What is next best action?

How is the “next best action” determined?

The idea comes from the customer service and sales operations of large financial service providers: instead of sending every customer all the campaigns they qualify for, a decision is made for each customer about what makes the most sense right now. That may be an offer – or the decision not to communicate at all today, because a more important message is running or the contact limit has been reached.

There are three approaches. Rule-based: decision logic that the company defines and that is traceable at all times. Predictive: models estimate which action is most likely to work. Hybrid: rules set the permitted framework, and predictions help with selection within that framework.

The more automated the decision and the greater its impact on the customer, the more important transparency and human oversight become. The PBM Campaign Platform covers elements of this without letting a language model decide on sending: prioritisation of competing campaigns, rule-based selection of arguments and content variants, and AI recommendations for argument, send time and channel as suggestions that people accept or reject.