Next Best Action
A Salesforce feature (part of Einstein Next Best Action) that uses strategies combining business rules and predictive models to recommend specific actions or offers to users at the point of customer interaction.
Definition
A Salesforce feature (part of Einstein Next Best Action) that uses strategies combining business rules and predictive models to recommend specific actions or offers to users at the point of customer interaction.
In plain English
“Next Best Action is a Salesforce feature that uses business rules and predictive models to recommend specific actions or offers to users at the right moment. So when a sales rep or service agent is on a customer interaction, the system suggests what to do next based on what's most likely to succeed.”
Worked example
When an AE at Highmoor Software opens a Lead record, the Next Best Action component on the page surfaces a recommendation: "Send the Cloud Migration Whitepaper - this lead has visited migration-related pages 6 times in the last week." The recommendation comes from a strategy that combines a predictive model (pages visited) with a business rule (whitepaper assets in the company's library). The AE accepts; the email goes out automatically. Other recommendations in the same component might suggest scheduling a demo (when buying signals are strong) or transferring to a senior AE (for high-value Leads). Next Best Action is platform-driven sales coaching at the moment of work.
Why Next Best Action matters
Next Best Action is a Salesforce feature (part of Einstein Next Best Action) that uses strategies combining business rules and predictive models to recommend specific actions or offers to users at the point of customer interaction. The system analyzes the customer context (current data, history, predicted behavior) and surfaces the recommended action: offer a discount, suggest an upsell, schedule a follow-up, route to a specialist, or whatever the strategy determines is most valuable in that moment.
Next Best Action is one of the most impactful Einstein features for improving customer interactions because it brings AI-powered recommendations directly into agent and rep workflows. Without it, users rely on memory and judgment to figure out what to do next, with quality varying widely. With it, the platform provides consistent recommendations grounded in data and rules. Mature Next Best Action programs invest in strategy design, recommendation curation, and ongoing measurement to improve the recommendations over time.
How organizations use Next Best Action
Uses Einstein Next Best Action to recommend upsell offers to sales reps during customer calls, based on predicted likelihood of success.
Built service-side Next Best Action recommendations that suggest case resolution paths to agents based on similar past cases.
Treats Next Best Action as a way to operationalize their analytics insights, turning predictions into recommended actions.
Trust & references
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Next Best Action.
- Einstein Next Best ActionSalesforce Help
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