What was hot, now is not

Sometimes it’s difficult to believe that technology invented during my lifetime is being retired in my lifetime.

No, I’m really not that old. But things are speeding up!

No, I’m not slow. But technological changes are moving faster and faster, driven by innovation and an appetite for all things new.

Of course, I have been accused of providing way too much background information so in this blog I will pay tribute to the criticism and get right to the point.

“Telephone Banking” also known as “VRUs” (voice response units) are out!

That’s right, and you heard it here. More and more financial institutions are choosing internet solutions over telephone banking. We see this trend continuing to build.

Hanging up on tele-bank

The smart phone and device-agnostic internet banking products are replacing the tele-bank. Furthermore, financial institutions are electing not to upgrade telebanking systems and choosing to just monitor the declining volume.

Each institution is different. But sooner or later, when the volume is low enough, they will send out a notice to customers that they are going to sunset the service soon.

Another strategy that we see most often is when an institution elects to change its core vendor. Voila, the phone service is gone and they direct their customers to a new, user-friendly and device-agnostic internet banking platform.

This is not to say that all banks suddenly decide to pull the plug. Some choose to let the tele-bank slowly decline. This is fine too. We do see the no tele-bank trend growing.

Pattern that repeats

What used to be hot is no longer, and the new hotness has stuff you never even thought possible, like check images… Yeah, that’s another blog!

Maybe the Beatles were looking beyond the Magical Mystery Tour when they wrote the song, “Hello-Goodbye”?

No matter how you read it, I just couldn’t “Let It Be”!

—The Wombat!