The latest release wave for the Zoom Contact Center is here, and it includes 30 new features and enhancements.
Many of these are brick-in-the-wall announcements as Zoom builds a platform worthy of its rocketing CCaaS growth rates.
For instance, there is an upgrade to email transcript management, new visibility of the agent queue, and improvements to the platform’s native video SDK.
However, the CCaaS platform has many more eye-catching or – as Iqbal Javaid, Head of CX Solution Engineering EMEA at Zoom, puts it – “jaw-dropping” additions.
For starters, there is a Next Best Action capability that provides agents with personalized, real-time recommendations during interactions via the platform’s native AI Companion.
System admins can bolster this feature by configuring rules – under the AI Expert Assist settings – to trigger actions based on live changes in customer intent and other variables.
Sharing more in a LinkedIn post, Javaid stated:
Next Best Action recommendations aim to guide inexperienced agents towards desired outcomes and improved customer experiences.
In addition, the AI Companion can now proactively share relevant knowledge base articles to accelerate live customer conversations.
Such innovations help simplify the agent experience and are crucial, as Zoom aims to leverage its reputation for easy-to-use software in the complex contact center world.
New Translation & SMS Features
Another helpful new agent feature included in the release is automatic message translation for multilingual support.
Think of this as a bidirectional language filter for digital channels, allowing customers and agents to receive and respond to customer messages in their chosen language.
Such applications are crucial to support vulnerable customers, like refugees new to a country. With this, they can receive proper guidance in their native tongue.
Yet, it’s also ideal for global enterprises looking to build a follow-the-sun contact center and leverage agents from across the globe as efficiently as possible.
Zoom’s offering here appears similar to those offered by its fellow fast-paced CCaaS innovators, like Five9. Yet, the next frontier of this technology is real-time voice translation.
Currently, such applications are only near real-time, resulting in stilted voice experiences. However, with the latest developments in multi-modal LLMs, Zoom and its industry rivals may soon make seamless voice translation possible.
Meanwhile, Zoom now supports SMS numbers for the UK and Ireland. As a result, businesses can use SMS-enabled mobile phone numbers in both countries via the Zoom contact center.
While that may seem like another “brick-in-the-wall” announcement, Zoom followed it up with SMS activity tracking for omnichannel engagements.
Shedding more light on this feature, Javaid noted:
The SMS log now captures all SMS messages sent and received during customer engagements across all channels, including voice, video, chat, and messaging.
As a result, Zoom maintains full customer context and ensures that its customers can achieve a fully omnichannel customer service experience.
New Additions to the Zoom Contact Center’s Channel Mix
Alongside SMS, Zoom has bolstered its channel mix further with new capabilities for email, WhatsApp, and voice.
Starting with email, users of the Zoom Contact Center may build libraries of email assets. For example, they may create an asset for automated customer replies, which the brand can tweak and publish across flows and queues, preventing manual copying and pasting.
Also, on email, Zoom has added the capability to erase personal information from email transcripts, which is critical for brands with strategies to feed conversational data in GenAI models.
On WhatsApp, Zoom has released message templates. So, for instance, if an agent responds to a message more than 24 hours after the customer sent it, they may leverage a delayed messages template to guide their response.
While that is perhaps best practice, this particular example is also critical so that agents respond to messages without violating WhatsApp reply restrictions.
Meanwhile, on voice, Zoom has released a screen pop advancement. The innovation will allow users of its Salesforce CTI Connector to configure settings so agents can efficiently scour a customer’s CRM records as soon as a call starts ringing.
Finally, Zoom has released a set of APIs to manage outbound campaigns, making it easier to create, update, and delete customer contact lists.
Delivering 30 New Features in One Month
Within the contact center world, any little issue within everyday operations means a big problem for the customer.
As such, Zoom continues to build out its core contact center capabilities while pushing toward the future of CCaaS – as evident in the depth of its latest release.
That’s crucial, as Chris Crosby, Founder & CEO of Inflection CX, recently told CX Today:
If you want to know what a vendor is actually doing, read their release notes, not the press releases or extravagant keynote speeches. And then go look at their API docs to back it up.
Thankfully, we – at CX Today – have read through those notes for you and presented some of the highlights. Yet, for those who wish to take a wider view of Zoom’s CCaaS platform, check out our video: The Zoom Contact Center: 2 Years On
