Eric Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom Video Communications Inc., center, reacts by ringing the opening bell during the company’s initial public offering (IPO) at Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, USA, on Thursday, April 18, 2019. Zoom reported a net profit of $ 7.6 million on revenue of $ 331 million for the year ended January, and is now worth nine times the $ 1 billion valuation it secured after a financing round two years ago.
Victor J. Blue | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Zoom said on Tuesday that it had found a way to allow people who visit offices to make contact with a receptionist without physical contact. It involves initiating a Zoom call, of course.
The development shows that Zoom recognizes that it must ensure that its products remain valuable after people return to the office, after months of working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The new feature, Kiosk Mode, is part of Zoom Rooms, one of the company’s corporate offerings. Unlike the standard Zoom video call service, which people use on their own PCs and mobile devices, Zoom Rooms is designed for meeting places, such as conference rooms, and costs from $ 499 per year per room.
See how the system works: as soon as an office visitor enters the lobby, she goes to the touchscreen monitor with camera and speaker and touches a button to initiate a call with a receptionist. The visitor speaks to the receptionist through Zoom, and the receptionist can allow the visitor to enter the office space, for example, by remotely unlocking a door.
“The receptionist doesn’t have to be in charge,” Harry Moseley, Zoom’s chief information officer, told CNBC in an interview on Monday. “They can be in their own homes. They can be anywhere. They can actually be in a different country and can support multiple buildings.”
Kiosk mode can also help companies reduce the number of receptionists on each floor of their buildings, said Moseley.
The pandemic has shown that employees can be effective working remotely, and Mosely expects companies to adopt a mix of remote and personal work, even after the pandemic is over. This scenario would benefit Zoom, which provides a popular way for colleagues to meet virtually, as well as rivals such as Cisco, Google and Microsoft.
But analysts expect Zoom’s growth to slow with the hypergrowth it saw during the early days of the pandemic. For the quarter ended January 31, analysts surveyed by Refinitiv are forecasting an annualized revenue growth of 331%. For the April quarter, they expect growth of 153%, and for the year ending January 2022, they expect growth of only 38%.
Therefore, Zoom continues to grow. In addition to the kiosk mode, a way is emerging for employees to connect their Android and iOS devices to the zoom rooms, so employees don’t have to touch a common device in a conference room. Zoom is also adding Amazon’s Alexa for Business service to Zoom Rooms, so joining a call is as easy as saying, “Alexa, join my meeting”.
It is possible that Zoom could add support for other voice assistants, Moseley said.
“This is the first iteration, if you will, of many of these things,” he said.
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TO SEE: Trading Nation: two analysts debate whether Zoom still has room to grow in 2021