‘Collaborate Happy’: Zoom, Google Cloud, AWS Showcase New AI, Machine Learning Tools

ENTERPRISE CONNECT — At Enterprise Connect on Wednesday, the conference’s love affair with generative AI continued with talks from Zoom and Google Cloud representatives.

“AI is in the air,” said Joseph Chong (pictured on stage above), head of platform and industry marketing at Zoom, during the company’s keynote.

For Zoom, that means “federation,” or providing flexibility within its artificial intelligence offerings. Zoom officials said users can implement the company’s proprietary models, plus OpenAI’s  and customers’ own models. This is because flexibility provides the most value for a customer’s diverse needs, officials said. These changes are happening within the framework of an ongoing focus on privacy, security, inclusion, trust and safety.

“The workplace is evolving like never before,” Chong said. “The pace of change has been relentless.”

Moreover, in this evolving generative AI climate, the video conferencing company has made additions to its AI-powered Zoom IQ. It can summarize meetings, offer meeting recaps and write email responses.

It would be unusual for Zoom to present at Enterprise Connect without showcasing advances to video technology, too. Chong explained how Zoom Intelligent Director uses multiple cameras in a Zoom Room to provide the best angle for participants.

The multitude of changes get users to ultimately “collaborate happy,” Chong said.

In 2022, there were 37 million downloads of Zoom’s business apps. They are the most downloaded mobile business apps in the United States.

Google Cloud’s Revolution

AI isn’t just changing, said Behshad Behzadi, VP of engineering, conversational AI at Google Cloud. It’s a revolution.

Google’s Behshad Behzadi

“Things that are not possible are possible,” he said.

And Behzadi didn’t come to Enterprise Connect to disappoint. Take this video scenario he shared with the audience.

Imagine a driver is having car trouble and needs to pull onto the side of the road. The driver hovers her cellphone camera over the car’s dashboard while she’s on the phone with emergency support. But instead of talking to a live agent, she’s speaking with a conversational AI car assistant, who, in real-time, diagnoses the driver’s car problems. The AI tool gives her next steps for roadside assistance, as well. To top things off, the car assistant speaks in an English that is full of colloquialisms.

The language capabilities of conversational AI tools are so precise these days that even Google engineers can’t distinguish between them and the human voice. These tools can recognize 1,000 languages and have 98% accuracy rate in English.

For the contemporary contact center, Google presents equally important offerings. With Contact Center AI, it’s “ten times easier” to build chatbots, Behzadi said. What once took days is now as easy as uploading a Word document.

Contact Center as a Lifeline

For AWS, the focus on the mainstage was more about streamlining operations for contact centers.

AWS’ Dilip Kumar

“The contact center is the lifeline of your company,” said Dilip Kumar, VP of AWS applications. “When it comes to contact centers, we’re just getting started.”

The company is trying to strike a balance with sophisticated machine learning to advance agent training. Amazon Connect, the omnichannel contact center, also offers a “single pane of glass” so human agents can be efficient in answering customers’ queries. It has also helped to reduce agent attrition.

This was critical for AWS client, financial software company Intuit. During tax season, Intuit typically doubles the number of agents it uses. However, the company doesn’t want to give these temporary agents the equivalent set of access to sensitive information as it does to its permanent employees.

“But if you don’t give [the temporary employees] the right information at the right time, they’re unable to handle all the customers’ inquiries,” Kumar said.

Intuit utilized Amazon Connect to build a unified customer portal so that it didn’t matter the status of the employee. They could have access to the information they needed.

It’s ultimately about one fact, Kumar said.

“Customers just want it to work.”