2026 ZKast #99 - Zoom Phone, Contact Center, & AI Companion: The Evolution of Zoom with CT Pros

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:09]Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Talking Tech with CT pros. I'm back with Chris Frey uh from Converse Technology Pros. Chris, how you been?

[00:00:19]>> I've been great. That's uh thanks for having me back on the show.

[00:00:22]>> Yeah, no, it's great. And uh we're going to be talking Zoom. Uh which is interesting because you know you guys have been around a long time. You know you were a big shortel dealer, Mel dealer. In fact I still see the Mel uh cup there behind you. Uh and a few years ago if I had asked you to talk Zoom, you didn't do any business from them. But you today you you guys are one of Zoom's largest resellers and let's start with that. How what's Zoom done to become that shiny penny for the customers today? Why have you seen such a dramatic uptick in business there?

[00:00:56]>> Well, I would say it's probably twofold.

[00:00:58]So the on the the first part of it, it's going to be the channel program. Uh so channel program under the the existing leadership has really taken off and >> become uh just friendlier and easier to do business with from our standpoint. In the past, it was there was some friction there specifically uh amongst the the sellers. And so the the new channel um new channel chiefs and and management has has really um paved the way for greater uh partnership there.

[00:01:28]>> Yeah. Yeah. Shout out to Mike Colin Nick there.

[00:01:31]>> Yep. Absolutely. And uh the second is going to be product. So the you know Zoom phone didn't exist a few years ago.

[00:01:39]Uh Zoom contact center didn't exist a few years ago. And I would say that the and I'll be honest like I was fairly skeptical of Zoom moving into those spaces from from being just the meeting player. Um but I I would say that I was I've been uh pleasantly surprised at the outcome that they've been able to deliver uh in the past several years. Uh and I'm sure we'll talk about you know commonly they talk about speed of innovation and the numbers of things they come out with but the quality of the product has been very evident. um customers are delighted by it and our team's delighting customers delivering it. So they seem to have the right feature set and moving in the path that is similar in or well aligned with consumer and customer demand. And I would say that's probably the probably the main reason why they're successful today and why we are successful with them.

[00:02:33]>> Yeah, you know, as an industry watcher, I too was very skeptical that they could succeed in those spaces. In fact, uh uh the big aha moment for me came when uh actually it was one of your customers uh one of the law law firm in LA when they decided to move to Zoom phone. I remember talking to the CIO there and I'm saying you know are you crazy?

[00:02:51]Zooms, you know, there's no industry that's more telephony heavy than legal.

[00:02:57]Um Zoom's relatively new to phone. And then he told me that seven of his the 10 largest law firms in the US actually use Zoom phone. And so if you can handle the rigors of legal uh again which uses the phone more than anybody today uh you can certainly do other ones. And with contact center that was interesting because they tried to acquire 59 that fell apart and one could have thought that they were behind. I think when we look at we look back at this now that was a blessing in disguise. instead of having to integrate two different stacks, they could just build off the existing stack they had and the when you look at the earnings calls, the momentum they have around both Zoom phone, Zoom contact center has been um you know, remarkable. Uh I'm curious as you deploy, are you seeing um the the bulk of the business for Zoom being, you know, the the legacy to cloud migration where people are moving away from those old AIA systems and things or is are you seeing more cloud to cloud or is it a mix of both? I would say it's still a mix of both, but I think they have a pretty healthy cloud-tocloud um pretty healthy cloud-tocloud business. Uh especially if if uh the the use the user base that's out there that hasn't um if Teams is not their primary meeting and messaging platform, then they're a great fit for Zoom, right? It's sort of like Zoomer Teams and I know WebEx is in there too, but that that I would say that a lot of times I think WebEx is more uh decision to go that route is is predicated on external factors um as opposed to just preference of the end user. And I think the uh for customers that are on different meeting platforms, they're finding that, you know, they prefer Zoom and that the people that they interface with would also prefer to be on Zoom. So I I feel like that's where the that's probably where a lot of it starts and then a lot of the other products and features are pulling through uh from that standpoint.

