With Office 365, we’re eager to help your small business achieve more. That’s why we are expanding the value of Office 365 to include not only essential productivity and collaboration tools, but also new services to help you run your business. The launch of Bookings earlier this year introduced a new way to schedule appointments with your customers. Today, we are adding a new tool to help you manage your customer relationships more effectively.

As a business owner, you know that getting repeat business starts with knowing your customers well, remembering the conversations you’ve had, and following through on their requests. That can be a challenge when you have many customers to keep track of and not enough time in the day. To make it easier for you to track and grow your customer relationships, we are introducing a new Office 365 service called Outlook Customer Manager.

Outlook Customer Manager gives you a complete view of your interactions with each customer, helps you track tasks and deals in progress, and surfaces timely reminders. You can stay on top of customer relationships right from Outlook, with no need to install or learn separate tools.

Now included at no extra cost in the Office 365 Business Premium plan, Outlook Customer Manager is a cloud-powered solution designed especially for small businesses. And as your business needs grow, you can move to Dynamics 365 to take advantage of enhanced customer information, process efficiency and consistency, and deeper financial and customer insights.

Customer information in one place—without busy work

Trying to keep up with all the information and tasks from emails, meeting invites, call logs, Excel sheets, handwritten notes and other team members can get in the way of more important work. That’s why Outlook Customer Manager automatically organizes customer information—such as emails, meetings, calls, notes, files, tasks, deals and deadlines—in a timeline next to your inbox.

See customer information next to your inbox so you can act on it right away.

The information in the timeline is automatically gathered from the email, calendar and call log data from your Office 365 environment, minimizing the need to manually enter data about your customer interactions. With all your customer information gathered in one place, you can spend less time entering data, or searching for it in various places, and more time with customers.

Never miss what’s important

Within the busy day of a business owner, it’s easy to forget about items that need follow-up—or worse, fail to fulfill important commitments to a customer. Outlook Customer Manager helps you stay on top of opportunities and commitments by surfacing timely reminders, letting you associate tasks with a contact, company or deal, and listing deals by stage, close dates, priority and amount. To help you prioritize your time, the system automatically presents a Focused list of your most important customers and deals.

Dive in for a detailed view of your customers and deals, and see timely reminders.

Get everyone on the same page

At a small business, everyone pitches in for customers. But when several team members talk to a customer, it can quickly get complicated to keep track of all the communication. With Outlook Customer Manager, you can choose to share customer information with your team so everyone is on the same page.

This means the next time an employee is out sick, other team members can answer a call from their customers with all the needed information at their fingertips—from notes from recent customer calls to upcoming meeting dates, and from deal stage information to the name of that customer’s dog.

Access it all on the go

Get on-the-go access.

Work doesn’t always happen in front of a desk, which is why Outlook Customer Manager has a mobile app that gives you quick access to the same customer information you’ll see at your desktop. You can check recent communication right before meeting with a customer, jot down a quick note after a meeting or scan a business card to quickly create a new business contact—all in a few swipes on your phone.

The mobile app is initially available for iOS, and over time we will bring it to other mobile platforms.

Simple to use

Outlook Customer Manager is accessible in one click from the home tab in your Outlook inbox—so you don’t need to install any new software or spend days training your team to get them started. Because your data stays in Office 365, you don’t waste valuable time setting up connectors to other software or services, or managing separate products.

Get started in one click.

Getting started with Outlook Customer Manager

Outlook Customer Manager is now rolling out to Office 365 Business Premium customers, starting with those opted into First Release and continuing worldwide in the coming months. Once it has rolled out to your Office 365 account, you will see an icon for it in the home tab in Outlook 2016 for Windows. Just click the icon to get started. If you want early access, please see this page for more information on how to join the First Release program for Office 365.

We are excited to see how Outlook Customer Manager helps you stay on top of customer relationships and grow your business. As you use Outlook Customer Manager, please tell us what you think by providing feedback in our feedback forum.

Frequently asked questions

Q. Which Office 365 subscriptions include Outlook Customer Manager?

A. Outlook Customer Manager is available with an Office 365 Business Premium subscription. We are working to also bring it to E3 and E5 subscriptions in the future.

Q. When will Outlook Customer Manager be available?

A. Outlook Customer Manager is rolling out to Office 365 Business Premium subscribers, starting with those in First Release and continuing worldwide in the coming months. If you want early access, please see support article for more information on how to join the First Release program for Office 365.

Q. How do I access Outlook Customer Manager?

A. An icon for Outlook Customer Manager will appear in the home tab in Outlook 2016 for Windows as soon as it is rolled out to your account. Click the icon to get started.

Q. Where can I get more information or give feedback?

A. Please see this support article for more information. You can share feedback with us in our feedback forum.