Study: First Contact is Key Opportunity to Win Customers More Often

Study of 260 business-to-business buyers welcome 'open contact' and appreciate 'guarranteed response'

Northborough, MA October 16, 2007 - Brockmann & Company released its latest independent, self-funded report on business-to-business buyers' perspectives on first contact with a vendor. The report, entitled "First Contact: Using Email to Win Customers More Often" reviews buyer preferences for communications services whenever they need to reach a vendor for the first time. The report also reviews the effectiveness of various techniques for responding to customer first contact.

Peter Brockmann, President and Research Director of Brockmann & Company said, "Every customer contact is a moment of truth. But, the first contact is probably the most important moment of truth. That's because the prospect has done the research, discovered how to contact the vendor and made the initial communication attempt. How does your company respond to that opportunity? How your company responds will contribute to the sale, or take away from it."

This report provides recommendations for marketers, webmasters and email administrators that showcase buyer reaction in terms of frustration comparisons and brand perceptions.

Some of the report findings include:

• Human accessibility on the website is important to buyers since it increases brand
• perceptions for 83% of buyers. It is recommended that webmasters should enable ‘open contact’ for sales and support professionals or executives. 
• Unsolicited tele-marketing has greater responsiveness rates than unsolicited email or leaving voicemail.
• A vendor using challenge-response technology has a more positive brand impression than a vendor catching customers’ email in spam filters, or a vendor that ignores first contacts altogether.

Overall, enterprises need to review their inbound email management procedures to assure that the highly valuable first contact email interactions are never lost and always quickly and appropriately handled. Empowering email or web form access off the website is not enough. Marketers must also allow buyers to reach the firm through the classic telephone call, which
continues to be useful to many buyers as a first contact method.

The First Contact Report is available for a limited time for free at http://www.brockmann.com/

About Brockmann & Company

Brockmann & Company is a consulting & advisory firm serving high tech equipment & application vendors and service providers. Clients accelerate growth through customer research & thought leadership. Our motto: "In God we trust, all others bring data." Learn more at http://www.brockmann.com.