Zoom has launched Zoom IQ for Sales, a “conversation intelligence software” that uses artificial intelligence to analyse sales meetings and deals to provide key insights, actions, and content. As part of the announcement, the company says sales leaders can use such data to help make better-informed management decisions regarding their sales teams.
This is Zoom’s first push into sales automation software, a market that Verified Market Research estimates will grow to $7.3 billion in size by 2028.
Because of the lockdowns, companies and their sales teams were forced to use digital tools during the pandemic. McKinsey predicted in 2020 that about 90% of sales would shift to a videoconference/phone/web sales model due to the growing importance of digital connections for businesses. 82% of organisations polled in an impartial Harvard Business Review research felt that artificial intelligence (AI) has the greatest potential to “substantially” enhance alignment between sales and marketing.
Many of Zoom IQ for Sales’ features stem from the company’s increased investments in artificial intelligence (AI). In May 2021, the video conferencing platform got an AI-powered feature that automatically selects the “best” parts of recorded meetings based on keywords from audio transcriptions. It bought Kites, a startup that specialises in real-time translation and transcription.
Additionally, Zoom’s omnichannel contact center strategy, which began with the launch of Zoom Contact Center in February, has grown with the addition of Zoom IQ for Sales to Zoom’s portfolio. Back then, Zoom claimed that Zoom Contact Center was designed to help with “customer service use cases,” including upselling, by “combining unified communications and contact center capabilities [with Zoom].”
Zoom IQ for Sales calculates an engagement score based on the “talk-time” ratio, the lag time between responses, and the number of times the customer speaks during the call. Positive and negative words and phrases are measured by a distinct metric, the sentiment score. Filler words like “oh,” “like,” “uh,” and “um,” which some studies reveal might have a detrimental influence on sales closing rates, are another factor that is taken into account.
To go one step further, Zoom IQ for Sales makes an attempt to determine “excellent” queries by looking at how long consumers take to respond. Zoom IQ can keep track of the number of times each product feature is discussed during a call by feeding it a list of features.
This solution has yet to be proven accurate, especially in light of the company’s history of using poor artificial intelligence. Zoom’s metrics for measuring customer engagement aren’t universally accepted by salespeople, in part because of the inherent bias in sentiment analysis algorithms.
Other platforms, like Gong and VoiceOps, already have features that look a lot like Zoom IQ for Sales. This puts more pressure on Zoom to show how it’s different. The company is probably feeling the pressure from its investors to come up with new ways to make money. Profits rose for Zoom during the pandemic, but now that users are moving to hybrid and in-office work arrangements that depend less on videoconferencing, the company’s guidance is falling.
