Are you doing Next-Best-Action or Next-Best-Campaign?
Most marketers talk about Next-Best-Action but end up running Next-Best-Campaigns. This is an important distinction for your customer experience and business outcomes.
The Coffee Example
One of the most common examples cited in the personalisation field is your local coffee shop. There are fan groups where people rave about how their barista remembers their order, makes it easy for them to order, and how this feels like a great example of personalisation. Let’s look at a scenario:
Barista A: Welcomes you with a broad smile and asks, “Would you like to try the special of the day - a Caramel Latte? It’s 20% off today!”
There’s a problem, though: you’re lactose intolerant and have been ordering almond milk coffees for over a year.
Barista B: Greets you by name with a warm smile, notices you’re in a hurry and it’s hot outside, and gently suggests, “Would you like an iced coffee today instead of your regular flat white?”
Both baristas think they’re giving you “personalised service.” But only one reads the moment, the context, and acts. That’s the difference between mass customisation dressed up as personalisation and real Next‑Best‑Action (NBA) Decisioning.
What “Next-Best-Action” Is Supposed to Mean
“Next‑Best‑Action” has become marketing’s latest buzzword. But most programs labelled as NBA fall short. They’re often just rule-based or campaign-driven, not actual NBA.
In theory, Next-Best-Action is a customer-centric marketing technique that considers all possible actions during a customer interaction and recommends the one most likely to resonate. It’s not just about pushing the latest product or offer; it’s about understanding the customer’s context, preferences, and journey, then responding in a way that feels personal and timely.
Done right, the NBA can:
Optimise marketing campaigns by targeting users more strategically
Reduce wasted resources by focusing on what works
Improve personalisation and customer engagement
Enable real-time, relevant interactions across channels
However, Most “NBA” implementations are stuck at the recommendation level, suggesting products based on past purchases or recent clicks. That’s not real decisioning. That’s just a recommendation.
True NBA involves dynamically choosing the most appropriate action - what to say, when, how, at this exact moment, for that particular customer. To deliver the NBA, we need:
Please ask below questions yourself and your team:
Data: Are you unifying behavioural, transactional, and attitude data in real time?
Context: Do you track device, channel, intent, sentiment - live?
Decisioning: Is there an engine (AI + rules) scoring and selecting the best action per moment?
Orchestration: Can you deliver decisions across all channels consistently and instantly?
If you answered “no” to any, you’re not doing NBA yet.
The Overuse (and Misuse) of “Next-Best-Action”
“Next-Best-Action” has become a buzzword. Marketers slap the label on everything from basic email triggers to simple product recommendations. But the true NBA is more than just a smarter suggestion engine.
The confusion:
Many solutions focus on single-channel recommendations, not holistic journeys.
“NBA” is often implemented as a rules-based system - if a customer does X, offer Y - rather than a dynamic, adaptive process.
There’s a lack of orchestration: actions aren’t coordinated across touchpoints, leading to disjointed experiences.
A popular McKinsey report (2021) states that while 71% of customers expect personalisation, 76% are frustrated when it doesn’t happen.
The biggest gap here is: Most brands are still thinking in terms of isolated actions, not orchestrated journeys.
Common Misconceptions About Next-Best-Action
Myth: NBA = Personalised Recommendations
Reality: A recommendation is static. NBA adapts based on live context - e.g., intent signals, device, journey stage.Myth: NBA can be built with existing campaign tools
Reality: Without a real decisioning engine, you’re managing campaigns, not actions. True NBA shifts decisions from marketing ops to real-time automated decisioning.Myth: More personalisation = better customer experience
Reality: Bombarding customers with “last viewed” offers isn’t enough. NBA delivers relevance in context, not just repetition.Myth: NBA is channel-specific
Reality: Real NBA must orchestrate across phone, email, SMS, web, even IVR. Single channel = fragmented experience.Myth: NBA Is Only About Sales and Marketing
Reality: NBA spans the entire customer lifecycle, including retention, service, nurturing, and even resilience (e.g., helping customers avoid financial distress). The “best” action may be a support message or proactive service.
My point of view: If your NBA looks like a sequence of A/B tests or segmented emails, it’s not NBA- it’s Next‑Best‑Campaign. Let’s stop calling it NBA until we've invested in context, decisioning logic, and orchestration.
Decisioning vs. Orchestration
So what does real decisioning look like? Think of it as the “brain” of your marketing stack, powered by AI and data, making decisions about who, what, where, and how to engage customers across every channel, in real time.
Decisioning: Determines the next-best step in the customer journey, considering all available data, business objectives, and customer context.
Orchestration: Coordinates and delivers those actions across channels, ensuring consistency and relevance, no matter where or how the customer interacts.
Without orchestration, even the smartest decisioning engine is just shouting into the void. The real magic happens when decisioning and orchestration work together, creating seamless, personalised experiences at scale.
Common Pitfalls and How to Move Forward?
Common pitfalls:
Siloed data and channels prevent a unified customer view.
Over-reliance on rules-based systems that can’t adapt in real time.
Lack of cross-functional collaboration between marketing, IT, analytics, and customer service.
How to evolve:
Centralised Decisioning: Move beyond channel-based recommendations to a unified decisioning hub. Can your Decisioning Engine make decisions in Real-Time?
Invest in Orchestration: Ensure your technology can activate decisions across all touchpoints - web, mobile, email, in-store, and beyond.
Leverage AI and machine learning: Use predictive and adaptive models to continuously learn and improve, not just automate static rules.
Break down silos: Foster collaboration across departments to align on customer experience goals.
Clarify definitions: Educate teams - NBA isn’t a campaign or personalisation silo; it’s a decisioning model.
Don’t Call It NBA Unless You Mean It
Next-Best-Action isn’t just a smarter recommendation. It’s about orchestrating the entire customer journey, powered by data, AI, and a relentless focus on relevance. If our “NBA” is just a new flavour of product suggestion, it’s time to rethink our approach.
Let’s stop watering down the term. True NBA is system-level orchestration - the difference between a barista who knows your order and can tailor it with context vs the one who just offers the special of the day.