Hi Philip!! 👋😀

Thank you for your feedback and proposal over this.

I think this indeed could be an interesting thing to look at. Let's see what other bunqers think of it 🤔!

It sounds like a plan. But let's not forget that support staff are often multi language. There are Dutch, English, Italian, French, German and Spanish-speaking. Even African if I'm not mistaken :)

I always start to talk English when I contact support. It would be handy if I could see when a support expert also can speak (Uhh type) Dutch :)

So thumbs up for your idea 💡

Agree, maybe a few flags next to their name. Or the first question when opening the chat could be if the person has a preference for a language.

Polish

Been using English since they days before bunq introduced support for German. Not sure which way would be the best, but just some thoughts / options that came to my mind:

1. Try to assign / "match" support person depending on the language that is used in the app (like you're already using the app's - or in effect phone's - language preference for personalization of payment cards)

2. Don't limit to English and Dutch. bunq is actively targeting Germany/Austria, Italy and Spain. Keeping in mind that we're dealing with technical terms here, even users with advanced English might not be familiar with all banking/payments terms. Support interaction could be much more efficient if you have a "match" in a third language.

3. Have a setting for customer's language preferences in customer profile. Maybe that'd be "better" / more efficient in some cases than just defaulting to English. For instance, Spanish language speakers might be more proficient in Italian and vice versa, as opposed to English, due to higher degree of mutual intelligibility between these two languages, especially in writing (even higher for Spanish and Portuguese). Luxembourgish speakers will often be more well-versed in both French or German than English, etc...

Ik typ altijd Nederlands en als er antwoord in het Engels komt met de vraag of dat akkoord is gewoon “Nee, liever Nederlands” typen en dan komt er vanzelf een Nederlandstalig bunqer op de chat.

Thanks for thinking along! We'll check it out 😄

One of the biggest problems being a foreigner in the Netherlands is when things are blocked in Dutch because I am physically in the Netherlands. I hate that huge companies like Amazon or Microsoft link my physical location to the language I speak. ABN Amro is the only Dutch bank that has a web interface and terms and conditions on English. So all of us non Dutch speakers use ABN. I was just telling an Irish friend about Bunq and the first question she asked.. Is it in English? This is a huge selling point for Bunq.

Absolutely true!

Our first language is English (in our communication, app, services, support and even in our office).

Of course, we'll also do our best to help out in anyone's native language as well 😄

In my personal experience with German banks they rarely if ever provide as good of a customer service as BUNQ which is a breath of fresh air, as if you're not dealing with a bank. English (I'm from Germany) is great and fairly universal. Just a comparison most online banks such as consistent (German only), N26 (German mostly, some English) are far behind BUNQ. I love the fact that English is the lingua franca at BUNQ plus Dutch. It seems to me the most Universal way for a EU-wide service.

I meant Comdirect above ^

I just created my bunq account. If you ask me you could ask me the question which types of languages I speak fluently in creation proces.

I see two options:

1. If I don't speak english fluently dont match me up with a english support member.

So when I reach support and there are no avaible support member in my language of choice, I could get a error 'there are no dutch supportmembers are available do you want to ask your questions in english?' etc

2. The flag idea of OP, only show me flags of languages I picked in the creation proces.

Of zorg er gewoon voor dat alle support medewerkers Nederlands spreken, wat mij vrij normaal lijkt.

I agree on both suggestions 👍

And of course the name of ‘bunq’ itself is English-first: pronounced in English it sounds like ‘bank’ in Dutch. 🌈

Ik zou bunq wel willen aanraden als bank bij familie en vrienden, maar van sommigen weet ik dat zij een "hekel" hebben aan de "verengelsing" van de Nederlandse maatschappij.

Zou het een optie zijn om bij de inschrijving als bunq-klant al aan te geven in welke taal/talen men wil communiceren?

bunq is internationaal actief. Dus alleen maar mensen die ook Nederlands spreken vind ik zelf niet zo logisch. Uiteraard zijn er zat Nederlands sprekende mensen aanwezig om vragen te beantwoorden. Net zo goed zijn er mensen beschikbaar voor de andere talen zoals Spaans, Duits, etc. 😁 Kan je altijd om vragen als je liever in het Nederlands geholpen wilt worden, al ben ik met je eens dat het op zich een mooi idee zou zijn als je direct iemand krijgt van de taal van je voorkeur. 🙂

If you're bothered about writing the same question in two languages, why don't you just assume it's an international bank and English will always be understood?