Zoom to Launch Virtual Co-Working Space and AI Chatbot

With people’s work habits continuing to evolve, Zoom has debuted features the video conferencing platform says are designed to improve the modern work experience.

“As global organizations are adapting to how, when, and where work happens, it’s crucial that human connection remains a top priority to drive business strategies forward,” Zoom CEO Eric S. Yuan said in a news release emailed to PYMNTS Tuesday (Nov. 8).

The rollout of these features came during the company’s Zoomtopia ’22 event. Among the debuts is Zoom Spots, which the company describes as its virtual co-working space.

“Coming in early 2023, Zoom Spots is a video-enabled persistent space, integrated within the Zoom platform, to help foster inclusive discussions, keep colleagues connected, and bring the fluid interactions of in-person work to distributed, hybrid teams throughout their day,” Zoom said.

There’s also Zoom Virtual Agent, an intelligent conversational AI and chatbot tool that uses natural language processing and machine learning to understand and resolve customer issues.

Meanwhile, Zoom Mail and Calendar — now in beta — lets users access their email and calendar without needing to leave Zoom by integrating those services directly into the platform.

Read more: Zoom’s Caution Points to Work-From-Home Headwinds

As PYMNTS wrote in August, companies like Zoom enjoyed “huge tailwinds” from people working from home. However, keeping up that momentum would be difficult.

Our research showed that among the five activities that consumers have added or removed from their daily online routines — measured from November 2021 to July 2022 — working remotely from home fell 3.8%. (Working remotely from somewhere other than home, meanwhile, gained 5.8%.)

We made these observations as Zoom reported that its online subscriptions would likely decrease by 7% to 8% this year while projecting that sales to larger enterprise customers will grow by more than 20%.

Zoom President Greg Tomb said that larger transactions are seeing “extra sets of eyes” and deals go through, with the implication that companies are taking a closer look at tech spending in the current macro environment. At least some spending is getting deferred.