November 2022 UK Challenger Banks App Performance Snapshot

After a Rockstar Launch in 2021 Chase UK Banking App Struggling with Consistency

The Chase UK Banking App launched in 2021 and experienced a meteoric “rockstar” launch and rise to take second place in the Touchpoint Group Engaged Customer Score ™ (ECS) App Rankings in May 2022.

The story since May when the Chase Banking App ECS reached its peak score of 4.25, like many rockstars, has been of one that has struggled to maintain its top of the charts ranking while experiencing mixed reviews from users. The good news for Chase is that November has seen a turnaround in fortune and the ECS has improved from 3.91 to 412.

A series of rapid app release versions in October appears to have resolved a number of issues users were having with the payments and security features that users were experiencing with versions 1.16.0, 1.16.1, 1.17.1 and 1.18. Customers were making comments such as "issue transferring money", "I can't make payments." “I'm unable to make payments” etc

The latest versions 1.18.1 and 1.19  have resulted in much more positive feedback and  the overall increase in the engaged customer score.

Head of customer intelligence at Touchpoint Group Tony Patrick States: “Chase is certainly back on the right track and consistent focus like they have shown in recent months will no doubt have them competing for top spot with a slowly declining Starling Bank in 2023.

Over a million Banking App Engaged Customer Score (ECS) rankings are tracked by Touchpoint Group each year in their global ECS index. 

Data is updated daily with insights available to identify issues for Operational teams,  monthly reporting for Leadership teams, and a Mobile Customer Experience Analytics (MCXA) report published quarterly for Executive teams to benchmark performance by category and against global leaders.

UK Challenger Bank Banking App Insights Session Transcript

00:00:02 – Glenn: Hello everybody and welcome back to another Touchpoint Group Banking App Insights Session. We're looking at the UK Challenger Banks for the month of November and, Tony Patrick, sometimes it's the little things that make big differences, isn't it? And we're going to have a little focus on Chase. And have a look at a little dip that they had in October, and then coming out of that dip into November - what were those little things that impacted in October that dragged them down and clearly from there, what is it that you need to focus on to fix that and get a good quick turnaround so that you're back on track in your upward trajectory? Over to you, Tony.

00:00:44 –Tony: Great, thanks, Glenn. UK Challengers today so looking at Starling, Monzo, Revolut,  Atom Bank, Monese, Metro and Chase

Let’s just jump straight in and look at what's happened in this period. So first of all, we can see there's a fair bit of movement going on, things going up and down, but there's clearly a rank here, where we've got Monese sitting at the base here sitting around 3 on average. We do see though that Chase UK has actually picked up across time, so they've done really across this time period in there. Starling is always leading at the top there. Although, something to look at next time, they've dropped below 4.5 for the first time in the past year. Revolut is also on the heels of Starling they're closing that gap so potentially like, you know, first quarter of next year there may be a bit of a tussle between those two.

What we're looking at today is Chase UK so, often we look at Major movements but walking in here is what we can find out about why they moved down in October and then pick themselves back up in November. So let's move into that and have a look. 

So first of all, this is the one angle you can look at, this is what actually happened across that time period what did they release? So, one of the things we can see is this period goes from the start of September -this is the past three months essentially- start of September to the end of November and there's probably -there's a few releases here.

One of the ones which was just within the right in the middle of that dip is version 1.16 so we'll have a look at that in a moment as to why that's happened. And let's have a look here at version 1.18 and version 1.19 so they have actually been the cause of that turnaround.

Let's have a quick look though at what's happening in version 1.16. This is more just the vibe, so what are people talking about? What are the major conversations going on?

So: Shocking App, Shocking Experience. There's problems with Approve Payments etc. so, App Issue. Again, clearly there's something going on here. 

“Shocking App” is the center of that attention. But we can actually look at this from a detailed perspective about what journeys, what particular things are going on. So, in here we've got things like App is Crashing and Forced to Login multiple times. Authorizations, Bad Experience. 

There are also Failed Payments and Transactions. So clearly there's a massive problem that Chase would have been aware of and they've gone out and actually made some fix to this.

Looking a version 1.18 and version 1.19 we can see from a similar perspective what we just saw before. First of all, those themes. What's the vibe? What's the broad conversation? It's easy, there's something about a slow update. Okay, interesting that's probably something to look at as well. There's other things going on but, again, you don't get that "Shocking" or that sort of like in-your-face problem. Let's look though at the detail because this is just the broad conversation.

What's actually going on in terms of journey? So, this for me is a massive turnaround. There's some improvement in Security and Login Features although there is still some problems there, but it's still an improvement from what we saw before. A few small things like Slow to Open, and there's things like App Cashback Feature's Not That Good. But again, just gives us an idea there's been that turn around which is great.

Let's have a look though in a bit more detail here, let's move forward a bit here. Let's have a look at now this point here is looking at what has changed in terms of our SURF pillars. Now, our SURF pillars are basically Security and Authentication, Usability, Reliability and Functionality. These are the four key areas you need to perform well on to actually achieve a higher score and here the lower score is better because these are all pain points, you want these as low as you can.

We saw there was an improvement in Security and Authentication in that previous graphic. So that's great, it's an improvement it's gone down from 5.9 to 3.4 but one of the -two of the biggest things on the right though, Reliability and Functionality they were- Reliability like 1 in 5 customers' approvement of Reliability Issues in in October that's actually improved into November.  

Let's have a look at the broad topic of Functional suitability but also Money Transfer Feature and basic things like Checking My Account Balance. So what I've got on the right here is just having a look at this Poor Money Transfer feature which you think it should work, it's the basic function of an app and we can see here have been left almost to make payments "due to the service being down", "issue transferring money". Things here "I can't make payments." "Left, I'm unable to make payments, etc" we can see here this is version 1.16 this is the one we talked about, which is the one where the issue happens. So, clearly this is one point, they've actually fixed their security. But also some basic things like making sure the Money Transfer feature actually works. So, some good turnaround there for Chase.

00:06:24 - Glenn: Great to see that sort of turnaround for Chase and good to see that there is some consistency in the way that they're approaching these things and looking forward to coming back in January and doing a review of 2022 and seeing who the movers and shakers there in the market. Thanks again, Tony. And we'll see you all next time.