Zoom’s Shift From Meetings To Work Products

Meetings create the most valuable raw material in a company: the ideas people say out loud. The problem is that those ideas usually evaporate into scattered notes, half-remembered decisions, and action items no one can trace. From the floor of Enterprise Connect, we sit down with Zoom Chief Product Officer Jeff Smith to unpack how Zoom is trying to close that gap by turning conversation into completed work.

Jeff explains why transcription is only the starting point and how “My Notes” is designed to capture interactions across platforms, building a durable repository that feels like perfect recall. We get into the less-hyped but crucial AI work that makes outputs reliable, like noise reduction, voice understanding, and meeting-room identity so tasks go to people instead of “Conference Room One.” Then we zoom out to the big product bet: AI canvases. With Zoom Docs as a text surface and new AI Slides and AI Sheets, AI Companion can translate what you discussed into a project plan, a deck, or a spreadsheet without the blank-page grind.

We also explore how customer obsession shapes the AI roadmap, how a unified data layer connects customer experience, revenue, and support insights, and why healthcare could be a breakout use case for AI workflow automation, better clinician preparation, and more focused patient conversations. If you care about AI productivity, meeting intelligence, knowledge management, and practical enterprise AI, this is a clear look at where collaboration software is going next.

Subscribe for more conversations like this, share this with a teammate who lives in meetings, and leave a review with your take: what should AI automate first in your daily workflow?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

And I'm here at Enterprise Connect with Jeff from Zoom. Jeff, how are you?

SPEAKER_00 0:04

I'm doing well. How are you, Evan?

SPEAKER_01 0:06

I'm doing well. Zoom is everywhere here. You're at Enterprise Connect, you're at HIMS, you're on everyone's laptop and phone. Before that, maybe introduce yourself, your role within Zoom. And how do you describe Zoom these days?

From Meetings To Work Platform

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Oh, that's that's a great question. But I'll start out with uh with me. So I'm Jeff Smith, uh I'm the chief product officer at Zoom. And uh Zoom is evolving for sure uh from a meetings platform or a collaboration platform uh to a platform where where work happens. So we take all those conversations, uh unstructured data, uh, and we're able to turn that into output, into work products. So a lot of the announcements that we talk about here at the show are about that mission of going from uh you know from that conversation into into completed work.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

And I've I've um watched you evolve from of course meetings, and then that led to transcription. But you're doing so much more than just transcription than meeting summaries and AI. Maybe where is the product today and where is it headed?

Capturing Conversations As Core Data

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Yeah. So the transcription or taking the uh just capturing all the conversations is foundational. Uh that's the it's the real value of our human-to-human interaction. So as we're starting to, you know, see the uh you know AI through every everything that we do, the thing that doesn't change is that new ideas are generated by people. Uh AI is a great job of synthesizing information, of uh you know collecting it, maybe some insight, but it's all based on the the ideas that have been generated by people. And so that foundational data uh is so important that we introduced a uh a feature called My Notes. Uh it's a cross-platform note taker. So every interaction that you have could be in person, could be on Zoom, could be on another meeting platform, uh, can all be uh you know brought into the the that same repository of transcribed data.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

That's fantastic. And you know, AI has so many opportunities to be leveraged in different parts of the product. Um that's an obvious one. Where else is AI being used? Uh obviously on the video side, quality side, but tell uh tell us your your idea of how much AI will be infused into the product over time.

My Notes As A Universal Log

AI Across Audio Video And Rooms

AI Canvases Docs Slides Sheets

SPEAKER_00 2:30

Oh, so it's super exciting uh because it's changing so quickly. Um we have we have AI throughout the product and have for many years. So everything from the media layer where we're you know using AI on the audio side for noise reduction, personalized so that it understands your voice versus the voices of others. Uh in the meeting room where uh we can take an image and understand that this is a human uh and that this is you, not just uh you know recognizing that that's uh that's you wherever you are. The reason that that's important in an AI world is that the data that comes out of that meeting room, that might be the most important you know, group of people in the meeting are in the meeting room. And if it's conference room one that does all the talking, it's not all that useful uh you know in terms of the all of the work that happens after the meeting. So uh conference room one shouldn't get any action items, should all come to humans. Uh uh, yeah. So that's that's what we've been focusing on in the conference room uh in leveraging AI. But again, that's foundational data, and what we announced as well uh here at the show is a new set of AI canvases. So what I mean by that is this is the surface that AI does work and does work for you. We had uh uh Zoom Docs uh that is the text-based canvas for AI Companion, and we're adding uh onto onto that with uh AI slides and AI sheets. So now you can you know you can accelerate your your presentation development and your spreadsheet development, and you can do all of that based on the conversations that we had. Maybe that turns into a project plan that might look like a spreadsheet. The conversation that we had, it might look like a presentation that has to be a you know persuasive document for you know for the board meeting or something. All of that can now be accelerated by by AI Companion.

