Zoom Pushes Team Chat Amidst Tough Competition

Zoom has renamed its team chat offering and added new features as it seeks to compete with the likes of Slack and Microsoft Teams.

The company is best known for its videoconferencing tool, which surged in popularity during pandemic lockdowns, boosting it into triple-digit revenue growth.

The firm’s video meetings include a chat feature, but the company also offers a distinct communication suite formerly called Zoom Chat and now renamed Zoom Team Chat to better distinguish it from in-meeting chat.

Hybrid work

With many companies continuing to shift to hybrid working in which they are only in physical proximity some of the time, it has become common for colleagues to make use of a range of tools for real-time voice or video calls as well as text chat applications.

Zoom said it was responding to users’ desire to bring those different communications modes into one and the same application.

The Team Chat feature is to get new features by the end of this month, including the ability to share in-meeting chat into Team Chat.

Users will also be able to schedule a video meeting from the Zoom Team Chat channel, linking a text conversation to a call.

Competition

Zoom Team Chat faces intense competition from the likes of Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Chat and WeChat as tech firms seek to take advantage of the popularity of hybrid working.

In August the company cut its annual profit and revenue forecasts as pandemic-era demand levels off.

The company’s stock has fallen 55 percent since the beginning of this year.