Office Live: Please Remove The Tips At The Bottom Of The Emails Generated By Contact Us Forms!

For the last month or so, the e-mails that Office Live Small Business generates whenever someone fills out a Contact Us form have the following (or similar) tip at the bottom:

You can automatically save incoming messages and customer contact information by activating your Contact Manager. Activate today: http://home.officelive.com/settings/pages/inprogress.aspx?pkey=BCM&ctag=PrivateSite&purl=%23root%23%2FWebBCM%2Fdefault.aspx&pguid=Home.BCM.

Sincerely,
Your Microsoft Office Live Small Business Team

Granted, it's helpful. But the problem is that whenever I reply to that message, it confuses the hell out of the person reading the reply because he thinks His Microsoft Office Live Small Business Team was somehow involved in this exchange.

I'd be grateful if Office Live Small Business stops appending these tips. 

 


Comments

August 23. 2008 05:56 PM

Sip Chilcot

Thanks for the feedback, I for Office Live Small Business and can provide some clarity here.  

This e-mail text or [quote]Tip[/quote] is automatically attached to the e-mail notification message if you have not activated the Contact Manager, which is free.  The Contact Us form has integration to the Contact Manager and all the Contact Us submission and information will automatically be added to your Contact Manager.  Once you activate Contact Manager, this [quote]Tip[/quote] will go away from the e-mail notifications.

If you go into the Site Designer application for your web site, then right click on the Contact Us form, you will see the properties on how you would like to be notified of new inquiries from your web site

Contact Manager is great feature and allows you to collect customer information and track the relationship over time to help build your business.

Sip Chilcot

August 23. 2008 05:57 PM

Skip Chilcot

Sorry, the correct spelling is Skip Chilcott

Skip Chilcot

August 23. 2008 08:14 PM

acxede

Thanks for the explanation, Skip.

If BCM is active I still get a [i]tip[/i], but it reads:

[i]This message has been automatically saved to the activity history for test test. View this person's contact information and activity history: xxxxxx.officelive.com/.../xxxxxxxxx?ID=xxxx.

Sincerely,
Your Microsoft Office Live Small Business Team
[/i]

My point is that in the past (at least till the end of May '08) whenever someone filled out a contact form, it came in as a run-of-the-mill e-mail message with the sender's address in the [i]reply-to[/i] field and whatever the guy typed as the body of the message. So I'd just reply to it as if replying to an e-mail from the guy.

Now the messages come in as an e-mail from the Office Live team informing me that so-and-so sent me such-and-such message. The [i]reply-to[/i] address is still the sender's address. So when I reply to it, the OL team's message to me (including the URL in my BCM) appears at the bottom of the e-mail. That's what I'm not happy about.

Besides, my contact manager now has information on folks trying to sell me all kinds of contraband; not exactly the kind of people I want to keep tabs on!

So even if I haven't checked the [i] Add new contacts to the Web group in Contact Manager [\i] checkbox on the form, every contact form submission adds an entry to BCM.

acxede

August 27. 2008 03:02 PM

Skip Chilcot

Great feedback axcede, which I will definatley pass on to the group.  

One thing our customers are telling us is that they want more integration and connection between all the compnents of the Office Live Small Business service as this is difficult to acheive without the right skills and expensive systems of larger businesses web sites.    This change is a big step in that direction and our mission of a integrated and connected solution for small businesses.  

The Contact Us form is no longer just a  web form translated to an e-mail message, it is a key component in enabling small businesses to collect and manage customer information and business opportunities to grow their business with new and existing customers.  By expanding this functionality and integration to the Contact Manager, it allows customers to manage the information in the Contact Manager instead of their e-mail inbox.    The upside is that the contact record of the inquiring person is only 1-click away with the link provided in the notification e-mail and you can delete the contact record from that screen.

If you do not wish this information to go to the Contact Manager, then you can disable the integration, however either way the messages around the use of Contact Manager can not be removed systematically.    To remove this text on a reply, you are correct and the user must remove this text during the e-mail response, however it is should only be 1-2 lines of text and a simple process.  

I can understand your feedback about changing some of the functionality and will pass along your feedback and perspective.   Keep the feedback coming, we are listening!

Skip Chilcot

September 1. 2008 11:15 AM

jerry

"This message has been automatically saved to the activity history for .....................Sincerely,
Your Microsoft Office Live Small Business Team"
These message will be always appended in the replied email when I click "reply" to customers. Customers may think what's going on, why  Microsoft Office Live Small Business Team will be invloved in every email between us and our customers. Please remove these messages. Thanks!

jerry!
www.car2tw.com

jerry

Add comment




  Country flag

[b][i][u][quote]
Loading