[00:04:57]>> Yeah. In fact, the the the uh IU Zoom brand campaign they have going on now where they've got users standing on desks almost in defiance of the IT team is kind of an interesting campaign and one that uh is a bit of a double-edged sword in that I'm not sure IT pros are all that excited about it, but users certainly love Zoom. In fact, the law firm use case that I referenced that was a great example where the customer had um decided to go with a different product. the user sentiment was so strong that the CIO there decided well let's just go a Zoom phone and we looked at it it did everything he needed it to do and so uh I I think very rarely in fact how many corporate IT brands can you think of where users will actually advocate for it right that's that's very rare and um that they for somehow they managed to have done that >> well it's and it's not the rank and file user either it's the executive level user the executive says cuz I'm this is my meeting platform. This is what I use and this is the people that I interface with. That's sort of the expectation. So they are they have they are really the ones that are that are kind of leading the charge on that.

[00:06:09]>> Yeah. But now when I look at their um their road map Chris in fact I I wrote a piece um for Silicon Angle on their uh summarized in their last analyst event Zoom perspective which just had they're to me they're the most fascinating vendor in this space right and I'll space in air quotes being the communication sector because they they have such a dramatically different approach and so most of their competitors are working on going deeper in the communication stack and Zoom is doing that too. But they've also augmented that with email, docs, sheets, right? They got Zoom notes, things like that. And a lot of people that I've talked to said, why is Zoom in those spaces? And so is this, you know, genius or mad scientist here?

[00:07:01]>> Well, I mean, time will tell. I think um I think the >> I'm going to go with the genius path. I mean, you look at where they're how they started and where they're at. um you can't deny that trajectory and so the uh you know the magic eightball would say they're probably doing the right thing and and I would expect it to expand further you know that and the and I think that they will become even more of a destination you know application as opposed to uh you know just a piece of the whole when you when you look at some of the other super apps or whatever you want to call them things like service now Salesforce they're expanding in other areas is uh they're taking on voice and contact center and and I think you may see I think Zoom's really well positioned to probably move into some of their space and start owning customer data and and things and becoming the system of record for for um you know many of the customers endpoints.

[00:07:59]>> Yeah. Well, the word you use there that's the most salient one is the data.

[00:08:02]And um I think this is where frankly I'm not sure Zoom has done a good job of un explaining what why they're doing what they're doing because they're not they're not trying to build a better email client and not trying to build a better document. In fact, the me the theme of Zoom perspectives was this concept of conversations to completion.

[00:08:20]And so we have a lot of conversations Chris, but then how do you create finished output? And so by tying all these things together, they have greater knowledge of what it is you're doing.

[00:08:30]I'll give you just a very simple example. You know, I use um Zoom as my platform and people send me stuff through Zoom chat. They also send me stuff through email. And a lot of times I can't remember did that come through email, come through chat. So historically I'd have to look at Gmail for one and Zoom chat for the other.

[00:08:46]That search function now works across both and no matter how it came in, I can find it now. So ex you know now extend that to something I wrote or a meeting I had right and so now from an AI perspective I can apply that to all the things I have and the the thing with um email docs and sheets and some of those things is you don't have to replace the old one it's a little like what box does so that box will say that 100% of the customers have have u one drive or google drive but they make it more functional They make it work better and so you can actually use Zoom to do all that behind the scenes AI stuff and then you can your finished output can still be a document or a PowerPoint, right?

[00:09:33]And so you when we were prepping for this you used the term you explained that everyone's looking for business outcomes and so um theoretically having that single stack should deliver better outcomes. No.

[00:09:45]>> Yeah, I would think so. I mean it when I and I've been talking to a lot of clients recently and they have again they've got six different tools for six different things and a few years ago that would might have been the right path. It was the right tool for the job but now the right tool is is the fact that you want the AI wrapper that kind of go all the way around it. And and that's where you get into the into the the concept and idea of search and how I how do I reference and find all these things and and now we've learned how to you know our generation has learned how to prompt and what that means. You know again a couple years ago nobody knew what that meant or at least not in mainstream uh not in mainstream society.

[00:10:27]And so the the ability to kind of wrap all the way around those things with that that one that one piece, that one AI component is is is now that's the tip of the spear. That's the entry point.

[00:10:38]That is the kind of the one ring to rule them all. And and that's really what they're after. And with that then you can do a better job of orchestrating those outcomes. And I think that's the vision that you know that they're talking about.

[00:10:51]>> Yeah. Yeah. In fact, one of the data points from my research last year was that uh that I think was 40% of a worker's time is spent managing work instead of doing the job. And so if Zoom can cut into that, you know, there's great rewards there. So now um uh I want to pivot and talk about one of their specific products which is Zoom revenue accelerator. Uh I know from uh talking in the past you've seen tremendous momentum there, right? And in fact, when we were prepping for this, you mentioned a bit a little bit of a light bulb moment in Enterprise Connect regarding structured versus unstructured data. So, can you talk about ZRA and what it means to the business and why you've seen such good momentum there?

