There was an interesting piece by Jessica Vascellaro in the Technology supplement of today’s Wall Street Journal. The title says it all, “Why Email No Longer Rules….and what that means for the way we communicate.”

The primary thesis:

• Old-school email is a passive way to communicate, more like a letter, and has been overrun by more information than the technology can manage.
• It will be replaced by more active services (e.g., Twitter, Facebook) that are akin to a conversation with filtering technology to keep noise levels down.

But Techcrunch’s MG Siegler’s take on the matter is even more profound. He argues that the winning technology will be something that combines both active and passive communication, such as Google Wave (see inset; short video explanation here). Users will be able to choose between active or passive, or anything in between, depending on the situation.

Relevance for Netbankers
The passive vs. active communication metaphor is a good one for banking too. Passive banking is the old way of doing things. We waited for our monthly statement, balanced the account, and walked in to the branch or called customer service if there was a problem, usually many weeks after the fact.

Passive banking is not a bad thing. As long as there are no problems or financial shortfalls, it’s the desired state for most customers. 

Telephone banking, then online banking, made it much easier to keep closer tabs on your account. Instead of reviewing transaction activity once per month, most users log in at least once per week to review activity. This helps ease anxiety during the intervals between looking at your data.  

But it’s still passive in the sense that a user deals with banking only when the choice is made to log in. And that passive nature limits the usefulness of online banking in situations where a user needs to pay attention NOW! For example, security issues, low-balance alerts, over-budget warnings, and so on.

Enter mobile banking. With text messages or direct-to-the-phone alerts, users can have an always-on, or active, connection to their accounts. This is great for those infrequent, yet urgent, events such as authorizing an unusual card transaction.

But most users will want to be in active banking mode as little as possible. So the challenge for financial institutions will be to make it easy for mobile users to balance “active banking” (alerts, warnings) with “passive banking” (logging in, requesting more data, changing settings and preferences).

Ultimately, companies that well manage this communication challenge will have customers for life.

Notes: For more info on mobile banking, see our Online Banking Report: Mobile Banking via iPhone (March 2009) as well as our earlier reports on Mobile Banking (Feb 2007) and Mobile Payments (April 2007).