Zoom has launched new AI Companion capabilities to ‘supercharge’ workplace communications and increase inclusivity within Zoom Meetings.
The latest AI Companion is said to improve connection, collaboration, and productivity across the platform, and it includes a generative AI assistant to help admins gauge usage and adoption levels, as well as empower contact centre agents.
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The all-in-one collaboration platform has also made enhancements to Zoom Team Chat and Zoom Whiteboard.
Mahesh Ram, Head of AI at Zoom, explains why it has decided to expand AI Companion’s capabilities: “AI Companion has generated over 5 million meeting summaries since we launched it in September 2023.
“We are focused on building AI capabilities that support collaboration, connection, and productivity, and empower users to do their best work.
“By continuing to launch new features for AI Companion, including an analytics dashboard and AI Companion for Zoom Contact Center, our aim is to help more people feel supported and enabled to build connections together.”
AI Companion for Analytics
Zoom is adding an analytics dashboard to provide admins with a clearer understanding of how AI Companion is being used throughout their company, and whether they need to introduce further support measures.
The dashboard offers visibility into metrics, such as the number of meeting summaries generated over a given time period and how many employees are using the tool to create messages or summarise chats.
It can also serve to remind users of the various ways in which AI Companion can be used to streamline their work, according to Zoom.
It is included at no additional cost for customers with paid services, although it may not be available for all regions and industry verticals. Admins can gain access to the AI Companion dashboard via the Zoom admin portal.
Ram also wrote a blog post explaining how teams can leverage AI in its new analytics dashboard, in which he highlighted the potential power of AI through a 2023 Zoom-Morning Consult report that found 74 Percent of team leaders and 46 percent of employees using AI save one or more hours per day.
Moreover, of those not using AI at work, 55 percent of employees and 50 percent of leaders were unaware of how much time they could be saving.
AI Companion for the Workplace
Zoom believes that AI Companion can increase productivity and collaboration within the workplace, cutting down on ‘toggle tax’ between applications.
When using Team Chat, the AI Companion will detect if a meeting is about to be scheduled and create a pop-up that leads to a calendar invite with pre-filled attendees, plus the date and time information, based on the content within the conversation. Users will simply need to check the information and click send.
Whiteboard users can also use AI Companion to create mind maps to help visualise thoughts based on user prompts.
AI Companion for Zoom Meetings
Zoom Meetings can also be made more inclusive. The AI Companion can use the gender pronouns that an attendee has chosen for themselves from their Zoom profiles and apply them to meeting summaries, which Zoom says will help them to “feel seen and acknowledged”.
AI Companion for Contact Centre
Artificial intelligence has also proved to be a valuable resource within contact centres.
AI Companion for Contact Center is able to summarise customer chats and conversations to improve agent hand-offs and understanding, generate post-call tasks, and assist with speech analytics and live sentiment.