[00:11:33]>> Um, absolutely. So, so Zoom Revenue Accelerator, um, again, everything's relatively new, right? It it has, uh, none of this has been around tremendously long. Um, but a substantial challenger to the to the status quo. uh products like Kong, Chorus, you know, those are the ones that we we're typically used to seeing. Um but again, the the the the ability to kind of wrap around it all is really giving it a lot of uh a lot of weight and credence, but we're definitely seeing uh customers have some momentum where they're moving away from the established mainstream product adopting ZRA because of its u cost for one, right? It's uh it's generally tends to be a little cheaper.

[00:12:15]Um it is either at you know feature parody or close to it and it involves the uh you're able to do you know uh we're moving more into live feedback uh to the individ to the not necessarily to the agent. You know we're not really calling them agents anymore because it could be just any rank and file person that's in that talks to a a customer but we're giving them live information and feedback and insights and trying to help them and prepare them to to do their jobs better. Um, so ZRA has been a I don't know, call it a lightning rod, if you will, that's been it's gotten really substantial adoption that we've seen pick up in the last six to nine months.

[00:12:54]>> Yeah. And uh, you know, you brought up uh, again, I'll reference your the comment you made about outcomes. What kind of outcomes are customers seeing the ZRA? How are they using this?

[00:13:04]Well, I would say that the they're they're finding different ways to to of how they are going to address scoring and and view scoring or or success. So the um I I would say that ZRA is really challenging the how they would how they would put that numerical value on how how what was the quality of a call and and they have some very unique ways in which they achieve that. Uh I spoke with one of our engineers prior to this call just to get some feedback and uh you know they had a uh one of our clients is uh they do coaching. They're like health coaches you know not your typical um sales organization. It's not like they're selling a certain widget.

[00:13:46]You know they're they're very involved with their with their clients. Most of this is all done over meetings and over the phone. So needing a different way with which to score and analyze and evaluate how they're actually servicing their clients. Um, I would say that's probably the biggest outcome is is more information for the people that need to have it so that they can manage better, make better decisions, and uh, and be very strategic in how they do it.

[00:14:14]And and now, especially with the fact that most everyone's hybrid, uh, maybe not everyone, but majority of of knowledge workers that that we come into contact with today are either fully remote or or hybrid. very few are coming in to the office every day. So having tools like this to help manage a disperate workforce where someone's not over your shoulder or you're not uh kind of in a in a bullpen environment is is really critical.

[00:14:42]>> Yeah. uh that and uh in fact everything these different u tools that are used to help sales people sell better have been uh I I've seen a great momentum that was just with zoom but even their competitors too and that seems to be um really one of the areas of lowhanging fruit for AI adoption and I think part of that is just because there's so much data out there that you couldn't use before >> and I I think from a from the the the traditional UKcast path um you unified communic communications or or UKCast as a service like we never really had a great solution to offer that that person that salesperson or or inside sales or or you know customer relationship individual. They didn't quite fit into contact center because they weren't driven by by inbound activity. There wasn't a queue. They were they were typically outbound users and we never really had a great solution for them as a uh you know for the industry. And now we're seeing the this like sales seat or or you know customer relationship type seat or skew and all these business processes that go around it and they're all connected now into in unified communications. And that's where you're seeing a huge that's that's where there is there is profit to be made. That's where there is a new customer acquisition to be had a apart from just here's my phone number and we can you can call me or we can meet on a bridge and and have a meeting. It's this uh you know again going after and and trying to go after all this unstructured data that we want to record, analyze, provide uh business analysis and intelligence around.

[00:16:21]>> Yeah. And the another product I think it's really interesting for them is AI companion. Um and uh it's uh there's a lot of AI companions like products on the market today. Zoom always touts that theirs is the most accurate and I've talked to companies that have tested it and by and large it does seem to have a leg up on accuracy and I'm not sure if you've if you found that as well.

[00:16:46]>> Um I I don't find it to be inaccurate. I would say I' I've got my hands in lots of different tools right now. So it's uh um I've had great success with it. Um, and I would say I think one of the things that I noticed the most is that when when people are feeding me information that AI Companion has generated, um, you know, someone will send a, uh, especially with ZRA and I want to know, you know, what's going on with this customer? What's going on with this opportunity? Can you give me the, you know, give me the details on it?

