How to manage customer contacts

[preuley30]

Hi everyone

I'm searching for a best practice method for managing customer contacts within M365 natively.

We have a small company with around ten peoples. So, the question is now, how can we manage the customer contacts for this company? They solved it now with a separate M365 User that contains all customer contacts. And everyone has this separate User mapped into outlook, so they can access the contacts book from this user. But this is not very practicable.

The main problem with this solution is, that they don't have these contacts in their own personal contacts book, which results into that there are no contacts in Teams. When a customer calls, they see only the phone number and not who's calling. The same problem applies to the Teams Mobile App.

I've googled so much and nearly every solution I can find is either a third-party customer contacts manager or a big boy CRM like the Dynamics 365 one, but you can't do this pricing for a small business.

Is there really no simple solution from Microsoft for this? Or how do you manage your customer contacts?

Thanks, regards.

[#2]

Hello,
create a distribution list Customers and add the customer contacts there.

Update: I mean the distribution list should be created here: Exchange Admin Center > Recipients > Groups

[#3]

@preuley30 Happy Workday to you.

Respectfully, I don't think creating a distribution list will resolve your issue unless you share it with others. I found Microsoft's Contact Sharing documentation, an alternative method for you and your team. This method, too, has its pros and cons.  

You can share your contacts with specific users using only MS Office Outlook. However, Outlook for the web does not support this feature.  

Resource: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/troubleshoot/calendaring/how-to-share-calendar-and-contacts...

I also found an article titled, Convert a user mailbox to a shared mailbox. I was hopeful. This option has its advantages and disadvantages as well. So, therefore, I don't recommend it for a small business. There were too many variables that may be problematic long term. Here is the article anyway. 

 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/email/convert-user-mailbox-to-shared-mailbox?vi...

I searched for "simple" Outlook Contacts Sharing Add-ons. I came across Pobuca in Office 365 AppStore. After investigating the product reviews, I don't recommend this product. I struck out again. 

https://www.capterra.com/p/148335/Pobuca-Connect/reviews/

In summary, I didn't provide you with the best solution. At least, you know which product Not to Use. Sorry, I wish I was more helpful.