In a move towards enhancing collaborative workspaces, Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZM) has unveiled a suite of innovative solutions at Zoomtopia 2023, its annual event, held on October 3, 2023, in San Jose, California. The company, renowned for its video conferencing platform, has introduced new products and features, all underpinned by advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities, aimed at streamlining work processes through effective communication and collaboration tools.
One of the standout introductions is Zoom Docs, a modular, AI-powered workspace designed to facilitate documentation, project and data management, and the creation of tables, wikis, tasks, and more. Scheduled to be generally available in 2024, Zoom Docs promises a next-generation collaborative experience, integrating seamlessly with Zoom and third-party apps, thereby enabling teams and individuals to create, collaborate, manage projects, and stay organised with ease.
Zoom’s CEO, Eric S. Yuan, emphasised the importance of effective collaboration and communication tools as work continues to evolve and present new challenges. He stated, “At Zoom, we’re grounded in doing what’s right and caring for our customers, and we understand that business leaders are faced with new obstacles every day.” Yuan highlighted the company’s commitment to evolving their platform in ways that empower limitless human connection and solve real business problems, amidst navigating hybrid work, improving engagement and collaboration, leveraging generative AI, and simplifying IT solutions.
Zoom AI Companion: A New Dimension in Intelligent Assistance
The Zoom AI Companion, a generative AI digital assistant, has been introduced with new Whiteboard capabilities and is expanding its reach to new industry customers, including those in higher education and healthcare sectors. The AI Companion, which is included at no additional cost for paid users on eligible accounts, offers a range of functionalities such as aiding users to catch up on ongoing meeting discussions, summarising lengthy chat threads, composing emails in Zoom Mail, and more. Furthermore, it can generate ideas on a digital whiteboard and organise them into categories, enabling teams to commence work more efficiently.
Zoom’s platform, which is purpose-built for hybrid, remote, and in-office work, has unveiled several innovations to enhance employee engagement and facilitate hybrid work. Workvivo, an employee engagement and communications solution acquired by Zoom earlier this year, provides new ways to keep employees informed, engaged, and connected in the current hybrid work model. Workvivo users will soon be able to access the platform directly through the Zoom desktop client.
Enabling Flexible Collaboration in the Hybrid Work Era
In addition to suggesting where people can sit to be close to key collaborators, Zoom will be adding a Wayfinding feature to its Workspace Reservation next year. This feature provides a map to the reserved seat and allows users to review their path on their mobile device when they’re in an unfamiliar office location, making it easier to find their desk. Moreover, Zoom has introduced presence indicators and location information with My Office View in Huddles, which is scheduled to be available in 2024, to inform users when their colleagues are in a virtual Huddle or in the physical office.
Zoom has also streamlined the pre-meeting process with products like Calendar, Mail, Team Chat, and, most recently, Zoom Scheduler. With the latest features available in Zoom Scheduler, users can incorporate single-use booking links, add customised booking page logos, and add multiple account support. Soon, users will be able to incorporate unique schedules of availability per host, delegate support, and integrate Salesforce with Scheduler to seamlessly link meeting records from Zoom Scheduler in Salesforce automatically.
Strengthening Customer Relationships with AI-Powered Solutions
Zoom’s AI-powered customer experience (CX) solutions ensure that customer-facing teams have what they need in one place to support and engage customers, regardless of their location. For customer support agents and supervisors, AI Expert Assist utilises generative AI to streamline contact centre workflows by providing contextual, real-time actions and auto-surfacing useful customer and knowledge base information. The agent features will be available in late Q4, and the supervisor features will be available in Q1.
To facilitate personalised connections, speedier resolutions, and increased long-term loyalty, Zoom Virtual Agent and Zoom Contact Center will integrate with two popular Meta digital messaging apps, WhatsApp and Messenger, in the coming months. Event managers will also receive better support around event prep and live event execution with the help of generative AI in Zoom Events through AI-composed event email invitations and lobby chats, available in the coming months, and sessions, available next year.
