Will’s head must be pretty warm with the many different hats he wears in his day-to-day work here at Monzo! He’s currently coordinating the rollout of the Monzo current account.
Tell us about what you do here?
My job title is Business Operations but my role is pretty varied. I’ve worked in lots of different areas of the business from customer support to PR (I used to be a journalist) and I’m now focusing on coordinating the rollout of the Monzo current account.
I’ve been managing the payment schemes such as Bacs (who offer direct debits) and CASS (Current Account Switch Service). There are certain things we need to do to ‘go live’, fix issues, or gain additional rights with particular payment schemes. It’s part of my job to learn as much as we can by doing things manually and then look at how we can automate these processes to help our customers as we scale.
I’m working closely with Jonas, our CTO, to project manage the current account rollout - making sure we’re building the right things and working together as a company to meet our shared goals. I’m also working on the Customer Operations side of the current account, orchestrating the support we’re offering to customers along with the accompanying procedures and processes - a lot of which are new.
What were you doing before you worked at Monzo?
I founded my own startup, a journalism platform called The News Hub. Having worked as a journalist before, I had big plans to save the news industry. It’s still something I feel quite passionate about.
Looking back, if I’d worked at Monzo before I started The News Hub, I think it would have helped me hugely. Some of the things I’ve learnt at Monzo have definitely given me some insight into what I should have done differently - the most important of which, as simple as it sounds, is to build something that customers truly want. When you’ve got that then the magic happens.
On a day-to-day basis, who do you work with and how does the team run?
I’m a COp (customer operations), but because I’m focusing on the current account rollout, I sit with the Core team who are working on the integrations at the heart of the current account. I’m a bit removed from the day-to-day responsibilities of COps at the moment but that will change as more COps start servicing current account customers.
I really love how varied my role is. It’s great getting to know and work with other teams. I’m constantly bowled over by what they’re producing and it’s awesome to watch this all come together.
What are the main challenges you encountered with the current account rollout?
In a word - information! There is so much detailed information held across various teams which is constantly changing and I need to keep track of it. Trying get to that knowledge without taking up too much of people’s time has been challenging.
There’s nothing in particular that scares me about the rollout - there’s just a lot of work to be done 🙂
If you weren’t at Monzo, what would you be doing?
I’m attracted to organisations with huge ambitions - companies that want to change the lives of millions of people - so I would hope to be working for a company with similar horizons.
Either that, or the polar opposite - sitting on a beach somewhere writing a screenplay (something which I’m also working on at the moment!)
What is the most valuable thing you’ve learnt while you’ve been here.
Not sure this answers the question but perhaps the thing I value the most is that we try to be world class at everything. I mean everything. It’s not just about our product, or our people - every little area of the company is considered. And that makes it a wonderful, inspiring place to work.
Tell us one unexpected thing about you.
I can remember the meal when I got fat.