Zoom Debuts an Agent Architect to Bolster its Conversational AI Solution

Zoom has added an Agent Architect to Zoom Virtual Agent (ZVA), its conversational AI solution. 

The Agent Architect allows customer support teams to develop AI agents using natural language prompts that manage both voice and digital interactions.

These AI agents can reason and, thanks to ZVA’s support for MCP, collaborate with other AI agents across third-party solutions to solve customer queries.

They may also orchestrate actions across systems and channels, according to Zoom.

As a result, customer service leaders can design new experiences across the front and back office while blending different modalities to drive positive customer outcomes. 

Zoom has also announced outcome-based pricing to support this endeavor, meaning brands only pay when ZVA delivers resolutions.

While an outcome-based approach has its detractors, as disputes can arise over what constitutes an “outcome”, this is rapidly becoming the conversational AI pricing model of choice for many vendors and their customers.

Why? Because organizations avoid the high upfront costs of disruptive technology and only pay when they start to see value.

A New Zoom Agent Performance Suite

Zoom has also announced an Agent Performance Suite to ensure positive outcomes from AI-led customer support interactions. 

The Agent Performance Suite monitors real contact center interactions to simulate how a brand's customers will interact with AI agents, tracking resolution rates, customer satisfaction, and cost per interaction.

As a result, contact centers can validate and optimize their designs and guardrails before letting AI agents loose. 

Multi-Location Deployments

Alongside the Agent Architect and Performance Suite, Zoom has released a new capability that allows brands to build an AI agent in one location and deploy it globally, utilizing local numbers, greetings, routing logic, and knowledge content.

For example, a retailer could deploy an AI agent across hundreds of stores while tailoring its logic to each location’s discounts, inventory, promotions, and policies.

As such, brands don’t have to create 100 customized AI agents. 

Yet, in addition to these upgrades, Zoom has also added innovations, especially for ZVA customers leveraging the broader Zoom CX portfolio…

More Capabilities Available to Organizations Leveraging Zoom CX 

Organizations using both the Zoom Contact Center and Zoom Virtual Agent can now monitor AI and human agents within a single framework.

With the new Quality Management for Zoom Virtual Agent solution, brands may then identify where human and AI agents perform best and use those insights to continuously improve their contact automation strategy.

These organizations can also utilize the customer context layer running across the Zoom Contact Center, AI Expert Assist, and ZVA.

Thanks to Zoom’s latest enhancements to its context layer, organizations can carry context from a customer’s conversation with an AI agent into escalations through AI Expert Assist, helping human agents deliver a more personalized experience.

“The challenge [of AI in CX] is eliminating the trade-off between speed and sophistication, and Zoom CX bridges that gap so teams can personalize better, deliver faster, and drive stronger outcomes."

Chris Morrissey

GM of Zoom CX

Expect Zoom to keep enhancing this layer, so insights from its quality management solution also inform the guidance individual service reps receive.

So, for instance, if a rep consistently forgets a step within a resolution flow but their colleague doesn’t, they may receive a prompt to make that step, but their colleague would not.

That is the future of personalized contact center agent assistance and another benefit of the customer context layer Zoom is building across its CX portfolio. 

The Hot Take: Zoom Keeps Pace with the Latest Conversational AI Trends 

In the customer experience space, Zoom has become synonymous with fast innovation.

Its latest ZVA release compounds its reputation with innovation that reflects the latest trends transforming the market. 

For starters, one key trend is that brands aren't just using AI to mimic what their best agents do. Instead, they're using it to reinvent the customer experience from the ground up.

The Agent Architect helps brands blend channels and AI to rewrite the rulebook. 

Other key trends Zoom is seizing upon include the shift toward testing through AI-generated customer simulations, outcome-based pricing, and hybrid quality management.

Thanks to the latter, brands can establish a single framework to inform their contact center automation and triage strategy.

While Zoom is following the lead of conversational AI stalwarts in multimodal orchestration, outcome-based pricing, and new testing tools, this use of its broader portfolio will help ZVA differentiate.  

With a unified context layer across its portfolio, Zoom can further differentiate its offerings, win new business, and expand existing customer relationships.

Its recent launch of the ZVA Receptionist, which routes incoming calls not only to contact center agents but also to employees across the organization, is a prime example.

Yet, expect much more to come from Zoom.