Mediated One-To-One.

The articles you're about to read are, on the surface, optimistic and reassuring screeds. They depict the Web and online banking as presenting significant challenges to financial institutions--but ones that are eminently solvable. And, advise the articles, if the solutions aren't forthcoming

Which is exactly right--as far as it goes. There's something both breakthrough and very retro about suddenly viewing the Internet in terms of our outsourcing. On one hand, seeing cyberspace as an exercise in outsourcing nicely demythologizes it, reminding us that however new the online world is, it does not represent the radical clean break with the past that wired magazine would ha us believe.

On the other hand, throwing outsourcing at the questions posed by Internet feels uncomfortably like the Old Economy trying to bludgeon this cyber thing--if not into submission--into a s that's at least recognizable.

As usual, the truth is found between these extremes. The one certain thing we can say about cyberspace is that it's a melding of old and new. This is the source of its strength--and its deceptiveness. Too many people (and banks) approach the Internet in binary terms: It's either seen as no different than current delivery systems or so radically new that everything we've known up until is, well, wrong.

Because the Internet is a hybrid of past and present, the biggest mistakes in dealing with it invariably occur when we forget or fail to understand the hybrid-ness.

Which brings us to the siren-song solution of outsourcing parts of your bank's online presence--or all of it. Can you do so? Of course. Will it have the tried-and-true dynamics of outsourcing as we've understood it until now? Nope. No matter how deeply your bank wades into outsourcing the online stuff, it must be understood that the institution is dealing with inframediaries (partners that provide critical parts of the Internet infrastructure that stands between your bank and the customer). By their very nature, inframediaries are your collaborators in providing a customer experience.

The good news about using inframediaries is that your bank's online presence will be better than your budgetary and human resources might otherwise allow. But at the same time, your institution no longer wholly owns the all-important customer relationship. At the most basic level, a visit to a website in an exercise in psychological form-and-function. On the Web, the interaction is the experience. Period.

Another way to understand this McLuhan-esque aspect of cyberspace is to imagine that a third party provides all of your tellers and loan officers. In such a circumstance, sales-critical people who weren't part of your bank, but nevertheless representing it, would be interacting daily with customers who would naturally assume they were dealing with genuine bank representatives. Although chock full of potential cost benefits for the bank, such a staffing plan--unless exceptional care was taken--is also a bad customer experience simply waiting to happen. And, when it does, the unlucky customer will be looking balefully at the bank and not Employees-R-Us. Which is probably why your institution doesn't lease its staff.

Now, however, consider your bank's online presence. A good customer experience as it equates to a visit to your website encompasses clean, intuitive design; pages that roll up quickly; site maps that are accurate; links that go somewhere; recognition of returning visitors; a database-driven compilation the customer's current financial products (and the ability to make suggestions based on this on-the-fly knowledge); the ability of customers to customize their online banking environment; email that is replied to quickly; content that is constantly refreshed; and, though often missing, a selection of solutions to customer problems, not an alphabetized list of out-of-context financial products and services.

Chances are, unless your institution is very large, you will be using inframediaries for some or all of the above components of the online customer experience--perhaps you already are. In doing so, your institution will be sharing its control of the customer experience with various, often invisible third parties. This is not co-branding or, in most cases, strategic alliances as we traditionally know them. For banks used to owning the customer experience, the involvement of third-parties results in mediated one-to-one--in relay relationships, if you will.

Pause and consider the "invisibility" factor. When using inframediaries, the goal is to integrate their contributions with those of your bank. Seamless integration has become the Holy Grail of the online world. The more seamless, the better. Which, of course, is just another way of saying you're making the presence of your inframediaries as invisible as possible. After all, it's your bank, and it should get the glory. Fair enough. But when a bad customer experience occurs, it's also going to be the bank out there holding the bag-- even if an inframediary has dropped the ball.

Does this mean banks should steer clear of using inframediaries to get themselves online or enhance their presence there? Certainly not. It simply indicates that financial institutions should approach involvement with inframediaries in a way that differs from traditional outsourcing in the past. It means that you should exercise more caution when screening potential service provider and monitor inframediary contributions in real time.

Ultimately, it is the recognition that pre-Internet service providers were both more limited in their contributions to the bank's business and, to the customer, had more obvious involvement. Their circumscribed and clear collaborations meant that while pre-Internet service providers might dent a bank's image, they were rarely fatal to a customer relationship. If the plastic sign manufacturer provided the lobby with shoddy work, customer relationships remained intact (hopefully) even while you approached another sign maker.

But in cyberspace, inframediaries contributions are not so contained and, if everything's going right, unknown to the customer. Couple this to the fact that the Internet is a holistic place where a site visit is a customer experience, and you begin to realize why new outsourcing strategies are needed.

What do these strategies look like? I'm not certain. The Internet Age, if no longer completely new, is still young enough to be in an improvisational stage. All I do know is that the topography of customer relationships has shifted, necessitating new maps. Like everything else Web-driven, the way banks deal with their inframediaries will be unlike traditional vendor relationships in the past, but, also, not a radical departure. In short, just new enough to keep the unwary confused. So be careful out there....