In his Zoomtopia 2024 keynote speech, Zoom CEO and founder Eric S. Yuan announced Zoom AI Companion 2.0, ushering in a new era of AI-first work platforms. Other key announcements included the creation of Zoom Tasks, new industry-specific solutions, plus updates to Zoom Contact Center, Zoom Docs, Zoom Events, and Zoom Revenue Accelerator.

I was also lucky enough to tour the new Zoom Experience Center at the San Jose headquarters, optimized with the latest Zoom Room hardware (and several delicious Zoom-themed macarons.)

Whether you missed out on Zoomtopia entirely or if you just need a quick refresher, my recap of Zoomtopia 2024 is here to give you the highlights and tell you which new Zoom features I think will have the biggest impact on your customers, agents, and business as a whole.

 

Customize Your Zoom AI Companion Experience

Since its initial launch in September 2023, Zoom AI Companion has served as a virtual personal assistant for more than 4 million customers across countless industries. Known for features like automatic post-meeting and post-call summaries with action items, chat and email summaries, and GenAI-powered response suggestions, Zoom AI Companion saved time and prevented workplace communication silos.

The biggest update from Zoomtopia 2024 is that users can now completely customize Zoom AI Companion via a $12/user/month paid add-on. The Custom Zoom AI Companion add-on, which launches in 2025, lets users create a personalized digital twin that integrates with internal company resources and expanded third-party applications like Zendesk, ServiceNow, Asana, and Atlassian. These integrations ensure the actions Zoom AI Companion takes on behalf of users  is consistent with company directives and customer expectations. Users can further customize AI Companion in the Zoom AI Studio, adding internal knowledge base data, summary templates, company dictionaries, HR policies, and more.

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The Custom AI Companion add-on also comes with a personalized coaching tool, which analyzes behaviors and interactions across Zoom Workplace to suggest areas for improvement and set performance benchmarks to monitor progress. Users can even create personal AI avatars–complete with deepfake safeguards–that generate shareable video clips of uploaded transcripts.

 

Additional Zoom AI Companion 2.0 Updates 

While the customization add-on was the most exciting AI Companion update, it’s far from the only upgrade the 2.0 version brings.

Zoom AI Companion 2.0, included at no extra cost with eligible Zoom paid accounts, adds a persistent interactive AI Companion side panel across Zoom Workplace. Users can type specific questions into the side panel to receive workflow updates, customer insights, and suggested actions in a two-way, conversational format–complete with source citations.

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Zoom Companion 2.0 can also analyze and make real-time suggestions based on data pulled from the web, conversation histories across Zoom Workplace, agent and customer behavior, and connected third-party applications like Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Microsoft Office files, and Microsoft Outlook.

 

AI-Enhanced Industry-Specific Solutions

Zoomtopia also highlighted four industry-specific solutions: Zoom Workplace for Frontline, Zoom Workplace for Education, Zoom Workplace for Healthcare, and Zoom Workplace for Clinicians.

Zoom Workplace for Frontline is a mobile-first, employee-facing application that leverages Zoom AI Companion to improve shift management, scheduling, and communication between frontline workers. Features include shift summaries and swapping, virtual punch in/punch out, push-to-talk, task assignment, and operations management tools.

Zoom Workplace for Education uses Zoom AI Companion to help educators create lesson plans, tests, and other classroom materials. Students can review automated class summaries and homework assignments, get help from an AI-powered learning assistant, and create their own notes by annotating class transcripts. Also available is the custom AI Companion for Education add-on, which connects to third-party education applications and other learning resources to offer personalized AI coaching for teachers, student engagement analytics, and suggestions in line with school policies.

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Zoom Workplace for Healthcare, with built-in AI Companion, integrates with essential healthcare applications and ensures HIPAA compliance. An AI Companion for Healthcare add-on, which includes personalized coaching, integrations with Electronic Health Records, and healthcare dictionaries.

Zoom Workplace for Clinicians streamlines essential patient forms and records in one space, allowing medical teams to review them before appointments. Providers can review their schedules, take SOAP-supported clinical notes during virtual or in-person appointments, and receive appointment summaries.

 

Collaboration Updates: Zoom Tasks and Zoom Docs

Zoom Tasks, with a late 2024 planned release, connects and analyzes internal and customer-facing conversations–plus data from connected third-party apps–across Zoom Workspace. Based on these findings, Zoom Task automatically identifies, suggests, and even completes tasks. Users can also manually create, assign, and update tasks.

