Zoom and ServiceNow Set to Dominate?

Zoom Video Communications Inc. recently partnered with cloud‑based digital workflows, platforms, and solutions developer ServiceNow. The video conferencing developer’s set to use ServiceNow’s platform to scale its customer service efforts and to enable Hardware as a Service, a new model introduced by Zoom, recently. I’m told Zoom will expand its implementation of ServiceNow’s CSM to provide HaaS customer support, too. As per the agreement, ServiceNow’s set to ‘standardize’ on Zoom Phone, ending its use of legacy phone technology.

The deal should help Zoom manage this newfound influx of users, and extend a host of new options such as proactive case management and personalized self-service options. “With the ongoing pandemic and shelter in place orders, Zoom’s usage rocketed to 300 million daily meeting participants in April 2020,” a spokesperson for Zoom told UC Today.

Zoom and ServiceNow’s relationship dates back to 2018 since it first became a Zoom customer. Today, ServiceNow has more than 11,000 Zoom Enterprise deployments to host video meetings across desktops, mobile devices, as well as conference rooms. According to Ryan Azus, Zoom’s Chief Revenue Officer:

“Since March, we’ve scaled to meet the incredible increase in business and consumer demand for our solutions. ServiceNow has enabled us to deliver exceptional customer experiences during this period of growth”

And there are a ton of fresh ways Zoom could use and are already harnessing the power of ServiceNow’s CSM Workflow product to solve customer queries, be proactive, and to rectify mistakes before customers notice them. The engagement process could also become simpler. “As a ServiceNow Now Platform customer, Zoom has deployed its IT and Employee Workflows and is in the process of deploying additional ServiceNow Workflow products, including ITOM Health, Field Service Management, and ITBM,” Zoom wrote in a statement.

Zoom is also leveraging ServiceNow’s out-of-the-box capabilities, including virtual agents, and access to its ‘Integration Hub,’ which lets users integrate with on-premise systems. ServiceNow and Zoom offer multiple new integrations, including one that lends employees the use of bots to reduce FAQs. There’s also another cool new feature called Zoom Meeting Anomaly detection, which lets Zoom identify latency, jitter, and average packet loss. ServiceNow now automatically creates ‘incidents’ for users to keep them abreast.

With ServiceNow’s AI Ops, Zoom proactively sends users the action of rating their meeting with a thumbs‑up or ‑down icon. If a user clicks the thumbs down button, the user’s IT department receives a notification and a ServiceNow Virtual Agent reaches out to resolve any technical issues.

The pair is likely to continue a long fruitful relationship as long as they keep innovating. And signs of that aren’t anywhere in the current landscape, so we can expect more ingenuity from Zoom and ServiceNow. It does seem that Zoom’s risen to the next level of business, and is ready to be taken more seriously. Should the likes of Microsoft be worried? What about Workplace from Facebook? I’d say with this announcement, any company that saw itself as a Zoom competitor before the novel Coronavirus – should be worried about long-term survival.