The world saw a great change in various practices and habits during the pandemic. Businesses around the world, especially, saw a huge shift in workplace environments, daily practices, and the way business is carried out in general. With social distancing and other hygiene norms in effect, work from home became the new way of attending office.
In such scenarios, we saw the emergence of various business tools and aids that offered their services in accordance with these new rules. Zoom was one such company whose value increased by multi-fold as it catered to video conferencing needs during such perilous times.
Over time, Zoom became more than just a video conferencing firm but a bare necessity for all businesses. This article will look through how and why this change occurred and why Zoom has become more than a video conferencing firm.
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Zoom‘s Success Story
Zoom was founded in 2011 by Chinese American businessman Eric Yuan. In 2013, Zoom launched its software and proceeded to become a unicorn business in 2017, with its 1 billion revenue evaluation. It started becoming more profitable in 2019 following the pandemic as work from home initiatives were started everywhere around the globe.
Zoom became a reliable tool for businesses and other institutions with its easy-to-use features, video conferencing support, and other features that made communicating via audio and visual means exceptionally easier.
However, even though the pandemic saw elevated use of Zoom, it had already laid its foundation firm and strong with steady growth. However, with social distancing and quarantine in effect, Zoom quickly became a must-have tool for all types of industries with the work-from-home practice. Centered around the ideology of having happy and satisfied customers with a cloud-based video conferencing tool, Zoom has come to be what it is today.
3 Primary Reasons Behind Zoom’s Growth
To understand why and how Zoom came to be what it is today, we will first have to understand what kind of growth strategy it adopted for it to be where it is.
As mentioned earlier, though during the pandemic, Zoom had increased users, it was already on its ladder up way before that. Good credentials go to the growth strategy that it has been following since the beginning.
Therefore, we will take our time to understand what growth strategy Zoom has followed and what its three main components are.
Thoroughly customer-driven
Eric Yuan was an employee at Webex for many years and had the equal experience to vouch for his position. He had been working on their technology for years and had built a team that started with just ten engineers to a massive 800 engineers.
However, in 2007, Cisco acquired Webex and Eric was made the vice president of the engineering department. Even though he was promoted and had a well-paid position, Eric was far from satisfied. Cisco adopted a backdated technology and customers were increasingly unsatisfied. Even when probed, the management was not taking any action for updating their strategy.
Dissatisfied with how things were turning out to be, Eric left Cisco in 2011. However, he was not the only one to leave. 40 other engineers resigned alongside him, all of whom came together to form Zoom.
Therefore, Zoom is not a newbie venture but a start-up with the knowledge and experience of professionals with years of expertise (almost a thousand years according to their survey). With the sole intention of serving customers, something that came to a halt after Cisco acquired Webex, Zoom was built with the intention of providing video conferencing aids that were easy to use and efficient.
Build a product that is self-saleable
Starting a new venture is always a risky path to take. The same was told to Eric when he decided to leave Cisco to start his video conferencing firm. Everyone warned him how this was not only risky but also crazy as there were too many similar products in the market.
However, to Eric, the answer was simple— build a product that is better than the others, and the one way to achieve it is happy customers.
Consistent feedback and survey, and using their product to assess their quality, Zoom is relentless when it comes to collecting data to improve their technology.
Another reason why Zoom became more prominent in the market is because of how they present their product. It follows a freemium model which allows users to use Zoom for 40-minute video calls for free. Yet, this limitation did not stop people from using Zoom and spreading the word (however, Zoom decided to remove the limitation in 2020 for thousands of schools globally).
The result— from three million people participating in a Zoom meeting in 2013 to two hundred million participants per day in 2020.
Spare no expenses while building brand image
Zoom believes in letting its product do the talking. However, they did not invest too much time in coming up with creative ideas on how to promote their brand. Instead, they focused on letting people try their products for free.
One of the few strategies at play for Zoom was to target the early adopters. This segment of the customers is the adventurous and curious people who are willing to try the new stuff in the market.
They focused on promoting strategies like billboards on highways (Route 101 in Silicon Valley, to be exact) and basketball arenas in exchange for the free use of their product for the teams. The idea was to let people use the product and see for themselves how well it worked.
Reasons Why Zoom Is Best At What It Does
Eric Yuan keeps focusing on making a product that satisfies customers the best by being the best among its competitors. So what exactly does Zoom offer for it to be the best in its field? Here are a few reasons why:
Easy setup
Zoom does not involve rocket science or complicated software that will have you pulling your hair out. It is easy to set up and install. You do not need the help of IT professionals and neither do you need to go by a guidebook to know how to install and run it.
Without any hidden prices and smooth payment and deployment options, a Zoom is a tool that anyone can use and get started on.
Multiple device access
You do not have to be specific about your device and models as Zoom can run seamlessly on all types of operating systems. This flexibility allows you to use it via any device whenever and wherever you want.
The best solution for widespread teams
Work from home is the new way of attending office but with Zoom, you can always stay connected no matter where you are. Zoom allows 100 participants (standard) to join at the same time and can provide high-quality video even with a poor connection.
Final Thoughts – One platform, multiple solutions
The best part about Zoom is its one-for-all solution. It is a platform that caters to your video conferencing, webinars, chat, and phone needs. Therefore, you will be investing in one application and getting the best of all the features.
Also, Zoom keeps updating its software to continuously keep up with emerging market trends so that you never have to worry about moving on to another application.
In conclusion, Zoom is not merely a video conferencing firm any longer. With its constant drive to have happy and satisfied customers, and a goal to offer a product that is best in its field, Zoom is a business tool that you must-have for your business.
