Zoom Intros First Native Cloud Contact Center Product Following Terminated Five9 Deal

Zoom says that in addition to its first homegrown contact center offering, now available through the channel, it will maintain its existing contact center partnerships with Five9, Genesys, NICE inContact, Talkdesk, and Twilio.

Zoom Video Communications is rolling out its first homegrown cloud contact center offering coming off its abandoned acquisition of cloud contact center software provider Five9.

Zoom Contact Center, unveiled on Wednesday, is an omnichannel offering that integrates into the same Zoom platform in which users are already familiar, Heidi Elmore, head of UCaaS at Zoom, told CRN.

“Our customers have been asking us for help communicating with their end customers. Part of that modernization of the customer experience has brought forth this new product and investment area for Zoom,” she said.

Video-centric Zoom Contact Center is available now through Zoom channel partners in the United States and Canada through the company’s Referral Partner Program, which includes the Zoom Master Agents Program, Direct Agent Program, and Standard Referral Program.

[Related: Zoom Invests $30M In Conference Hardware Partner Neat]

Out of the gate, Zoom Contact Center will support customer service use cases that use video and voice channels. SMS and webchat channels are currently in beta. The company said it also working on making workforce management and CRM integrations possible and will layer in AI and machine learning capabilities to optimize agent productivity.

The contact center offering will allow agents to work from any location, while allowing organizations to centralize the management of their customer service arm through a well-known platform, Elmore said. It will also give organizations that may already have a contact center solution in place access to a video-enabled customer experience offering, she said.

“We’re hearing from the industry at large that customers don’t want to modernize their customer experience separately from their internal productivity,” she said. “It’s about being able to bring those experiences together [in] that single unified platform.”

Bringing productivity and the contact center together will help agents become more productive because they can communicate with their internal teams at the same time as the customer from the same platform, “instead of being an island unto themselves,” Elmore added.

Zoom Contact Center can be purchased as a standalone offering or on top of an existing Zoom Video license, the company said.

Channel partners on behalf of their clients and contact center administrators can create menus, greetings, and prompts from the same Zoom Admin portal they work with internally for unified communications and video. Zoom Contact Center can also integrate chat and video into an existing website to let businesses have conversations with customers in the right context, she said.

“[The contact center] is just another area where partners can help modernize their particular customers’ businesses,” Elmore said.

Zoom said that in addition to its new contact center offering, it will maintain its existing contact center partnerships with Genesys, NICE inContact, Talkdesk, Twilio, and Five9, which Zoom made news when it tried to buy the company in 2021 for $14.7 billion. The deal fell through when Five9 shareholders ultimately rejected Zoom's all-stock offer.

San Jose, Calif.-based Zoom said its channel is contributing more than 20 percent to non-online bookings globally, and nearly 30 percent of its international business is going through the channel today. The Company will open up Zoom Contact Center through partners outside the U.S. and Canada as it opens up the product in new geographies, Elmore said.

Zoom Contact Center joins the company’s existing portfolio of business solutions, including Zoom Video, Zoom Phone, and live events platform OnZoom.