Microsoft is looking to help small businesses to better keep track of their interactions and deals with customers. As such, the company has announced the launch of Outlook Customer Manager, a program that will be part of the Office 365 Business Premium plan.
Those familiar with Microsoft’s higher-end business products, can think of this new service as a very light version of Dynamics. Those of you less familiar with Microsoft nomenclature, can simply think of it as a convenient way to centralize some data on clients and deals.
Outlook Customer Manager, as its name suggests, will be part of the Outlook desktop client, for those on the correct Office 365 plan. It will unify data on clients by keeping tab of your e-mail interactions, notes you write, calendar appointments, and other data spread across Office. It’ll then show you the timeline of your interactions with said client, reminders, and notifications when a deadline or important event is coming up, and recent discussion notes that you wrote down. And, of course, it does this across your entire business for all employees.
There’s also a “Focused” view which only shows the most important clients and deals, alongside the tasks, contacts involved and calendar dates you need to keep in mind.
There's also a mobile app for Outlook Customer Manager, originally destined for iOS only, but coming to other platforms in the future. The mobile version of the app lets you check on client interactions or recent notes. Microsoft describes it as the perfect way to brush up on previous discussions before going into a client meeting.
Outlook Customer Manager is already rolling out to those Office customers who opted into the First Release program and will become more widely available in the next few months. Though limited to the Office 365 Business Premium plan for now, Microsoft says the feature will eventually come to E3 and E5 plans in the future as well.
You can check out more info on Microsoft’s Outlook Customer Manager page.
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