Summary Bullets:

• Zoom CX is a credible option for enterprises looking to transform their customer engagement with omni-channel and AI capabilities.

• Working with a broader partner ecosystem is pivotal for Zoom to win in CX space since this involves workflows and different business applications.

Zoom is well-known for its conferencing solution, which is used extensively in modern workplace, but it has gone well-beyond conferencing in recent years. The core business of Zoom has been the enabler of conversations within the workplace. To go beyond communications, the company sees new opportunities by expanding its role to help enterprises automate workflows during and after conversations (i.e., meetings and phone conversations). This vastly enlarges the value Zoom can deliver to enterprise customers, especially with the application of AI. For example, AI can eliminate many manual tasks such as generating documents from meeting with summaries and next steps, or updating CRM records after a discussion within the sales team.

Taking this concept a step further, conversations can also include external parties including customers and partners. One area that is of great strategic importance for Zoom is around customer experience (CX) – a rapidly transforming space as a result of enterprises striving to enhance CX to gain an upper hand against competition. This expands Zoom scope to help enterprises streamline workflows related to customer engagement, which can happen across customer services, delivery, marketing, and sales functions. The launch of Zoom Contact Center in 2022 was a major step toward building out the Zoom CX portfolio. The company has developed the product ground up, giving it the ability to meet customer demand with speed without the baggage of legacy systems and features. This is especially useful in having AI natively embedded in the platform instead of building a separate stack. Moreover, there should not be separate communications systems for the internal workplace and for the contact center. A key value proposition for Zoom is its common platform to address both scenarios and deliver the same experience.

Zoom Contact Center is an omni-channel solution with a single routing engine. It enables businesses to engage with their customers over channels such as voice, video, SMS, and chat. In 2023, the company added Zoom Virtual Agent, initially as a chatbot, and now as an agentic AI platform. To close the gap with other contact center offerings, Zoom also added Zoom Workforce Engagement Management, which includes Zoom Workforce Management and Zoom Quality Management. Moreover, it has introduced Zoom AI Expert Assist, a ready-to-deploy AI agent to provide end-to-end interaction guidance to contact center agents. Moreover, Zoom CX Insights provides a conversational intelligence layer to synthesize data across the CX portfolio to provide more accurate insights for faster decision-making. With the aim to simplify workflows, the ability to integrate with third-party applications is crucial. The company is enabling this through Zoom Marketplace, which already supports integration with a wide range of business applications (e.g., Google Workspace, Jira, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, and many more).

While Zoom is a relatively new competitor in the contact center market, it has seen strong traction and winning significant deals. Oracle is the largest customer so far as the company moves its 15,000 global services agents to Zoom and integrates the tools with Oracle’s existing workflows. Zoom also leverages Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to run Zoom CX, which can appeal to enterprises using OCI extensively. There are other customers that Zoom can reference too. National Storage, a self-storage company based in Australia with over 250 centers across Australia and New Zealand, has adopted Zoom Contact Center to connect with customers as well as its centers together. The company is now engaging customers through multiple channels (e.g., chat, email, and video); using Zoom AI to gain insights into customer interactions; and using Zoom for internal meetings and webinars. This highlights the power of having a single platform for both employee and customer engagements. With the system in place, National Storage is also able to further strengthen its CX leveraging AI, for example, using Zoom AI Expert Assist to provide cues to operators during customer interactions so that they can offer the best solutions.

The local government of Nara City (Japan), has also adopted Zoom Phone, Zoom Contact Center, and Zoom Virtual Agent, to replace its legacy PBX and contact center solution. This is part of its efforts to improve citizen services (a population of about 350,000) through its ‘’Nara Digital City Hall’’ initiative and to drive digital transformation within municipal operations. This customer highlights the importance of integration between the cloud-based PBX and the contact center to deliver a seamless experience for employees. AI is a requirement as well. Nara City is looking to use AI features such as call recording, transcription, and summarization to enhance visibility and efficiency of phone operations. It is also leveraging Zoom Virtual Agent for automated voice inquiry response that is available to citizens 24 by 7, and it is using multiple models alongside its proprietary models to meet requirements (e.g., accuracy, compliance, and cost) of different use cases.

Enterprises understand that the delivery of superior CX will involve different business functions that interact with customers along the buying journey. Data and AI will play a key role in delivering the CX magic. But implementation is anything but straightforward. While enterprises see the potential of agentic AI, there are still concerns around data privacy, AI governance, security, and cost. Having the right business culture and skills is equally important. This means that to accelerate the adoption of Zoom CX, Zoom will need to expand its go-to market ecosystem to help enterprises implement the solution with confidence and delivering business values. This is totally different from selling a contact center solution, which traditionally only involves the customer service function. CX specialists, systems integrators, and consulting firms are now playing a more central role in supporting enterprises in their CX transformation.