[00:17:20]what used to take an hour phone call or an hour meeting with maybe four or five individuals, a couple of sales engineers, account managers, management, like all of us get together and pow and discuss what these things were. And now um within two to three minutes that that individual can can export a really concise summary of of everything that's happened up until this point in time and then hand that over to to myself or others and and kind of get us up to speed on what's happening.

[00:17:51]>> So it's been super useful.

[00:17:53]>> Yeah. And a related product is is Notetaker, which is used often with it.

[00:17:58]And I'm I'm curious, you know, there's a lot of thirdparty notetaker apps. You know, we got Granola, we got Otter, things like that.

[00:18:05]Do you do you think eventually those standalone products give way to these because they are integrated as part of that stack and you know I I look just even my own use um you know if I use something like grola then I've got to take the output of that and put it into an AI engine to be able to do some of the you know document creation for me and it just seems like all we're doing with these standalone note takingaking apps is adding to the quagmire of standalone apps that we already have that we're trying to get rid of. No.

[00:18:40]>> Well, I agree with you and it's not just the notetakers. It's I would say anybody that's a standalone application is at risk of being you know cannibalized by the by the main platform their main meeting and messaging platform adding that feature and sort of making that service obsolete unless they address something really unique or they have a niche like in in legal or or some other um you know they have some specific integration that makes them particularly valuable.

[00:19:08]>> But other than that, no I think I think those products are I mean, you looked at at Zoom Notetaker and its ability to connect to kind of, you know, many other meeting platforms that are out there or even in person meetings. There's really no reason to use the other ones.

[00:19:24]>> Yeah. In fact, I I'd like to see Zoom Notetaker become a mobile app where I can just leave it on an ambient mode all the time, right? And then it gets it gets pulled into my Zoom database. You can kind of do that in the desktop app, but not the not the mobile one yet. So, and I will say it works pretty well. I the at their analyst event I recorded all of the meetings in um in Zoom notes and then I asked AI companion to go create a summary for me for LinkedIn and it actually did a pretty good job. It wasn't you know perfect but I didn't give it any guidance either. I just said create me a LinkedIn post and I thought it did a a pretty interesting job there.

[00:19:59]Now when I when I look at the suite that Zoom has and if we throw in all the bonsai small business tools of work vivo, it is becoming um you know kind of one of these mega apps if you want to call it that. Right now I um there are a bunch of these on the market right there's the office suite Google suite.

[00:20:17]Where do you see the lowhanging fruit for this initially?

[00:20:21]Like it's awfully hard to get customers to ditch their office suite or to you know move away from these other big platforms. And so where where are you seeing momentum you know for people looking to work look at this adjacent products outside the core zoom >> I would say zoom revenue accelerator being one right that they're looking to move that in there's others uh begrudgingly Slack users that uh and although it does have a cult-like following >> um you know >> that's the problem with Slack though is it's the cultlike following and it's too hard for other people to Yeah. And and again, it's not it's not I don't think I don't feel like Slack's universally used within a lot of organizations that that tends to be the >> the old guard that's there that's been using it forever and that there's too much too much stuff there to move away, but the rank and file maybe haven't caught quite caught up. Um, but the but again the draw of that the AI wrapper around it is going to push more people into using it because they want AI companion to be able to access it and access it quickly and easily and have memory and know me and remember me and have that level of personalization. I think that's those are the things that it's going to going to take over on um from a cannibalations you know cannibalization standpoint. I think those are probably the the key ones. I mean outside of you know again they're >> they're pulling in lots of contact center and lots of zoom phone you know it's like all of those things are are uh um they're acquiring other people's customers and and consolidating that substantially.

[00:21:59]>> Yeah. Now if you look at the road map um you know they brought in like I said HR tools small business tools um the one missing piece of the puzzle here uh is CRM. Now, you and I both don't have any inside knowledge as to where they're going, but it sure seems like that's the one thing they're still lacking, doesn't it?

[00:22:18]>> Yeah. I mean, I don't I have um it's only my theory, right, that I think CRM is around the corner. I think it's the eventuality of it. I think they have enough money and resources to do it.

[00:22:30]>> I think that is one of the big big, you know, differentiators for them. And I think that given the full suite of other products and tools that they're working in, things like like you mentioned, work vivo um that their front they have a frontline worker application that's specifically built to integrate to HR tools. Um for for people that don't have phones and don't do messaging that, you know, just another application that they can clock in, clock out and communicate to their the rest of their teammates.

