Zoom has launched the next generation of its Zoom Virtual Agent at Customer Contact Week 2025.
The announcement introduces agentic AI to the solution.
As such, the Zoom Virtual Agent not only searches for answers by scouring knowledge and data stores, but it can also leverage those sources to reason.
While it reasons, the solution may recall previous interactions and pull context from them, enabling a continuous service experience and greater personalization.
Moreover, the Zoom Virtual Agent can reason to an appropriate tone of voice, given the customer’s language choices, their intent, and brand guidelines.
It may also tackle multi-intent queries by breaking them down and keeping the customer on track when they veer off halfway down a resolution path.
Yet, most critically, thanks to this reasoning capacity, the solution adapts and mechanizes processes to automate more complex customer queries.
Additionally, with agentic AI, the Zoom Virtual Agent may reach into integrated systems and collaborate with other AI agents to trigger actions within them, automating more of the contact center.
Alternatively, the Zoom Virtual Agent can escalate to a live agent when the AI is not confident in providing accurate answers.
Speaking to CX Today before the launch, Ram Rajagopalan, Head of AI Product at Zoom CX, said: "We’re moving away from scripted, intent-based models and replacing them with a system based on skills and prompts.
Instead of programming exact decision trees, you can set broad objectives and allow the AI to reason, adapt, and act autonomously based on real-time context.
Underpinning the possible transformative impact of this technology, Gartner predicts that agentic AI will automate 80 percent of customer service queries by 2029.
Such announcements edge the industry closer to this possible future, with Zoom also extending its new Virtual Agent across voice as well as digital channels.
However, despite the rapid advancement of this technology, businesses shouldn’t let the latest AI innovations loose across their contact centers without guardrails. Whether it’s Virgin Money taking offense to the word “virgin” or NYC instructing small businesses to break the law, there have been many customer-facing AI fails over the past 18 months.
Zoom recognizes this, provisioning a new AI studio for businesses to build, test, and deploy specialized virtual agents.
All in all, the new Virtual Agent offers Zoom a key expansion opportunity, according to CEO Eric Yuan, with over 1,250 companies leveraging its adjacent CCaaS platform.
Yuan noted this when celebrating the largest-ever deal for the Zoom Virtual Agent last month. He also reiterated internal claims that Zoom is already resolving 97 percent of online queries via the solution, even before agentic AI entered the fray.
