Hands-free meetings with Logitech Zoom Rooms and Alexa for Business

The return of employees to physical offices highlights the need for touch-free and voice-controlled meeting rooms. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Gartner predicted that “by 2022, 40% of formal meetings will be facilitated by virtual concierges and advanced analytics.”[i] While Echo devices can be used in meeting rooms, Alexa for Business is easier to deploy and use when built-in to existing video room solutions. These solutions offer a touch-free experience with no additional hardware required. As the latest example, Logitech Room Solutions for Zoom Rooms now come with Alexa for Business. This new offering enables customers to set up Alexa for Business with a few quick clicks. Once enabled, Logitech Zoom Room users can ask Alexa to join meetings, book rooms, and answer company-specific questions.

Neal Piliavin, Director of Collaboration at HubSpot, understands the importance of voice in the workplace. “Together with Zoom and Logitech Tap, Alexa for Business has made it easier for our employees to join meetings and book nearby conference rooms,” said Piliavin. “Those tools will also make it safer for employees returning to our offices by eliminating the need to touch surfaces in conference rooms. Looking to the future, voice assistants show promise in increasing productivity and making meetings more effective.

Using natural language like “Alexa, join my meeting,” or “Alexa, find me an available room” helps you focus on the meeting itself rather than the technology. Keeping people on time is also essential, so Alexa reminds you when there are only 5 minutes left in your meeting.  In addition, the Alexa for Business intelligent room release feature uses Logitech Tap’s motion sensor to free up reserved, but unoccupied rooms for other employees to book them. The Alexa for Business console displays meeting no-shows along with other room utilization metrics. These insights are increasingly important for organizations trying to meet new distancing guidelines and requirements in the office.

“It’s important we continue to evolve the meeting room experience to better support the needs of our changing workplace,” said Scott Wharton, general manager and Vice President, Logitech Video Collaboration. “People are very comfortable with voice commands at home thanks to Amazon Alexa’s adoption, so it’s now becoming a natural experience in the business world. We’re now able to be more efficient around utilization of meeting rooms, allowing our customers to deploy videoconferencing even faster.”

Collin Davis, General Manager for AWS Alexa for Business, added: “We are delighted to work with Logitech and Zoom to introduce hands-free voice control to their industry-leading room solution.  By integrating directly into Zoom Rooms and not requiring any additional hardware, Alexa for Business has never been easier to deploy. Together we are delivering an end to end solution that will enable enterprises to be voice-first.”

The Logitech Zoom Rooms with Alexa for Business solution is available today for organizations of all sizes. Meeting room management is one of several use cases that have established Alexa for Business as the leading voice platform for enterprises. AWS’ collaboration with Logitech lets customers implement safe, productive, and easy-to-use meeting experiences for all their rooms.

For more information on Alexa for Business and meeting rooms, and how to enable touch-free experiences in your organization, go to our Getting Started page.

[i] Gartner, “Magic Quadrant for Meeting Solutions”, published September 2019.