Zoom is the latest company to jump on the AI bandwagon, with the pandemic poster child announcing a new partnership with startup Anthropic to integrate its Claude AI into the platform.
From Microsoft to Salesforce, companies around the world have been scrambling to make AI part of their platforms in recent months, adding the technology to search engines, messaging apps, and everything in between.
Given Zoom's newly found status as a go-to option for productivity tools, it makes sense that they're making a play on AI, but can they catch up to the rest of big tech?
Zoom Partners With Anthropic for Generative AI Push
Announced in a company blog post, Zoom is partnering with Anthropic to allow the startup's Claude AI assistant to be integrated with the productivity platform. The integration will first be rolled out to the Zoom Contact Center but will eventually be added to help with tasks across the rest of the platform.
“With Claude guiding agents toward trustworthy resolutions and powering self-service for end-users, companies will be able to take customer relationships to another level.” – Smita Hashim, chief product officer for Zoom
The integration will specifically add a wide range of self-service features to the Zoom Contact Center interface and guide agents to the best solutions for their customers.
This partnership represents arguably the biggest step in Zoom's “federated approach to AI,” which has seen the company adding new features and functionality across the board to align with the AI-powered business world.
AI and Productivity Platforms
Zoom is certainly not the first company to integrate AI solutions into its platforms, and it absolutely will not be the last. The technology has become a driving force, with the biggest companies in the industry vying for the best product.
Microsoft, obviously, is well-known for having acquired OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPt, which launched the whole AI gold rush in the first place. Google naturally threw its hat in the ring next with its Bard solution, which compared to ChatGPT is an admirable runner-up.
Even popular CRM Salesforce has made an investment in an ChatGPT alternative, with plans to roll it out across the platform.
All that to say, AI is clearly coming to the business productivity world, and coming fast. Not only Zoom and Salesforce, but Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 will likely soon be crawling with AI assistants and automated tasks that will improve efficiency on a dramatic scale.
Is Zoom Good for Business?
If you're considering a communication tool like Zoom for your business, we don't blame you. Since its meteoric rise during the pandemic, the company has been in overdrive mode to provide an all-in-one hybrid working platform to help businesses manage remote employees.
As for how it actually performs for businesses, its best feature is the ease of use. While competitors like Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 are quite popular for their massive feature catalogs, Zoom comes with a more intuitive interface that some businesses find a bit more user friendly.
Plus, given the investment in AI, it's safe to assume the company plans to roll out some automation features that will keep pace with the rest of the industry. Because at this point, if you aren't leveraging AI for your business, you could be in trouble.