Zoom Tasks

 

Although Zoom Docs first launched in August 2024, new AI-powered features are currently in development.

Soon, Docs will include pre-made file templates, GenAI-powered content creation from native and integrated data sources, and the ability to customize content according to document creator and recipient roles. Users can review and share document summaries, access new interactive data table and column types, and use Zoom AI Companion to create meeting agendas.

Best of all, Zoom Docs will expand access to Microsoft 365 and Google Docs, let participants edit documents during live meetings, and create chat channels specifically designed for file collaboration.

 

Zoom Contact Center Updates: Zoom Virtual Agent and Quality Management

Zoom Contact Center will enhance Zoom Virtual Agent and Zoom AI Expert capabilities and add new Quality Management tools.

Zoom Virtual Agents will be able to assist with multi-intent inquiries, meaning it will be able to completely resolve more customer service requests without involving a live agent.  If a live agent is needed, customers will benefit from the added security of personal identifying information masks during interactions with customer-agent screen sharing.

Zoom also announced an upcoming preview of a new AI Virtual Voice Agent, which would revolutionize phone-based customer self-service.

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In-conversation agent assistance, provided by Zoom AI Expert, now provides suggested responses informed by multiple knowledge base articles, as well as dynamic agent guides with adjustable suggested call scripts.

In addition to these updates, Zoom is leveraging its acquisition of Workvivo to offer AI-generated employee surveys, guides, and employee engagement insights. Zoom will also offer shift bidding as it continues to expand its workforce management solutions.

 

Zoom Revenue Accelerator Dialer and Coaching Tools

Zoom Revenue Accelerator, a sales and conversation intelligence tool for Zoom Meetings and Zoom Phone, is also getting several AI-powered upgrades.

The new Zoom Revenue Accelerator Dialer includes simultaneous outbound dialing, voicemail drop, automatic call transfer to a live agent, real-time call transcription, and the ability to schedule upcoming appointments in Zoom Scheduler. The Revenue Accelerator will also record and analyze Zoom video meetings from external participants and third-party tools like Microsoft Teams.

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The Conversation Explorer tool uses conversation analytics to provide insights into the sales process, allowing managers to ask open-ended questions instead of being limited to hard data.

Users will also benefit from embedded sales agent coaching tools like premade or customizable performance scorecards, automated agent performance scoring, and automated evaluations for more specific feedback. Managers can monitor department-wide and individual agent score progress over time.

 

Zoom Events Updates

Zoom Events will also leverage AI Companion to streamline webinar creation and management. Webinar recordings can be used to create omnichannel follow-up content like event highlight reels, shareable event summaries, and blog posts.

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The AI Companion helps moderate audience questions during live events, and a branded content hub shows upcoming virtual events and recordings of past events in one place. New analytics capabilities show audience engagement statistics, event attendance records, and more.

 

Zoom Room Updates: In-Person AI Companion and Workspace Reservations 

In keeping with the overarching theme of AI Companion enhancements, Zoom Rooms will soon include AI Companion for in-person meetings. This means AI Companion’s automatic transcription, note-taking, and summary features will work for in-person meetings in addition to virtual ones. Teams can review Zoom Rooms analytics and even receive meeting scheduling suggestions based on room use and participant schedules.

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Smart speaker tags identify speakers in a conference room, create virtual name tags for participants, and optimize speaker differentiation in meeting transcripts, summaries, and live closed captions. In addition to custom AV protocol integration, Zoom Rooms will also offer several new products from Poly and Logitech in 2025.

 

Will Zoom’s AI Evangelism Pay Off?

As has been the case at nearly every major industry event recently, Zoomtopia 2024 centered on the power and influence of AI. Zoom believes its AI Companion 2.0 will help teams to “work happy” by automating routine tasks, giving users more time for human connection and freeing them up to focus on the aspects of work they enjoy the most. But skepticism about AI–from employees and customers–is still high, with 77% of consumers concerned about AI transparency.[*]

That said, Zoom has come a long way since its Zoombombing days. Advanced privacy settings, the ability to enable end-to-end encryption, screen share watermarks, and audio signatures are all included in Zoom’s security culture. Most importantly, Zoom executives stated numerous times throughout Zoomtopia that Zoom does not use customer data to train its AI models.

Initial pushback against implementing AI in the workplace is to be expected, but only time will tell if additional regulations and a renewed focus on ethical AI will be enough to quell AI anxiety.

Still, with several new AI-powered features, industry-specific solutions, and expanded contact center and collaboration tools, the future of Zoom looks bright.