Zoom Chat is changing its name to Zoom Team Chat and getting new features as part of a campaign to highlight its wider capabilities that are often better known with competitors.
Zoom Team Chat provides users with chats and channels, which can be used to keep the team connected, stay on track with projects, and connect workstreams.
New features of Zoom Team Chat include sharing in-meeting Chat to team chat, scheduling meetings from chats and channels, Reminders, third-party integrations, and more.
Janine Pelosi, Chief Marketing Officer at Zoom: “What started as a video meeting app quickly moved into broadcast webinars, connected conference rooms, and more, and it continues to evolve and expand.
“Now you can use Zoom to connect teams on and off video, reimagine your workspaces, engage new audiences, delight your customers, and build new innovations –– all on the Zoom platform you know and love.
“This evolution is more than a decade in the making. You will see it reflected today in our new look and refreshed visual identity. You’ll also see it in the innovation in our product offerings.”
When people think of Zoom, they tend to associate it with video; a hangover from the pandemic. For a while now, Zoom has been keen to show itself as more than just a video provider.
Like Teams, it wants to be viewed and used as an entire platform, offering everything from video, chat, and collaboration tools to hosting third-party applications and integrations.
Zoom’s new campaign logo is advertising the many aspects of its platform, and the sometimes-forgotten Zoom Chat is being brought into the limelight with a new name, new features, and even bagging the first ‘O’ in Zoom’s new logo.
Much of Zoom Chat’s functionality is comparable to Slack’s chat features, but without public awareness, Zoom may as well not have these capabilities.
This campaign isn’t just a lick of paint. Zoom is adding real value to the platform with these features, and it has been consistently upgrading and remodelling its platform over the years.
In the past year alone, Zoom has introduced three new products through its Zoom Whiteboard, Zoom Contact Center, and Zoom IQ for Sales.
New Zoom Team Chat Features
The following feature additions to Zoom Team Chat are expected to be released later this month.
Share In-Meeting Chats: By turning the Team Chat on, the host can share the in-meeting Chat to Team Chat, saving important links or information shared during meetings.
Schedule Zoom Meetings: Zoom Meetings can now be scheduled within chats and channels, making it easier to create meetings for the intended participants.
Reminders: Chat messages can be flagged to create a reminder which will notify users at a later time. This is designed to prevent users from failing to respond to important messages but creating time in the interim to get more pressing work completed.
Respond to Meetings via Chat: Users now have the ability to respond to an incoming meeting via Chat to let them know if they are busy.
Third-Party Integrations: Zoom Team Chat applications can be streamlined to users’ workflows.
Anywhere Chat: Team Chat for Progressive Web Apps (PWA) enables access to Team Chat from a browser, which allows users to collaborate in Chat outside of meetings without relying on the Zoom client.
Zoom’s Campaign Logo
Zoom is keeping its main company logo the same, but it has created a campaign logo by adding new colours, typography, and product icons.
The new campaign logo uses six ‘O’ letters in its name, each one representing a different aspect of its business, with the Zoom Team Chat symbol occupying the first ‘O’.
The company says the logo uses visual elements that represent its unified platform.
Pelosi continues: “Zoom is one platform to connect because of people like you. Everything we do is grounded in our core value of Care, and we care about our global customers, who face new collaboration challenges every day.
“Employee expectations have changed. Remote and hybrid work are now just work. Communication happens across more channels and collaboration across oceans. And there’s no playbook for organizations to adapt.
“We strive to continuously enable meaningful team collaboration in support of these evolving workstreams through technology.
“One way we’re doing that today is through the expansion and evolution of our chat messaging product.”
Zoom: The Year So Far
Zoom already has a lot to talk about so far this year. Zoom Phone celebrated three million users worldwide in July, Zoom Workspace Reservation was launched, a new scalable ‘Zoom One’ package, the launch of Zoom Ventures, and more.
However dazzling many of these product releases, milestones, and improvements may be, the reality on the minds of Zoom execs right now is probably better gauged by looking at the recent quarterly earnings results.
The latest Q2 results were branded ‘disappointing’ by Zoom executives and the biggest reason behind these below expectation results were explained simply by CFO, Kelly Steckelberg:
“In Q2, total revenue grew 8% year over year to $1.099 billion, approximately $16 million below the low end of our quarterly guidance.
“A stronger U.S. dollar, which had an impact of approximately $8 million, weaker new Online sales, and to a lesser extent backend linearity in the quarter were the biggest factors contributing to the miss.”
The truth is, sales have been going down for Zoom. People who bought into Zoom during the pandemic can no longer justify paying for a video conferencing solution which they are hardly using any more, or because they are using video conferencing software as part of another platform.
Therein lies the problem and the solution for Zoom. They need to establish themselves as more than just video conferencing, but a full platform serving a host of communication and collaboration needs. This is precisely what is lying behind the latest changes to Zoom Team Chat.
Earlier this month, Zoom launched a customer-managed key (CMK) offering to help companies meet compliance regulations.
Zoom also recently announced it is providing UCC and’ fan experience’ services for Oracle Red Bull Racing.
