When digital services fail

The interdependent woes of the Natwest banking app

The interdependent woes of the Natwest banking app

I’ve had my iPhone 7 for, as it turns out, 5 years. (Yes, I know)

As a result of this, (or whatever Apple naughtiness you believe) this morning it is stuck on the apple not-loading screen and no amount of recovery and attempted factory resetting using other Apple devices is going to get it back.

Dead. Phone.

So I go to buy a new phone. Easy enough, until.. it wants me to approve payment — in the Natwest app.

Don’t get me wrong, the Natwest app is awesome and has many magical biometric wizardries contained within, which make all the things talk to all the things and the money flow out of my bank account with wild abandon.

Until it doesn’t work.

This is when the service (not the product) falls down.

So come with me, if you will, down to the 8th circle of Service Hell.

Multiple instances of an app

Well luckily, the Natwest app can be added to multiple devices — hurrah! So let’s use the Work iPhone to do just that.

Easy enough, until they ask for… the code they just texted to my phone. So now I’m locked out of online banking as well. Aces.

Chatbots and call centres

Now it’s 7am and I have no phone. This is what chatbots and international contact centres were designed for, yes?

Once I write “human please” enough times into Cora, the Natwest chatbot, I eventually get a person. Allegedly.

Sadly this person does not understand very much about the 8th circle of hell and so asks me to log in to the account I’m locked out of. I explain that I can’t. That’s ok they say, we’ll send you… a text message.

Well, we know a text message won’t work but that’s ok — call the call centre. On… your phone.

So fortunately I have my Work iPhone, which at least functions as an actual telephone even if I can’t get the app on it.. so let’s see what I can do with that.

Fun with call centres

First off we have the main customer service team. After I explain my circular pit of despair they put me through to the Fraud team.

Well the fraud team’s security proceedures need the app or yet another SMS of course. Alternatively, perhaps I can remember the precise amount and last location that I used chip and PIN — not just a tap — the actual chip and PIN. No, of course not.

Or do I know the amount in my accounts by heart? No, but I would do, if I could look… in the app.

So I make some vague guesses and somehow get through this process. The fraud chap suggested I put my phone’s SIM in my work phone. My work phone is of course is locked down like Fort Knox, so that’s another dead end.

The ultimate undo

And so now I’m sent back to the main customer support team because the only thing left to do, to allow me to even complete the payment on Amazon is… delete everything from my account to do with the App and all of my online banking service. All instances, all accounts, all biometric data associated, a complete wipe of my service identity.

So if this works (and who knows if it will or if I will have to swipe the Wife’s credit card or walk to an Apple store in person) I will get a new phone in the next couple of days and then have to re-set up The Entire App Service on my new device like I’ve not been a Natwest online banking user since the dawn of time.

Designing for edge cases

I can imagine somewhere there’s a design team at Natwest who have not chosen not to prioritise this edge case however how can a service be designed so extensively around a single point of failure — the ability to receive an SMS to a specific phone number — without designing a means of service recovery that is not so completely fatal to the user?

The future of my Natwest app relationship?

So going forward, assuming I’m able to sort this mess out I can see two options: