Microsoft Corp. has announced the launch of Microsoft Sales Viva, a seller experience application that builds on the existing Viva platform released last year.
Viva Sales enriches any CRM system with customer engagement data from Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams, and leverages AI to provide personalised recommendations and insights for sellers to be more connected with their customers. This helps sellers more seamlessly personalise their customer engagements toward faster deal closure.
Viva Sales enables sellers to capture insights from across Microsoft 365 and Teams, eliminate manual data entry, and receive AI-driven recommendations and reminders. It streamlines the seller experience by surfacing the insights with the right context within tools salespeople already use, saving sellers time and providing the organisation with a more complete view of the customer.
“The future of selling isn’t a new system. It’s bringing the information sellers need at the right time, with the right context, into the tools they know, so their work experience can be streamlined,” said Judson Althoff, executive vice president and chief commercial officer at Microsoft. “Empowering sellers to spend more time with their customers has been our goal — and we’ve done that by reimagining the selling experience with Viva Sales.”
“Sellers rely on digital collaboration and productivity tools to connect with customers and close deals, but a lot of the insights they uncover with these tools don’t make it into the CRM,” said Paul Greenberg, founder and managing principal, The 56 Group. “Microsoft is taking on this challenge by offering a solution that complements the CRM. Viva Sales automates the busy work, captures critical information about the customer and helps sellers get the job done.”
Viva provides an integrated employee experience platform that brings together communications, knowledge, learning, goals and insights to empower every person and team to be their best from anywhere.
As sellers are working, they can tag customers in Outlook, Teams or Office applications like Excel, and Viva Sales will automatically capture it as a customer record, layered with all relevant data about the customer.
Powered by data and AI, Viva Sales recommends next steps to progress a customer through the sales funnel, prioritises work and next steps, and enables sellers to access full history and customer interaction materials.
It also uses Context IQ, announced last fall, to ensure relevant content is connected across Microsoft apps and services — like Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 — so sellers save time and stay in the flow of work.
