Zoom's earnings call for Q3 2023 was a positive affirmation of its post-pandemic strategic direction, as it diversifies its portfolio with the likes of Zoom Contact Centre and collaboration solution Zoom Docs while strengthening its video conferencing offerings at its core.
They announced several momentous milestones, including that Zoom Phone now has seven million paid seats and that Zoom AI Companion has already been enabled by over 220,000 accounts.
They are, as Dom Black, Director of Research at Cavell Group, told UC Today, "still growing very fast" because "they just continue to execute, they continue to add products to their portfolio.
"I think execution on Zoom Phone, seven million users is exceptional," Black added. "You look at the other UCaaS providers on the market (but let's take Microsoft Teams out for a second); they've blown everyone out of the market in terms of growth, so it's fantastic what they've been achieving on that."
"Contact centre, I think there's a great opportunity there as well, seeing some real innovation coming out through that. At the Zoom Analyst event at Zoomtopia, there was a huge amount of focus on what they're doing (in the contact centre). I think that's only going to start improving the cross-sell and up-sell that they're going to do. We're speaking to a lot of partners at the moment, not only in North America but Europe as well, who are looking for new platforms to take to market, and it's fascinating to see what they can do there."
One of the key challenges Zoom faces is that those customers who signed a three-year contract back in 2020 at the start of the pandemic have those contracts coming up for renewal. What happens then? Are those customers who made that choice three years ago still convinced that Zoom is the UCC platform to take them forward?
"I think from a product portfolio perspective, they've only added to that," Black said. "So I speak to a lot of people who are very happy with the Zoom experience, and adding contact centre, adding AI Companion to that is only going to be beneficial to keeping those customers there long-term."
While Zoom's product portfolio has grown impressively, Black underlines a key difference between Microsoft, Cisco and Zoo, however.
"Zoom hasn't got a coherent mobile strategy at the moment," Black argued. "I think you see Webex launching Webex Go, and you see Team Phone Mobile working with carriers and operators through that. Zoom hasn't gone down that route yet, and speaking to them, their argument is, 'Look, the Zoom experience is better in the app. Why do we need to bring it out to the mobile?'"
