Let’s talk about Zoom AI Companion - My review after week one!

I posted on LinkedIn last week, talking about how amused I have been with Zoom AI Companion. It quickly become one of my best performing LinkedIn posts ever (even gaining a like and a repost from Zoom’s CEO himself).

Now, I’m pretty sure “amused” isn’t the right word for it because that implies there’s something funny or not right about Zoom AI Companion, which couldn’t be further from the truth. But I can’t think of a better word to sum up how my first week with AI Companion has gone.

You know when something is surprisingly good, and you get that strange feeling where you just want to laugh? Yeah… that!

Zoom is really knocking it out of the park at the moment. Following the launch of Zoom Contact Center in 2022, and the fast follow of Zoom Virtual Agent earlier this year we’ve witnessed first-hand the speed at which Zoom is delivering on an incredibly ambitious roadmap. And as Zoom’s first EMEA-based CX Competency Partner, it’s exciting for us to be a part of it.

What is Zoom AI Companion?

Zoom AI Companion is the company’s newest Generative AI release, built natively on the Zoom platform and included with any paid Zoom licence. Formerly known as Zoom IQ, this is a new generative AI assistant which works across the Zoom platform including Zoom Meetings and Zoom Team Chat.

AI Companion offers a multitude of use cases (some of which I’ll talk about shortly), but the key one that I’ve been using so far is Meeting Summarisation. Voice-to-text has always been a bigger challenge for AI providers than text-to-text and, having spent the best part of the last decade working with natural language, transcription, and voice analytics providers in the contact centre and telephony space, I’m always a bit cynical about how good these tools actually are.

In simple terms, AI Companion transcribes the meeting audio in real-time, and then organises the meeting content into discussion topics and action points/ follow-ups. It appears to be extremely smart when it comes to understanding the context and tone of a conversation and can adapt its summary accordingly. It’s ideal for example if you join a Zoom meeting a few minutes late: Rather than interrupting the session to find out what you missed, you can ask AI Companion to catch you up and it will summarise what’s been discussed so far. (Not that I would personally admit to such behaviour).

After the meeting AI Companion then creates a summary in the form of “Smart Chapters” (essentially titled paragraphs), identifying who said what, highlighting important topics, and outlining any agreed next steps.

A real-life example

I’ll give you an actual example of what this looks like:

On Monday this week the Acceleraate team joined our daily stand-up call. We’ve done this every single business day, with very few exceptions, since the company was formed over a year ago; it helps us to stay connected and productive. Part of the agenda is personal life (for those who wish to share) as we strongly believe in the importance of family and personal time for our colleagues.

Our Commercial Director, James, had competed in “The Lap” in Windermere on Sunday 10^th September – a gruelling and hilly 47-mile ultra-marathon, in which he finished TENTH overall. Part of Monday’s conversation therefore, revolved around James’ experiences from the previous day, and Zoom AI Companion summarised that “chapter” as follows:

James' 10-Hour Run: Overcoming Challenges

James participated in a long-distance running event, during which he overcame several challenges to finish in tenth place. He initially ran alone and encountered another participant who encouraged him, and later learned he had moved from eleventh to tenth place. Despite not achieving his goal of running under 10 hours, he was satisfied with his overall performance. James revealed he had a blister on his foot, his only significant pain, and indicated he had another 50K run scheduled for the following Sunday. Ben, his friend and listener, expressed concern about James' health.

Next Steps

James needs to rest and recover from the race, especially with another 50K run scheduled for Sunday.

AI Companion produced this without assistance. Nothing was edited, and no bot training was required.

Zoom AI Companion Use Cases

Features available today!

Late to join a Zoom meeting?

• Catch me up - Ask AI Companion to tell you what you missed.

• Why was my name mentioned? Ask AI Companion in what context your name was mentioned.

• What are the action items? Ask AI Companion what actions have been agreed/suggested so far.

Meeting notes & summarisation

• Summarise the meeting - Receive an email at the end of the meeting, with a full chaptered summary of what happened, important topics, who said what, and what the follow-up actions are.

Zoom Team Chat

• Chat Compose - Draft chat responses based on the conversation’s context, and provide prompts based on topic, customisation of tone and message length.

Zoom AI Companion features coming very soon!

• Compose email messages

• Summarise Zoom Team Chat threads

• Generate suggested responses to Chat messages

• Detect meeting intent in chat, and schedule

• Process automation (file a support ticket, find documents)

• Zoom Phone call analysis

• SMS and voicemail summarisation

• Digital coaching (real-time presentation feedback)

The team here at Acceleraate can't wait until the AI Companion Summarisation feature is available in Zoom Contact Center. When added to its intuitive agent desktop we believe AI Companion will be a complete game-changer for agent productivity and improving accuracy: Preventing customer service agents from needing to take manual notes, and also automating next steps/follow-up tasks. This will deliver huge efficiency gains and CX improvements for contact centre operators.

Watch this space!

How do I get AI Companion?

Zoom AI Companion is included free-of-charge with every paid Zoom account. Initially available for Meetings and Team Chat it will be extended in the coming weeks and months to support the entire Zoom platform.

Already have a paid Zoom account? Your System Admin can enable Zoom AI Companion for you in the Zoom Web Portal.

Considering switching to Zoom? Why not get in touch with us for a demo?