Microsoft Customer Manager is designed to help small businesses:
Use Customer Manager to track potential business opportunities and analyze invoice and payment records. You can also create and store records of e-mail messages, phone calls, letters, and bulk mailings. Plus, you can integrate your Customer Manager data with other Office programs, simplifying the way you work and making it easier to access and analyze information.
Overview
Customer Manager evolved from Microsoft Small Business Tools Customer Manager 2000. Customer Manager 2002, however, is quite different from its predecessor in the ways it enables you to access and manage your business information.
Customer Manager runs from within Microsoft Outlook. When you access Customer Manager for the first time from the Outlook Tools menu, a wizard guides you through the steps for creating a new database for your company. Once your company database has been created, you can open Customer Manager folders as you would any folder in Outlook.
Basic Features of Customer Manager
Customer Manager has seven default folders.
Communications Folder Customer Manager can automatically create a new record, or communication item any time you make a phone call to a customer or send an e-mail message, letter, or fax. You can type information about the communication, attach items, and track the time and date of the communication. The communication item is then linked to the customer or account record. The Communications folder displays communications for all accounts and customers.
Customers Folder Use the Customers folder to display names, phone numbers, addresses, and other crucial customer information. You can import contact lists from other programs, including Microsoft Outlook, into Customer Manager. You can also use your customer list to start Microsoft Word or Microsoft Publisher mail merge.
Direct Mail Lists Customer Manager provides a list of links to preferred direct mail list provider Web sites, where you can purchase and download direct mail lists. The Direct Mail Lists folder displays the information included in the lists you purchase. You can start Microsoft Word or Microsoft Publisher mail merge from the Direct Mail List folder to send bulk mailings to potential customers.
Invoices and Payments Folders You can import invoice, payment, and customer information from your favorite accounting program into Customer Manager. Customer Manager uses Microsoft Office Web Components to display imported payment and invoice information. By using Office Web Components, you can create interactive PivotTable lists to analyze your data.
Opportunities You can create opportunity items to keep track of your business leads. Opportunities are stored in the Opportunities folder and can be either active opportunities, meaning that the business transaction is in progress, or closed, meaning that the business transaction has been completed.
Notes Use Notes to write questions, ideas,
reminders —anything you would write on notepaper. Notes are also useful for storing bits of information you
might need later, such as directions or text you want to reuse in other items or documents. Notes are linked to the associated customer or account.