Recommendation
In Salesforce Einstein Next Best Action, a record that represents a specific offer or action to suggest to a user, containing a name, description, acceptance label, and rejection label displayed through the recommendation component.
Definition
In Salesforce Einstein Next Best Action, a record that represents a specific offer or action to suggest to a user, containing a name, description, acceptance label, and rejection label displayed through the recommendation component.
In plain English
“A Recommendation in Salesforce Einstein Next Best Action is a record representing a specific offer or action to suggest to a user. It has a name, description, acceptance label, and rejection label that appear when the recommendation is displayed through the Next Best Action component.”
Worked example
Cascade Bank uses Einstein Next Best Action to suggest cross-sell offers to call-center agents during customer calls. When an agent opens a checking-account record for a long-tenured customer, the Recommendation component surfaces a card titled "Offer balance-transfer credit card" with a description of the customer's eligibility, a green Accept button, and a "Not interested" rejection label. Each Recommendation is a record an admin maintains separately, with the name, description, and labels editable without code; the underlying strategy decides which Recommendations appear and in what order. When the customer accepts, the agent clicks Accept and the banking system records the conversion against that specific Recommendation.
Why Recommendation matters
In Salesforce Einstein Next Best Action, a Recommendation is a record that represents a specific offer or action to suggest to a user, containing a name, description, acceptance label, and rejection label displayed through the recommendation component. Recommendations are the candidate actions that strategies evaluate and surface to users based on strategy logic.
Designing recommendations thoughtfully is part of Next Best Action effectiveness. Recommendations should be clear, actionable, and specific enough for users to understand what they're being asked to do. Mature programs maintain recommendation libraries, iterating on wording based on acceptance rates and outcomes. The library is the pool of possible actions that strategies pick from based on customer context.
How to create Recommendation
Recommendations are the Salesforce records behind Einstein Next Best Action and Salesforce CMS recommendations — "Suggest this offer to this customer," "Show this article to a similar visitor." Most are auto-created by Einstein engines; manual creation is for static, hand-curated suggestions.
- Confirm Next Best Action is enabled (for NBA recommendations)
Setup → Next Best Action → enable the feature.
- Open the Recommendations tab (or App Launcher)
Recommendations are records, like any object.
- Click New Recommendation
Top-right of the list.
- Set Name and Description
Description appears in the recommendation card shown to users.
- Set Action Reference (URL or quick action)
What clicking the recommendation does — open a record, run a Flow, navigate to a URL.
- Set Image
Optional image shown in the recommendation card.
- Save → bind to a strategy
Setup → Recommendation Strategies → strategy → Add Recommendation → pick this Recommendation. The strategy decides when to surface it.
Required.
Required. Shown on the recommendation card.
- Recommendations on their own do nothing — they need to be in a Recommendation Strategy. Without a strategy, the Recommendation record exists but never displays.
- Recommendation Strategies are part of Next Best Action — separate paid feature in some editions. Confirm licensing.
- Image hosting is on Salesforce Files. Large images count against file storage; optimize image size before uploading.
How organizations use Recommendation
Maintains a recommendation library of sales actions that their Next Best Action strategies can surface based on context.
Iterates on recommendation wording based on acceptance rate data to improve user engagement.
Treats recommendation library curation as part of their Next Best Action program management.
Trust & references
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Recommendation.
- Einstein Next Best ActionSalesforce Help
Test your knowledge
Q1. What is a Recommendation in Einstein Next Best Action?
Q2. What fields does a recommendation have?
Q3. How should you improve recommendations?
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