"We are living the future today" | Iqbal Javaid, Zoom @ The Communication Technology Expo 2023

The Communication Technology Expo has just kicked off in ExCel London, and EM360 was there to interview Market leaders and industry experts about everything unified communications – from the rise of hybrid work to the emergence of AI-wired CRMs and communication tools. 

Yesterday we spoke to Iqbal Javaid, EMEA SE Leader at Zoom, about the customer experience and how innovation is transforming today's communications landscape.

“We do more than just meetings” 

When asked about some of the major talking points his team has been having with customers at the event, Mr Javaid explained that Zoom is now exploring new technologies to add to its communication platform, including a contact centre and an AI-enabled support system” 

“We’ve recently introduced Contact Centre to our large portfolio of collaboration services. Zoom is obviously well renowned for meeting and video-conferencing, but we are now delving into the world of customer experience and we’re here to show customers that we do more than just meetings,” Mr Javaid told us. 

“We’ve looked at the market, looked at what customers are looking for. [Customers] want to open up lots of different channels in a way that allows their end-customers to reach them. So we have things like videos, social media, web chat, and even an AI conversational chatbot engine all plugged into one platform. We’re able to do that with Zoom now.”

“We are living the future today”

When asked about what he thought the future of Unified Communications would represent, Mr David explained that since the pandemic, the space has evolved so rapidly that what were once ideas for the future, such as AI,  are now real products on our doorstep. 

“We're now seeing a massive shift in this industry with AI. We've invested and built our own AI engine to help with things like meetings, to be able to manage how you, how you how, how your sales organisations interact with these customers, being able to use things like sentiment analysis and being able to see how AI can coach you to become better at what you do,” Mr Javaid said.  

“We have a solution called Zoom virtual agent which can plug into your knowledge base of your CRM and then help your customers do their self-serve using that API. But we are at the beginning of that journey and I think we're very much on board with where, where the industry is going today. 

Post-pandemic, we've seen a lot of customers looking to really now define what that longer-term strategy is in terms of people going back to the office, and working in a hybrid mode. And I think that's now well established now. 

The tools are there now for us to do whatever we want from wherever we want. This is where AI, I think, will determine where the future of unified comms and customer experience goes."