Nine months since first deploying artificial intelligence (AI) in its product set, Zoom Video Communications has launched an AI-powered, open collaboration platform called Zoom Workplace and introduced expansions to help reimagine teamwork in AI Companion.
Explaining the rationale for the launch, Zoom’s chief product officer, Smita Hashim, said the company had seen the positive impact AI Companion has had on its business and customers, and noted that the new product would transform how people work by freeing up precious time for collaborative teamwork.
“Zoom Workplace with AI Companion will help solve real customer problems by bringing the core collaboration solutions into a single AI-powered platform to help improve productivity, efficiency and the overall workday, all within the Zoom experience users trust and love,” she said.
Zoom claimed Workplace would deliver new innovations to help businesses reimagine teamwork, facilitate connections, improve productivity and optimise flexible work experiences. It is built to elevate the Zoom experience with Zoom AI Companion so that all employees can be more productive, collaborate better and enhance their skills.
An open platform that enables customer choice, Workplace will support Zoom’s application programming interfaces, software development kits and more than 2,500 integrations in the firm’s App Marketplace to make it easy for customers to integrate the application into existing tech or integrate users’ favourite apps into the platform.
With the introduction of Zoom Workplace, it is also improving the user experience, including the ability for hosts to add customised virtual meeting backgrounds to tailor the feel or focus of the meeting.
“With Zoom, there aren’t any challenges with implementing complex tools, so we can focus on engaging our employees and collaborating on the work that matters,” said Diofanto Rosales, vice-president of digital workplace and IT infrastructure at Flex. “Zoom Workplace will bring all our essential work tools together in a single app, making it easier than ever to get work done.”
AI Companion innovations include Ask AI Companion, an enhancement of the digital assistant that will help users prepare for their workday across Zoom Workplace; AI Companion for Zoom Phone; and additional capabilities for Team Chat and Whiteboard. All AI Companion features will continue to be included at no additional cost with the paid services in eligible Zoom user accounts.
Zoom Phone now has AI Companion capabilities to help make calls and follow-up more productive. Users can request a post-call summary and next steps, so they can focus on the conversation instead of taking notes. If they miss an important call, voicemail prioritisation helps elevate urgent messages, moving them to the top of the queue, and voicemail task extraction delivers actions from voicemails.
Ask AI Companion will provide a new way to interact with AI Companion across the Zoom platform. Users are said to be able to enhance their productivity and be better prepared for their workday by being able to gather, synthesise and share information from Zoom Meetings, Mail, Team Chat, Notes and Docs, among other applications.
Zoom also announced customer experience enhancements to its Contact Center solution to help businesses strengthen customer relationships and leverage real-time AI-powered insights to improve live agent engagements.