Over the last few years, Zoom has probably had one of the most intriguing journeys in the business world.
After booming during the pandemic, the company has since expanded its offerings to cover a huge range of enterprise needs, with contact center services alongside traditional video conferencing and expanding AI tools.
As the company looks ahead to its new AI-enabled evolution, I went to the Zoom Experience Centre in London to find out more.
Refusal to compromise
“When we look at EMEA, we think the landscape is shifting in how organizations think about the technology they rely on,” Louise Newbury-Smith, Zoom’s Head of UKI, explains.
“For years, the pattern has been pretty similar, an organization would adopt a platform and then have to manipulate their own way of working around that platform - we really want to reverse that.”
“There is still some of that friction…(but) what’s changing is that organizations are starting to refuse to compromise - they want platforms to work the way they want to work.”
Zoom opened its UK data center in November 2025, greatly improving the situation for organizations in the region, as data residency choices which didn't exist before are now in place, meaning the likes of local councils, NHS trusts and financial services firms can store their data locally.
Newbury-Smith notes that the EMEA region is not a secondary market for Zoom, but high growth opportunity, a point echoed by Nick Tidd, Head of Global Channel GTM, who said the region offers, “a truly remarkable opportunity for our customers and for our partners, when you look across the product portfolio.”
This opportunity is hooked onto AI, particularly the growing importance of the context layer, a situation where Zoom is ideally placed, Tidd says.
“Think of how Zoom is positioned across the product portfolio - capturing all of those conversations…(and) putting them into the context to capture them in the workflow is where we are very different to others.”
This move was expanded by Leo Boulton, Zoom’s Head of Product, Solution and Industry Marketing, who ran us through the company’s recent releases and product announcements, highlighting the importance of context in Zoom’s concept of “conversation to completion” in its new Unified Context Layer.
“Conversations come natural to us - the way that we work is through conversations, it’s just a natural part of how humans are,” he noted, “so getting the job done should also be a natural thing - not something that requires a change in behavior, but something that should naturally just be part of our everyday work.”
If this doesn’t happen, workers will resist change, Boulton notes - particularly when it comes to AI, which is why Zoom is looking to embed intelligence into work itself.
Context has become a critical part of improving AI performance and usefulness in recent months, and Zoom wants to ensure its tools are as up to date as possible - but this requires some key elements.
“Before AI can truly understand how people work and operate, we have to guarantee it has the highest-quality raw materials,” Boulton points out. “The conversation must be crisp, clear and understood with genuine eye contact – because only with the best ingredients can AI deliver the most value.”
Zoom has been working hard to improve the quality and fidelity of its audio and video for calls and meetings, including the upcoming launch of a real-time “voice smoothing” tool known as “touch up my voice” and a pose correction tool enabling for greater eye-to-eye contact to boost interpersonal connections.
The better your agents understand your business, the more effectively they can work for you, Boulton notes, as he demonstrated how users will soon be able to benefit from a live assist feature which offers proactive suggestions during a call, such as telling you to speak slower or faster.
Zoom Chat is also getting a significant upgrade, making it what Boulton said should be a shared space where people and agents will interact and work together.
“We don’t expect our customers to live entirely inside Zoom,” he said. “True adoption only happens when tools feel natural, which is why our context layer is open by design – bringing the intelligence directly into whatever interface people already choose to work in.”
So it’s clear that Zoom wants to be so much more than your classic video conferencing and chat platform - and its ability to get the most out of your information could make it a very handy tech partner going forward.
“The direction is super clear,” Newbury-Smith concludes, “we're building and serving our customers where they are.”
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