How To Use Outlook As A CRM?

Individuals can handle customer information more efficiently through Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Business Contact Manager lets you add contact information, notes, activities, and other information to the contacts section of Microsoft Outlook. 

In addition, Outlook offers tools for organizing customer information under categories and managing customer activity and follow-up work. CRM efforts can be efficiently managed with Microsoft Outlook.

Microsoft does not provide Outlook CRM as a standard product to its users. However, you can easily convert Outlook into a powerful CRM tool to boost your sales results. Microsoft Outlook is primarily a business-oriented email, contact, and calendar management tool that tends to the requirements of most businesses.

If you work in sales, however, you’ll quickly discover that Outlook’s capabilities are not enough to satisfy the needs of your sales position in terms of keeping track of leads, contacts, deals, or pipeline updates.

The good news is that Outlook can be modified to become “Microsoft Outlook CRM.”

1) Microsoft Outlook Customer Manager (Outlook CRM)

Microsoft Outlook Customer Manager is a cloud-based tool provided for free and without extra charges when you have Office 365 Business Premium plan. It is mandatory to upgrade to a Business Premium plan if you don’t have one.

Managing customer relationships can be done right in Outlook without installing or learning anything new through Outlook Customer Manager. The system automatically keeps track of customer details such as e-mails, meetings, phone calls, notes, files, tasks, and deadlines in a timeline right next to your inbox. It is possible to share customer information among your team so that everyone is aware of what is happening. 

However, you should note that Microsoft Customer Manager is only a “light CRM” that converts Outlook into a customer relationship management system. It is recommended to search for an alternative if you are looking for features such as admin control, customized reports, autodialers, mass emails, link tracking, analytics, and automation tools.

2) Prophet CRM

Prophet CRM provides client relationship management through Outlook and other sales functions such as email monitoring, activity tracking, opportunities, dashboards, etc. It also provides cloud and on-premises hosting.

 3) Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM – Outlook CRM

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a complete customer relationship management solution from Microsoft. It is designed for large businesses but has Outlook plug-ins so that Dynamics CRM features can be operated through Outlook.

The software needs to be installed and implemented by your administrator. Due to this and other factors, some users may not find it as easy to use as Outlook Customer Manager or competing tools. However, it is up to you to decide.

Would you like to know what a CRM’s operational components accomplish? Read our blog to find out.