News

Microsoft's Sales Support Now Offers Online Sales Consultations for Small Businesses

Microsoft on Wednesday announced that the sales support of Microsoft Stores, which launched in 2020, is now being presented as a new and free consultation service for small businesses.

"A new, free one-to-one service that helps small organisations understand their technology needs and their best options for devices and software has been launched by Microsoft," the announcement stated.

However, rather than being new, the consultation service likely is similar to the service that's been available since Microsoft began closing its physical stores back in 2020 in response to the pandemic. Many of its store employees at that time switched over to doing online sales work, using Microsoft Teams for customer connections.

The one-hour consultations offered by Microsoft focus on sales support for Surface devices and Microsoft 365 services. Technical support isn't being offered through this program. However, they do support product setup and deployment after purchase.

"After finding the right business solutions, Microsoft will help the organisation through every step of the setup and deployment process," the announcement promised.

The announcement was directed toward U.K. readers, but this free consultancy program is also available in the U.S., Canada and Australia, according to a FAQ section at Microsoft's U.S. business consultation landing page. The FAQ explicitly stated that Microsoft does not provide technical support with this service.

The free consultancy is available to education buyers, too. Microsoft is also offering 30-minute training sessions on its products with this consultancy.

About the Author

Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.

Featured

  • Microsoft Appoints Althoff as New CEO for Commercial Business

    Microsoft CEO and chairman Satya Nadella on Wednesday announced the promotion of Judson Althoff to CEO of the company's commercial business, presenting the move as a response to the dramatic industrywide shifts caused by AI.

  • Broadcom Revamps VMware Partner Program Again

    Broadcom recently announced a significant update regarding its VMware Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) program, coinciding with the release of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0, a key component in Broadcom’s private cloud strategy.

  • Closeup of the new Copilot keyboard key

    Microsoft Updates Copilot To Add Context-Sensitive Agents to Teams, SharePoint

    Microsoft has rolled out a new public preview for collaborative "always on" agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot, bringing enhanced, context-aware tools into Teams channels, meetings, SharePoint sites, Planner workstreams and Viva Engage communities.

  • Windows 365 Cloud Apps Now Available for Public Preview

    Microsoft announced this week that Windows 365 Cloud Apps are now available for public preview. This aims to allow IT administrators to stream individual Windows applications from the cloud, removing the need to assign Cloud PCs to every user.