As you head back to the office, Zoom promises it's still relevant

Zoom chief product officer Smita Hashim explains why even video-chat innovators need the physical space – with a little help from AI.

For many, Zoom rose to prominence during the pandemic era of working at home in pyjamas. Schools held virtual classes on the platform during lockdowns and friends gathered there when they couldn't meet in person. There were even Zoom weddings and funerals. It was so ubiquitous during lockdown that "Zoom" entered the lexicon as a catch-all term for virtual calls, joining companies like Kleenex or Band-Aid whose names symbolise a single product. With offices shut, demand reportedly surged from 10 million daily meeting participants to 200 million in March 2020. Zoom's market valuation peaked at approximately $161.65bn (£125bn) in October 2020.

But as lockdowns lifted, that sky-high stock price was followed with an equally spectacular crash. Today, the San Jose-headquartered company is hovering closer to its pre-pandemic valuation at around $17bn (£13bn). Like so many technology companies, Zoom issued layoffs in February 2023, axing 15% of jobs. Soon after, CEO Eric Yuan made a surprising announcement: the company that helped millions of people work from home wanted their own employees back to the office in person. Changing predictions about the future of work prompted a rethink: now, Zoom wants to be known for more than "Zoom calls".

In August 2023, the company announced that workers living within 50 miles (80.5km) of a Zoom office must work in person at least twice a week. Yuan stressed the importance of in-office collaboration for fostering innovation and building employee trust. Zoom also shifted its product focus towards the physical workplace. Its hybrid mandate coincided with the opening of a modern, new London office for its 200-plus UK employees – an "Engagement Hub" featuring 75 work points across library-style benches, agile tables and hot desks bookable through Zoom's reservation tool. The company has tried to market the office as "the blueprint" for a modern workplace. A neighbouring "Experience Centre" that showcases its technology includes a "boardroom of the future", featuring cameras controlled by artificial intelligence (AI) and floor-to-ceiling curved-screen displays.

"If our customers use the office, we do too," says Smita Hashim, who joined Zoom as chief product officer in January 2023, just before the company's restructuring. "It means we can make our products even better." The India-born, California-based industry veteran had previously led product teams at video collaboration platforms Microsoft Teams and Google Meet. But her work for Zoom often encompasses the built environment. After all, the company's headline-making return to the office (it was a largely in-person company before Covid-19) wasn't just for better brainstorming sessions – Hashim says it also makes business sense.

Zoom's new workplace focus extends across hardware and software. Both incorporate AI. For example, its Intelligent Director product leverages algorithmically-selected views of in-person meeting participants, so virtual colleagues see them in a Zoom gallery view – although it does require high-definition cameras that are sold separately. And, following the likes of Microsoft Copilot and Google's Gemini, Zoom has released its own always-on automated assistant for work – an AI Companion that uses generative AI to provide meeting summaries, message drafts and meeting room recommendations.

According to the company, this means Zoom's business is about far more than video-call. It wants to be regarded as a workplace company – and known for Zoom Workplace, its suite of collaborative tools.

Here, Hashim talks to the BBC – via Zoom, of course – about the company's transition to the workplace, the evolving role of the physical office and the future of AI at work. 

Zoom is synonymous with video calls and working from home. Yet you're now focused on in-person work. Why?

The physical setup is very important to customers – and therefore to Zoom, too. The future of work is flexible: 65% of our employees don't live near an office and work remotely. But teams still want to come in and collaborate seamlessly. Alongside human connection, we wanted to be able to test our products. We can only do so if we're in the conference room, too.  

Why is the physical workplace so important for Zoom, given those working from home often use Zoom to chat to colleagues all day?

Because we're human. When we meet each other face-to-face, some creative work, brainstorming and decision making becomes easier. We may now have generative AI writing up meeting notes and online whiteboards, but there's still something really engaging physically going over and writing something down as colleagues gather. Some in-person time is energising – that's why we want to offer the opportunity for all our employees to do it, that's why see our customers also doing it.

With hybrid teams now the norm in knowledge work, why is it so difficult to achieve truly hybrid meetings for virtual attendees? 

A pain-point cited by customers is around equity, and not creating a meeting experience that's balanced between someone in the conference room and someone joining remotely. We've solved it up to a certain extent, for rooms of a certain size. We use AI in our Intelligent Director product: two or three cameras are in the room, slightly angled. Once you do that, through AI, they're able to segment the room so colleagues appear individually on laptops at home, rather than crowded around a table. The challenge comes from the AI being smart enough to find the best view: for example, if someone sits at a different angle, moves around and talks in real-time.

How much is Zoom wanting to shake off the remote working tag? Do you want to be known more for hybrid working – or something else?

We love that Zoom is well known to so many and they use us for connecting all the time. But we see the future of Zoom as really an AI-driven open collaboration platform that modernises the work experience. We've gone in this direction based on customer feedback. We've always had video calls, and built in phone infrastructure, chat capabilities and now Zoom AI Companion. Our AI works in the background to even recommend a desk for employees to sit near their teams for their office days.

Are Zoom customers really embracing AI? Or is there still scepticism? 

We're seeing growing comfort and usage among customers. But there are still worries over security and privacy of data and assets – they often go through a rigorous process before turning on AI Companion. And they ask us hard questions related to security – as they should. 

We've also taken the position – the right one – that we never use any of our customers' conversation data to train our AI model or third-party ones. And we give controls to customers to turn individual features on and off, so they have control.

[Zoom faced international backlash in August 2023 after an update to its terms seemed to imply the company might harness user data to train AI. A subsequent Zoom policy update said that "for AI, we do not use audio, video or chat content for training our models without customer consent". A Zoom spokesperson confirmed that the company never used conversation data to train its generative AI.]

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Is this the future of work then? Workplaces powered by AI?

As generative AI becomes better, it's going to become more of an agent for teams to work on their behalf, sending messages such as, 'These customer requests came in overnight, I've set up meetings for you to talk through them'. People are burned out by constant mundane tasks. The hope is that AI frees up time so employees can work on energising and engaging jobs instead. We're working on that now. 

The advent of AI has led to some fears it can take jobs. But do you think the average knowledge worker is better placed now than they were five years ago?

I've worked for so long and raised a daughter – I'm happy that flexibility is so much more normalised and accepted now. It's created more opportunities, especially for those not able to attend the office because of health issues or caring responsibilities. 

But work has also become really busy and noisy now, with so many tools and constant tasks. I'm a tech optimist: my hope is that as more employees become familiar with generative AI tools, they can help them spend time on more engaging tasks. For me, flexibility is the guiding force of the future of work. If done right, it can empower people to do their best work.

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