner and I switched our joint account from Monzo to Starling simply because we both hated using the Monzo app. Navigating the app feels unnatural to us and probably due to how infrequently we use it, we never learnt to live with it. Last week I finally closed my personal Monzo account as I only used it for one small DD a month and much prefer the Starling and NatWest apps.

I have used Starling app and I couldn't make sense of statements. I think it's equally bad as Monzo.

Also I kind of despise the idea that you have to have an app to access the account.

After trying these "challenger" banks I am staying with my good old High Street bank where I can access my account from the web and it does not have any confusing bells and whistles.

Re: How we got customers to sign up to Monzo in the early years

#28

Post by arranf »

srmarm wrote: post #17
rand49an wrote: post #11

Sadly closed my Monzo account down recently after applying for a joint account with my partner and being denied with no explanation (both long term users, good credit etc). Apparently a common story. Opened a Starling account and got one straight away. It's a shame because the Monzo user interface is miles better.

This mirrors my experience a couple of weeks back. Having come across many others with the same problem I almost wondered if it was a case of pretend to have a feature to gauge interest (I'm sure it wasn't - I hate those things!) I also ended up using starling instead - perfect really. While I like the Monzo travel bits when travelling I find bank accounts much of a muchness really for my basic needs so don't have an…

For what it's worth I've had a joint account for years. It works fine but there are some wrinkles - mainly that it's not a first class citizen. Split the bill and other Monzo specific features only work with your individual account.

Re: How we got customers to sign up to Monzo in the early years

#29

Post by andrewingram »

nicoburns wrote: post #15
danpalmer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monzo do have good tech, but I've also heard that there is a "surprising amount of legacy tech" there as well. I'd interpret that as either they do too many re-writes of things, and/or they're perhaps not building at the level of quality that they should have been. They have some excellent engineers in the early team, but I've also seen a lot of very inexperienced people go there, so that in combination with a "move…

Monzo seems to have gone all-in on microservices (they have thousands apparently), which sounds like an absolute nightmare.

One of their earliest engineers was apparently a bit of a microservices guru, so there's a good chance that at least they did it well, in terms of mitigating the litany of common issues. Though I'm still skeptical as to whether it was actually a good idea.

Re: How we got customers to sign up to Monzo in the early years

#30

Post by chrisseaton »

deeptote wrote: post #26

Given Monzo's hiring practices, I'm not sanguine about the future of this company. I myself went through their interview process not long ago and to say it lived up to the sentiment of the glassdoor reviews is putting it mildly. Several rounds, silly armchair-psychologist behavioral questions, and the interviewers made it blatant that they didn't want to be there. Did my last interview at 4pm one day, got rejected by…

I’d you have offers from Google and Amazon then why are you interviewing at a place like Monzo? They can probably tell you’re both wasting your time so rejected you on that.
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