Zoom Pricing is a Barrier For Converting Users
You make an excellent point, Jim, in regards to how Zoom’s business model with regards to pricing represents a significant barrier for converting users into customers. I am glad that you brought it up because I wanted to include some discussion comparing pricing models but decided that it would go too deep to really fit into the article.
Touching first on how the pricing structure differs between Zoom and Google Meet for G Suite subscribers, I think that it is important to note how the Zoom business model emphasizes “hosts” versus Meet’s “users.” Though it may seem like a minor difference in vocabulary (after all, all Meet users are hosts when they schedule meetings), it implicitly codifies a licensing barrier between being a host versus a participant. Zoom is an individual add-on for organizations that would require an individual license for each authorized user before being allowed to host a meeting. It makes sense from a licensing perspective, but since Google Meet can make everyone in the organization a host as part of a pre-existing subscription cost (or no cost for educational institutions and nonprofits), it represents significant friction for organizations to constructively use. By commoditizing key features, Google has forced Zoom to move into a “premium feature” market segment to best grow its customer base.
Assuming that Zoom can succeed in differentiating its product as a premium over commodity functions included as part of a G Suite or Microsoft 365 subscription, Zoom would be wise to include an administrative feature that would allow organizations to easily share out host licenses across a user pool. For example, as a business owner, I would have found it helpful to treat my Zoom webinar license as an assignable conference room within my G Suite domain. Then, my users could have scheduled meetings using that license as if they were reserving a physical conference room. As members of the authorized user pool, Zoom could then send the user an email with session-based access to the account for configuring the session. I think that would be a valuable features in small-group scenarios like you describe.
Lastly, Zoom’s customer service will need to be better than you describe to be perceived as a premium service. Many people are surprised when I characterize Google’s customer service as “stellar.” As a G Suite customer, my interactions with Google support personnel have always exceeded my expectations when normalized across experiences with other technology companies. Never in my career have I had a support technician email me to follow up on an open issue and state that they would not close the help ticket until they could get in contact with me to confirm my satisfaction until I first started working with Google.
I would be interested to hear your (and others) stories migrating from Zoom to Google Meet or other services. Meet has not always given me a great experience, but I have adapted to its quirks as it has improved over the past couple of years.
