Correspondence: Mark Durkin, School of Marketing, University of Ulster, Shore Road, Newtownabbey, Northern Ireland BT37 0QB, UK. Tel: +44 2890 368992; Fax: +44 2890 366872; e-mail: mg.durkin@ulster.ac.uk

¹is presently the Director of Student Marketing at University of Ulster. Formerly Head of Ulster's School of Marketing, he joined academia from a financial services marketing background in 1996, completing his PhD part-time through Loughborough Business School. He has researched aspects of financial services marketing, particularly e-banking, in Ireland, UK, Sweden, USA, Australia and New Zealand. A former Chair of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) in Ireland, he was appointed a fellow of this body in 2003 and in 2006 was named the CIM Marketing Person of the Year in Ireland in recognition of his contribution to marketing education. He is a council member of the NI Chamber of Commerce, a board member of Young Enterprise Northern Ireland (see http://www.yeni.co.uk/) and a member of the Institute of Directors.

²is a senior lecturer in Communication and Advertising at the University of Ulster. She is engaged in research within the financial services, advertising and small business sectors. A particular research interest is the relationship between face-to-face communication and remote, technologically based communication in a financial services context. Her PhD research investigated how small firm owner-managers build networks and use the process of networking to further their businesses.

³is a senior manager with Bank of Ireland, has worked in financial services for over 25 years and has extensive experience in sales and marketing. A chartered marketer, he has an MA in Marketing from the University of Ulster and an MBA from OU Business School. Joe has close links with the University of Ulster and in addition to part-lecturing has sat on a number of cross University–Business fora. Recently, he has provided mentoring support to academics and young entrepreneurs and has worked in helping arts graduates to develop their business ideas.

Received 13 August 2007; Revised 13 August 2007.

Abstract

It has been established that increasing the role of technology in a service organisation can serve to reduce costs and improve service reliability. It is argued, however, that there remains an important role for personalised relationships in the delivery of any service proposition. Throughout this paper both of these perspectives will be discussed and an attempt is made to reconcile these apparently opposing views in the emerging age of technology-enabled remote relationships. Findings from a longitudinal research study with a large UK case bank that focused on the area of remote relationships are revisited and reinterpreted with management from the case bank in question. Through this reflective lens the bank's recent strategic decision to no longer proactively relationship manage its personal customer base is examined. In light of this deliberate relationship disconnection strategy key marketing implications are discussed.