Microsoft offers new small-business resources

Microsoft Monday will begin an eight-country rollout of a new set of online resources and technical support for its small-business customers, a company executive said Friday.

The new offering, called Small Business Plus, is part of the company’s ongoing effort to provide better access to software, support and services for this customer segment, said Doug Leland, general manager for small business in Microsoft’s Worldwide Small and Midsize Solutions and Partner Group.

The resources of Small Business Plus include content and technical support that is personalized using information that a customer provides when signing up for the service. That content and support can be accessed through the Small Business Center Web site, which Microsoft set up in March 2004 as an online portal for its small-business customers. The company has been trying for some time to make its software easier for that segment to deploy and purchase, Leland said.

Small Business Plus will be available in eight countries once the rollout, which begins Monday, is complete on Feb. 2. The offering will go live in the U.S., U.K., Australia and Canada on Monday. It will reach Germany on Jan. 30, the Netherlands on Jan. 31, Italy on Feb. 1 and France on Feb. 2.

Customers can sign up for Small Business Plus for free here. By providing information about their company, small-business customers gain access to a self-service environment that gives them answers to common questions about software products, along with service packs, articles, patches and Webcasts that might be helpful to them, Leland said. The information is customized for companies based on their sign-up information, he said.

Customers also can chat for free with live customer service representatives for quick advice on products, he said. However, if those calls become too lengthy or complicated, an agent will inform a customer they must pay for that kind of chat-based technical support. Small-business customers can purchase that support through Small Business Expert, a yearly subscription service that provides a mix of online chat and over-the-phone technical support, Leland said.

Small Business Expert comes in bronze, silver and gold packages, each with a yearly subscription fee. Bronze packages provide six online chats for $149; silver provides unlimited online chats for $299; and gold combines unlimited online chat support with phone support for $499. New members of Small Business Plus in the U.S. and the U.K. receive the silver package on a free trial basis for 45 days, Leland said.

Before Small Business Plus, small-business customers had to pay $250 for phone-based technical support per incident, he said. While Microsoft offers free technical support for many of its software products, it is not a guarantee for all the products a small company might use, so Small Business Expert is a good deal, Leland said.

Those who sign up for Small Business Plus also are eligible for software product training, as well as business training that will help employees of small businesses apply Microsoft technology to their particular roles in the business, he said. Software training is available for the Office Suite and Office Small Business Accounting products. Business training – which Microsoft partners will help the company provide – will be customized for marketing, management and technology professionals, among other roles.

Chat-based technical support is available through Small Business Support for the following products: Internet Explorer; Outlook Express; Windows Media Player; Office Small Business and Office Pro including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Business Contact Manager and Publisher; Windows Standard Server; and Small Business Server and its components, including Exchange Standard Server, SQL Standard Server, ISA Server, FrontPage and SharePoint services.