As part of its January release, Zoom has added ten new features to its CCaaS platform: the Zoom Contact Center.
This month, the video conferencing pioneer has put emphasis on giving customers more control over their data, with two eye-catching new capabilities.
First is a Customer Managed Key (CMK) support function that allows admins to define the types of Zoom Contact Center data they encrypt.
In doing so, they may better manage cross-channel contact center data – whether that’s from a recording, transcript, or voicemail.
Second is its new personal data redaction capability, which automatically redacts personally identifiable information (PII) from voice, video, and messaging recordings and transcripts.
When enabled, it isolates personal data entities and replaces them with generic placeholder text.
Such innovations will allow contact centers to curate data sets – which belong solely to that organization – without exposing sensitive customer data to various AI models.
Indeed, each customer owns the data they place onto any Zoom platform, and Zoom will only use the encrypted, secured data to train their AI if they receive explicit consent.
“We are treating data very responsibly and transparently,” said Xuedong Huang, Chief Technology Officer at Zoom, during a recent interview. “We will ask a small percentage of our customer base if it’s okay to use the data to improve AI experiences.
If they give us consent, we will secure the data and use it only for improving AI experiences.
These assurances and innovations will prove critical as Zoom looks to further the international expansion of its CCaaS business after rolling out its platform across EMEA and APAC in 2023.
Yet, that proved only one highlight of the past year for Zoom in CCaaS, as the vendor launched its workforce engagement management (WEM) suite, virtual assistant, and revamped conversational intelligence tool. Meanwhile, it also announced new releases every month.
That pace of innovation does not seem to be slowing down in 2024, with the vendor also announcing new outbound dialing, contact handling, and translation capabilities.
→ THOUGHT LEADERSHIP: Zoom and the Future of Customer Engagement: Expert Takes
New Outbound Dialing Innovations
Outbound dialing may still have a reputation for spam but advances in predictive analytics promise to breathe new life into the channel.
Recognizing this, Zoom continues to evolve its dialer, with three new capabilities to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of outbound campaigns.
To start, it has launched an “always-running” campaign option, which supports outbound operations that dynamically update their contact lists from another source.
When the dialer runs out of customer records to ring, this feature ensures that the dialing doesn’t stop. Instead, it sits idle, waits for more contacts to appear on the list, and restarts dialing.
As such, admins don’t continually set up the same campaigns. Rather, the same custom, specially configured campaigns keep running, triggering new leads from marketing flows and other sources.
Next, admins may now configure contactable hours – i.e., weekdays from 9am-5pm (ET) – and closures (i.e., not on 25/26 December) for outbound campaigns.
As a result, contact centers may continue to align custom campaigns to business specifications.
Finally, Zoom has enhanced its outbound call error notification for unanswered or unconnected outbound dials, which provides context on the missed call. That comes from a SIP response code – and now comes in the language the agent sets in their desktop client.
What Else Is New?
While data privacy and outbound dialing proved the primary focus for Zoom in its January release, the tech giant also made several other enhancements across its platform.
The new “Saved Replies” feature is an eye-catcher, allowing agents to insert pre-written responses in customer responses across digital channels.
Contact centers may also assign saved replies to specific queues, evaluate how customers respond to them, and ensure consistent, quality replies that flex across languages.
Centralizing these replies is especially helpful, as agents often copy and paste their trusted customer responses, which haven’t had a quality check and could cause problems down the line.
Elsewhere, Zoom now supports video recording transcripts in multiple languages, offers more live chat customization options, and allows agents to toggle callers during warm escalations.
While these are brick-in-the-wall features, they are coming at an incredible pace as Zoom builds out its one-stop-shop for enterprise communications. That pulls UCaaS, CCaaS, conversational AI, and more onto a single unified platform.
The vendor has spent the past two years piecing all this together and – in 2024 – will blend more of these solutions to bring new, innovative solutions to the market.
Ben Neo, Head of Contact Center and CX Sales for EMEA at Zoom, gave CX Today the scoop on this disruptive strategy. Click here to check out the interview.
