Eric Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom Video Communications Inc., reacts while ringing the opening bell during the company’s initial public offering (IPO) at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, USA, on Thursday, April 18 of 2019. Zoom reported net income of $ 7.6 million for revenue of $ 331 million for the year ended January and is now worth nine times the $ 1 billion valuation it earned after a round of funding two years ago.
Victor J. Blue | Bloomberg | Getty Images
On Tuesday, Zoom said he has found a way to allow people visiting offices to register with a receptionist without physical contact. It involves, of course, initiating a Zoom call.
The development shows that Zoom recognizes that it must ensure its products are valuable after people return to the office, after months of working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The new feature, the kiosk mode, is part of Zoom Rooms, one of the company’s business offerings. Unlike the standard Zoom video calling service, which people use on their own computers and mobile devices, Zoom Rooms is designed for meeting places, such as conference rooms, and starts at $ 499 a year per room.
Here’s how the system works: Once an office visitor enters the lobby, he goes to the touch screen monitor with camera and speaker and taps a button to start a call with a receptionist. The visitor talks to the receptionist via Zoom, and the receptionist can allow the visitor to enter the office, such as unlocking a door remotely.
“The receptionist doesn’t need to be in charge,” Harry Moseley, head of information at Zoom, told CNBC on Monday in an interview. “They can be at home. 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 they have on each floor of their buildings, Moseley said.
The pandemic has shown that employees can be effective while working remotely, and Mosely expects companies to adopt a mix of remote and in-person work even after the pandemic ends. This scenario would benefit Zoom, which provides a popular medium for colleagues to meet virtually, as well as rivals such as Cisco, Google, and Microsoft.
But analysts expect Zoom’s growth to slow from the hypergrowth it saw during the early days of the pandemic. For the quarter ending Jan. 31, analysts surveyed by Refinitiv forecast annualized revenue growth of 331%. For the April quarter, they demand growth of 153% and, for the year ending January 2022, they expect only 38%.
Therefore, Zoom continues to be created. In addition to kiosk mode, it offers employees a way to connect their Android and iOS devices to Zoom Rooms, so employees don’t need to touch a common device in a conference room. Zoom also adds Amazon’s Alexa for Business service to Zoom Rooms, so joining a call is as easy as saying, “Alexa, join my meeting.”
Zoom may add assistance to other voice assistants, Moseley said.
“This is the first iteration, if you will, of many of these things,” he said.
Nominations are open for 2021 CNBC Disruptor 50, a list of private companies that use innovative technology to become the next generation of large public companies. Present on Friday, Feb. 12 at 3 p.m. EST.
I’LL SEE: Trading Nation: Two analysts debate whether Zoom still has room to grow in 2021