The Summer of 2022 proved a busy period for the Zoom Contact Center team, releasing 70+ new and enhanced features.
Zoom announced many of the most eye-catching in June. For instance, the vendor added several elements to its virtual waiting room, allowing contact centers to add custom imagery, messaging, and web links.
Another welcome addition included the capacity for agents to share knowledge articles, documents, and images with customers – allowing them to add color and context to contact center conversations.
Yet, perhaps most interestingly, it added an escalation feature, allowing agents to shift chat conversations to video. Doing so – at the right time – may enable a deeper level of service, better customer connections, and enhanced contact resolutions.
Zoom will likely continue to develop a platform that accentuates the human factor in CX. However, this move also suggests that it is building a true-omnichannel solution, with the vendor indicating that it will soon bulk up its CCaaS platform with new channels.
Heidi Elmore, Head of Product Marketing at Zoom, made no secret of this intent when the Zoom Contact Center launched in February. Speaking to CX Today, she said:
We really want to drive innovation with additional channels… We want our customers to meet their end-customers where they want and on the channel that is most important to them.
Its July release saw Zoom push further into the omnichannel direction. For instance, it added an omnichannel overview tab into its historical analytics dashboard, allowing operations to access a more holistic view of contact center and agent performance.
Further bulking up its reporting capabilities, Zoom enabled operations to set thresholds for queue KPIs. When the contact center exceeds these, the solution triggers an alert to admins – via chat or email – warning them of the status quo.
Another fascinating July addition connects the Zoom Phone to the Zoom Contact Center, allowing for internal calls between the two solutions.
In weaving these together, agents can forward conversations to employees outside the contact center, enabling better problem-solving.
In putting such an innovation forward, Zoom closes the gap between CCaaaS and UCaaS.
Additional July releases included callback enhancements, real-time analytics dashboard developments, and call recording improvements (in beta).
Yet, like the heatwaves, Zoom Contact Center innovations kept on coming as July turned into August.
This month, the most striking new features are perhaps the third-party bot integrations with Google Dialogflow ES and Amazon Lex. These are available alongside native conversational AI tools, which Zoom captured following its recent Solvvy acquisition.
The vendor has also expanded its routing capabilities, increasing the solution’s custom variables and enabling more sophisticated strategies that pair customers with the best-placed agents.
Finally, Zoom has improved management features within its flow editor tool, which allows agents to share knowledge base content with customers. Admins may also reinstate archived knowledge.
This solution also received an upgrade earlier in the summer, as the vendor launched a capability that automatically translates knowledge articles into the customer’s native language – as per their phone number.
However, perhaps only focusing on a select few features does the Zoom Contact Center team a disservice. After all, they have made many more nifty upgrades to the platform this summer.
To glance over all of them, check out the release notes.
Yet, as Zoom continues to advance its platform, expect many more announcements in the fall. After all, the Zoom team will likely build most of the core capabilities for its CCaaS solution itself.
For differentiative features, it may – however – consider acquisitions as its recent Solvvy deal maybe indicates.
