In order to boost their competitive edge against Microsoft Teams, Zoom will release a new feature next year allowing users to collaboratively edit documents, like Alphabet Inc.’s Google Docs, but what differentiates this tool is its capability to summarise and include information from meetings by employing AI.
Chief Product Officer Smita Hashim said in an interview that the new AI tools will be bundled for free.
This tool could increase revenue for a company that benefited from the pandemic but has since plateaued, with analysts expecting sales to increase less than 2% in the coming quarters.
Recently, Zoom’s strategy to renew growth included providing a more extensive suite of business tools outside of video meetings, with features like Workvivo’s employee communication service, its office phone service, which rakes in around $500 million per year, and its customer service centre.
All of which Morgan Stanley analyst Meta Marshall characterise as “encouraging stats.”
However, Microsoft’s Teams remains a worthy and formidable opponent.
On that front, Zoom has raised issues the company has with Microsoft to U.S. and European Union regulators regarding how the tech giant has unfairly boosted its competitiveness with its preference for its product through design and price bundling.
According to Zoom executives and some financial analysts, the majority of the public prefers Zoom’s videoconferencing app better than Teams. Still, Zoom has only about 7% of the market for communication and collaboration software as of the first quarter of the year.
Microsoft, however, had 42%, according to industry analyst IDC.
“The quality of Zoom is just incredible — it is just heads and shoulders above anyone else,” Hashim said.
According to Hashim, many still prefer Zoom even though customers have licenses for multiple videoconferencing solutions.
To boost growth and capitalise on that edge, the videoconferencing titan is testing other new offerings like scans recognising the “nonverbal cues”, adding interactive virtual objects into meetings, according to patent filings.
“There’s a lot of technical innovation that happens,” said Hashim.
Additionally, Zoom has already introduced other free AI features, such as call summarization and message drafting.
“We are beginning to see that customer interest and customer adoption continues to go up,” Hashim said.
“The focus right now is bringing more and more value to customers through these kind of cross-product journeys.”
