How to Get Customers to Fall in Love with Your Brand

The noughties were an exciting decade for customer experiences in banking. Disruptors emerged to challenge the traditional ways of managing finances and digitalisation increased to open up a range of opportunities for engagement.

In this sit-down with Rona Ruthen, Director of Customer Operations at Monzo, she spills all on how to better understand and approach changing customer expectations – from winning the general trust of customers and distinguishing between the wants and needs of different demographics, to maximising the use of new technologies and bridging the gap between tradition and new possibilities.

CCW Europe Digital: When it comes to living up to customer expectations at Monzo, how crucial was it to create different strategies for different demographics?

Rona Ruthen: Monzo was initially very much focused on younger people. Our strategy was coherent, and it worked very well for that population. As we grow and as our customer base grows, we need to make sure that we continue to tailor both the value we add, how we reach our customers and our communication channels to a wider audience while keeping our brand and our identity as a company.

It is more about making sure that our product makes money work for different groups of people. Given that we are a bank and that we are very passionate about making money work for everyone, we have not had to create a separate strategy for different demographics. We want to make sure that what we build adds value to a wide range of people and that it can be very inclusive.

CCW Europe Digital: How does Monzo deal with customer interactions across generations?  

RR: Managing money can be scary for most of us. When there has been an instance of fraud with your card or if someone is tight for money at the end of the month, handling these situations can be very stressful. Customers can also feel stressed if they do not have access to the right advice for saving money. So, money is a very sensitive topic for all of us, across generations.

At Monzo we care about making the experience of handling money less stressful for our customers, so making it easier to interact with money, rather than ignoring it. That is where real-time notifications can come in, the high visibility and budgeting and just giving people, all types of people, more control. I think this benefit is not limited to just one generation.

Where we see some differences is maybe how people want to interact with customer support, for example, chat versus calls. Social interaction when it comes to engagement with us as a brand all together and also when people want answers from us.

CCW Europe Digital: What impact has the digital transformation of the financial sector had on the banking experience, in your opinion?

RR: It has become more acceptable to expect a better experience from your bank. It’s ok to now expect to not have to physically go into a branch and fill out lots of papers to open a bank account.

So, we have already seen expectations change in terms of customers feeling more confident to ask for more and expect more of their bank. With progress in digital transformation, banks – us included, but also the incumbents – are making it easier for customers to access their money and interact with their bank accounts.

CCW Europe Digital: What has been the greatest contributor to customer engagement at Monzo today?

RR: Monzo was always about an open dialogue with our customers and creating a community around what we do. We don’t want to just build stuff in banking, we want to build the things that solve problems for our customers and so it was always an open discussion.

In the very early days, to get a card, you had to physically come to an event at the office. You would have a conversation with someone on the team, discuss pain points that you are feeling around banking and your money. We have continued to take that with us, obviously it has changed in some ways, because with 3 million customers, you can’t have a conversation with each one. But we still do a lot of events, there’s still a lively community, and we still rely on feedback from our customers. We are also passionate about being transparent and open with our customers and they have been open and engaged with us.

CCW Europe Digital: What do banks need to do to gain the trust of customers and their willingness to share their data?

RR: Making it easier for customers to deal with anything in their financial world and being honest and transparent. What we all want is just to be able to do what we want with our money, in the way that we want it.

Customers generally trust banks that will keep their money safe, but they don’t necessarily trust that their bank will have their back and work in the customer’s best interest.

Transparency, consistency of experience, and communication will win customer trust over time.

CCW Europe Digital: What has been the biggest challenge in understanding what your audience wants and how do you encourage the rest of the organisation to see this?

RR: Sometimes the challenge is just imagining something different than what we already have. We are all used to incumbent banks and the way things have been done for a long time and it is difficult to imagine that it could be done in a different way. Even when we build things that work differently, better and easier, it is not always easy to explain the value and get customers to try it. There is a barrier around trust, as money is super-sensitive and for all the right reasons.

So, getting people to just try something else and see if it is better than what they have had before is tricky. Internally it is not difficult to convince people, we are all passionate and aligned behind what we are trying to build and what we are trying to do for customers. And we are very focused on making sure that we earn our customers trust in everything that we do, in how we build our products, in how we make customer service available, in how we deal with money, and in how transparent we are. I think that relationship of trust is the focus in this story and making sure we work to earn it every day.

CCW Europe Digital: It has been recently announced that Monzo will be launching in the US. How do you plan to gain loyalty from a new market?

RR: It is a mix of taking the best of what worked for us a few years ago in the UK, when we just got started, but also using the learnings we had along the way. So, we are starting small in the US, building the product by listening to customers, by engaging with customers. It is very similar to what I described about how Monzo UK started, there are now events in the US, where you can go meet the team, get a card, sign up and have your first Monzo experience in the room.

That also helped us test and understand the market better, so that we can build a product that is really fit for the US market. We want to keep that approach of being close to people and working with a community to get feedback and build the right product for our customers.

CCW Europe Digital: What do you believe is the success driver for Monzo as a FinTech challenger bank?

RR: Honestly, we really care about people loving their bank and the product we have and having the best possible experience with their money. We are focused on solving problems for our customers and improving their relationship with their money. It feels great to be a part of that.