Customer-Led AI Roadmap

SPEAKER_01 4:40

That's fantastic. So, Eric, uh of course, notoriously customer obsessed, Eric Juan, the CEO, and many of his greatest ideas came from customers, listening to customers. How do you think about your AI roadmap? Uh, the balance of responding to what customers might be asking for and showing inventing new products and services and ideas that might delight uh customers in the spirit of customer happiness that Eric always talks about.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

No, and it it so it's absolutely quarter our culture. Uh and it every time that we come out with a new idea, even if it wasn't originated by a customer, we always vet that with customers to understand is you know, is it just an idea that we have, or is this something that you're actually going to use and value? Um so it's not even a balance, it's everything that we do is built for uh you know for customers and and uh to meet their needs.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

And you guys aren't just about workers anymore or getting work done, you're about customer experience and serving customers, contact center customers. Tell us about how that side of the business is shaping up and just the amazing opportunity that AI represents for CX improvement.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Look, it's it so it's fantastic, and and we are well positioned. Um it's not just because we can have a great experience for you know for the the on the customer side, but that also adds value across the platform. So if I want to have insights, if let's say I'm you know I'm in product, right? And so for our product development, we have to understand what our customers are experiencing. And all of that insight comes through the uh you know those customer channels. Now that comes into a unified data layer where I can grab insights from the the CX side, I can grab insights from our revenue team through our revenue accelerator product, I can grab insights from our virtual agent uh you know on the sub on the support side. All of those channels now come into a unified data layer for me to get insights on how to build my product and meet customers' needs in a better way. So it's an amazing opportunity, uh, but all of it comes together in terms of a unified experience across the board. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Without picking any favorite children, what's your what's your favorite feature or functionality on Zoom on the platform? Something you couldn't live without, maybe use every day. There's you have so many features. I I often can't keep track of all the things. But but but what uh what what do you use every day that's your go-to?

Healthcare Workflows And Patient Focus

SPEAKER_00 7:14

No, my notes is my favorite today. So uh I have a favorite child today. Uh uh, and the reason that it's my favorite child today is that it gives me perfect recall. Oh, yeah. I can any interaction that I've had, I can, I can, you know, two months ago we had a meeting, we talked about whatever. Uh now that's part of a you know permanent repository. Second brain, yeah. It's it's like perfect recall of uh you know of all the interactions that I've had. And what we're gonna be able to do on top of that data is to create now AI Companion knows me, knows how I respond to questions, knows when I defer to other people, knows my leadership style. So when I go to make a presentation or a document and I ask AI Companion to help me with it, it's leveraging all of that memory to understand how to build this in the way that it fits what I would do. So it takes it way more from this, you know, a generic tool to my you know, my personal executive assistant.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

It's fantastic. And speaking of that, just down the road, we have the hymns, the big healthcare IT show, you're there as well. All of this is applicable to the healthcare world, but in particular, giving superpowers to doctors and nurses and providers and even patients. Um there must be a lot of capability that you're building specifically for those healthcare customers.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

So I'm super excited about the opportunity on the healthcare side as well, and especially on our ability to provide insight to physicians and help them to uh focus on the engagement with the patient instead of focusing on you know what what is their medical history and how do I, you know, uh write write all the prescriptions at the on the back end. But if we can automate their workflow so that they walk into a patient interaction fully prepared with all the history that they've had, and they can uh just focus on the conversation because they know that that that our uh Zoom AI is processing all of it for them, they can have a great and rich interaction with that patient, which is gonna help the out uh have great outcomes in the in the future.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

That's great. And I know most doctors hate the applications they're given and using. I don't think anyone hates using Zoom, so what a great opportunity to give a modern mobile a modern UI and experience that's actually usable.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

That's right. And so we're looking at both the you know the software application, and either be you know for um telehealth on the on a traditional Zoom interface or for a mobile device when it's an in person visit, um, as well as in uh uh like hospital rooms. So the whole portfolio that we have for collaboration we're uh you know bringing into the health.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

As patients and family members are patients, we're all rooting for you. So good work. Thanks so much. Thank you. Onwards and upwards. Okay, thanks.