I was genuinely excited to be invited to Zoomtopia 2025. A chance to return to journalism, I spent an exciting 2 years writing for GolfPunk magazine, despite being truly terrible at golf, was just too exciting an opportunity to miss.
True, it was held in London rather than some glamorous transatlantic odyssey, but it was still a front-row seat alongside Zoomies and proper tech journalists from across Europe.
From Teams alternative to something bigger
Going in, I thought of Zoom as a little more than a better-functioning alternative to Teams. Slicker, easier, less bandwidth hungry, and my personal choice for lecturing and meetings when the spinning wheel of death became unbearable. What I found instead was a company determined to prove it’s something far bigger.
AI Companion, the invisible colleague
The theme for this Zoomtopia was “For the People” and for once it didn’t feel like marketing spin. The message was clear, AI isn’t there to replace people, it’s there to strip out the rubbish that clogs their day so they can focus on work that actually matters.
The star of the show was AI Companion. Every licence now comes with it, no hidden “AI tax” and it can do the lot, notes, summaries, workflows, content clips, even real- time translation.
There was plenty of talk about agentic AI, the latest buzzword. Strip it back and here’s what it means for SMEs. If the technology works as advertised, you’ve got a new employee who never sleeps, never eats, never quits and quietly handles the unseen work that makes the rest of the team more productive.
It’s the invisible colleague most small businesses can’t afford to hire. Crucially, Zoom insists it isn’t feeding your data back into its models. In a world where many are greedily hoovering up whatever they can, that matters.
Contact centres that SMEs can use
The second big revelation was the customer experience suite. Historically, these tools belonged to the biggest corporations and Zoom is dragging them into SME territory.
The future, much of which is here now, looks very exciting indeed.
Virtual agents aren’t clunky bots that do more to annoy than help. Now they can manage complicated workflows and even sound like you through the clever use of voice sampling technology. Information shifts seamlessly from AI to human, reducing repetition and through the new Agentic AI Expert Assist the human agent has support providing suggestions and step-by-step workflows while the call is still happening.
It will even suggest taking a break after the call if it perceives it as particularly stressful, a world away from the usual sweatshop metrics that reduce people to call- handling machines.
There are also real-time dashboards that flag when an agent is going off script or a customer is showing frustration, giving seniors the chance to step in before a situation escalates. Automated Quality Management scores AI and human conversations alike, keeping standards high across all touchpoints.
Then there is CX Insights, which lets leaders interrogate customer interactions in plain language. Instead of waiting for reports, they can simply ask, “Why are calls spiking this week?” or “What’s driving complaints?” and get an immediate answer without needing a team of analysts.
Driving the business forward
Zoom isn’t stopping at support. It’s also pushing into sales and events. The Revenue Accelerator takes the pain out of prospecting by automating outreach, surfacing opportunities and letting sales teams focus on closing. On events, Emmy award-winning Zoom is turning webinars into broadcast-quality productions. AI now generates attendee summaries and manages production features that once cost a fortune, meaning even the smallest company can deliver something polished.
SMEs are enterprises in progress
This is where Zoom’s strategy clicks, it isn’t pretending it can knock the existing incumbents out, especially given some of their bundling advantages but as one executive put it, “Nobody gets fired for buying Microsoft. We want them to get promoted for choosing Zoom.” That line for me tells you everything. Yes, Zoom is chasing enterprise contracts; it would be mad not to, but unlike other providers, it appears genuinely committed to SMEs too. There’s a team focused entirely on them. I even spoke to the amazing team head, and the offering feels equal whether you’re a solopreneur influencer or an S&P 500 giant. If the technology works as billed, it could transform efficiency and give SMEs the ability to scale nationally and internationally without burning out their people.
There is one snag. The pricing page is a bit of a mess, a wall of options that looks more like a pub chalkboard of guest ales than a software menu. This isn’t a stick- your-credit-card-in-and-go product, you’ll need to speak to someone so it’s lucky there is a team to help you work out the solution that is right for you.
A real contender
I went to Zoomtopia expecting a nostalgia act about video calls. I left convinced that Zoom is building something SMEs need to take seriously and something I plan to use in my next venture, as I would be daft not to.
The key is to understand that this isn’t just about running smoother meetings. It’s about turning conversations into workflows, customer calls into insights. It is a way of adding an extra low-cost hard-working team member to support your efforts, as
well as a growth engine and an insights machine. It’s not another SaaS line item, it’s potentially a support function that can really help your SME grow!
PS I work with founders, scale-ups and boards that value honest, experienced advice with real commercial impact. No fluff, no hype, just clarity and direction, as one friend said I call a spade a shovel (with a few expletives) and this is a description of which I was pretty proud….and this post is my personal view and other than lunch and a couple of coffees no remuneration was provided for my views!