[00:22:57]there's so many other things going on there that a that some other type of larger tool, you know, system of record seem would just make sense because >> and the other part of that I think is that the self-deterministic view that I think um leadership of Zoom has and and that what's the alternative, you know, continue to integrate to Salesforce and Service Now, they're clearly going down their own path. you know, they're looking to bring those things into >> put their AI around it and and again be able to to get the outcomes that they're looking for. The the u I was speaking with an analyst not long ago about, you know, the uh for example, you know, Salesforce moving into CCAs. Same thing with uh with Service Now. And it's not because they really want to be a CCASS provider. It's because they need access to that unstructured data and they want to wrap their AI around the whole thing and and they can't do that when they're only getting pieces of it. They need all of it.

[00:24:01]>> Yeah. So, >> I think it's a I think it's going to happen, but again, I I wouldn't uh place any stock bets on that, but that would just be my >> Yeah. No. And don't please don't place any stock bets on any of the stuff we said. So, uh All right, Chris. uh you've gone through I think a you give me a pretty good idea of you know what Zoom has where it's going. What are some of the challenges to still see with it? Are are customers able to really digest all this stuff as fast as they roll it out today? I would say that they don't. Um I I think that is one of the biggest challenges with Zoom is they do have a lot and they they come out with a lot of features and and you look at every new release and it's just a it's a huge trove of stuff that they have that they've you know continued to to increase make better. Um it's too much for anyone to really take in at any one point in time. Um, I think what Zoom has done though is they've done a really good job of of sort of forcing the incremental change on the user base to continue to upskill them. Um, you know, for example, the the the new notes feature starts showing up even when you didn't quite expect it and it eventually you sort of start to figure out how how it works and you you starts to make its way into your day-to-day life. Um, I think they've been really good at that.

[00:25:20]And I think that is it's easier to make everybody learn a little bit at a time than to try to take make them force into a big step where you have to get people into a training class and go through um, you know, some big to-do. It's got to be incremental. Uh, so I think I think they do a good job at it. I think that it is the messaging though can be difficult to comprehend because of the amount of change. I think even internally it's hard for them to keep up themselves on what's happening and what's going on. Um it's not like we're going to start the year and here's the here's our release and here's all the features that go with it and you know come back next year and we'll talk about the new stuff. It's it's just continuous and I think along with that there's there can be challenges with pricing and contract levels or I should say licensing SKUs and bundles like that gets complicated as well and so the for people that have a product and they want to upgrade to another product uh or they're going through renewals like there can be some friction there.

[00:26:21]>> Yeah. Well, that's that is something I' I've heard where um they their portfolio's gotten so big that I mean license changes even with AI companion, right? It's free, but then if you add on these other things and it's not free and so uh it they could they could use a little bit of clarity, but I think that's just part of the growing pains of uh you know where they are. Um and I will I guess wrap this up with you know where I started is they they are the most interesting vendor in the space right now. Uh I think in a market where to your point uh everybody kind of in their adjacencies are moving into their space um building on a roadmap that actually allows them to you know push back and work on their from their core area strength is actually a good strategy. So we'll see how this all plays out but uh um they are the the vendor I think I like most in the space just because they their strategy is so different and that obviously is a double-edged sword, right? It's if you're the vendor of one, it's harder to get convince people you're doing the right thing versus doing what everybody else does. But they came to market uh being a little bit different, focused on user experience. And I think right now this industry needs a little bit of different.

[00:27:31]>> Yeah, I would agree. And uh and again that we're a customer-driven organization. So we you know we we go where where people are happy and uh people have been pretty happy here, >> right? Happy with the outcome. feel like the the feature set is strong. Um the quality is there. So they are certainly interesting to follow and keep tabs on.

[00:27:52]>> Yeah. Well, and again um you know big shout out to Nick and Mike Connley because they took the old meat happy and work happy and extended it to sell happy. So which they hadn't had for a while. So that's good to see. All right.

[00:28:04]Anything else you want to add, Chris?

[00:28:05]>> No, I don't think so. I think we're we're good for today.

[00:28:08]>> Yeah. No, I always appreciate uh hearing from you. And uh um uh if people want to learn more about Zoom, just hit up cpros.com and uh there's lots of resources there for people. So, >> all right. Thank you.

[00:28:20]>> All right. All right. So, uh until next time on behalf of Chris Frey from CTPros, I'm Zas Caraval from ZK Reese and thanks for watching. Uh give us a like and also hit that subscribe button.

[00:28:29]We'll see you next time on the next episode of Talking Tech with CTros.