When a sales rep opens a lead, contact, or deal record in Zoho CRM, they often face a straightforward question: what should I do next with this record? The answer usually requires reviewing past interactions, checking engagement patterns, looking at deal stage history, and comparing with similar records—all of which takes time and context-switching across reports.

Zia's Next Best Experience (NBX) answers that question directly on the record's detail page. By analyzing data across modules, including engagement history, deal stages, interaction patterns, and customer behavior, NBX provides a specific, actionable recommendation along with the reasoning behind it.

Each suggestion comes with a clear explanation of why Zia is recommending that action, references to similar records and their outcomes, and preparation material for the suggested activity—whether that's an email draft, meeting agenda, or call prep points. 

NBX works across three goals, each mapped to the relevant module:

• Lead Nurturing, available in the Leads module
• Customer Retention, available in the Contacts module
• Pipeline Optimization, available in the Deals module

How NBX generates suggestions

NBX analyses data from multiple modules to arrive at its recommendations. Rather than relying on a single data point, it combines engagement metrics, like activities, emails, and notes, to build context around each record.

NBX also factors in Voice of the Customer (VOC) data where available, including customer satisfaction, feedback, and sentiment, so suggestions reflect how the customer actually feels, not just what the numbers say.

The more data available across these modules, the more precise the suggestions become. NBX continuously learns from interactions and adjusts its recommendations based on how each record's journey evolves over time.

The Next Best Action widget

On a supported record's detail page, NBX displays its recommendation in the Next best action widget. 

This widget shows:

1. The suggested action: A specific, contextual recommendation. For example, "Schedule a technical workshop to resolve pending battery integration questions raised during last discussion" or "Send a value-focused follow-up email highlighting strategic business benefits aligned with their leadership priorities."
2. An action button: This button changes based on the type of suggestion. If Zia recommends scheduling a meeting, the button reads Create Meeting. If Zia recommends sending an email, it reads Send Email. The button lets you act on the suggestion directly from the widget.
3. Know more: Opens the Detailed Insights panel where you can see the full context behind the suggestion, including a summary, reasoning, reference deals, and activity preparation material.
4. Last updated timestamp: Shows when the suggestion was last generated, so you can gauge how current it is.
5. Like / Dislike: Provide feedback on the suggestion to improve Zia's accuracy over time.

When a new recommendation is available, the widget displays a prompt to fetch it. Click Get New Suggestion to load the latest recommendation.

You can also click the View NBX button in the record's header bar to access the Next Best Experience panel.

Detailed Insights

Clicking Know more on the Next best action widget opens the Detailed Insights panel. This panel provides the complete context behind Zia's recommendation and is organized into three tabs: Overview, Reference Deals, and Activity assistance.

Overview

The Overview tab provides two key pieces of information:

Summary

A brief narrative of the record's current situation. This includes relevant context such as recent interactions, the stage of the engagement, key concerns raised by the customer, and any pending actions. The summary gives you a quick understanding of where things stand without having to scroll through the record's timeline.

Reason for suggestion 

An explanation of why Zia is recommending this particular action. This goes beyond just stating the suggestion and explains the logic behind it, citing patterns such as engagement trends, customer behavior signals, or outcomes from similar records. For example, Zia might explain that similar deals that included a technical deep-dive at this stage showed 40% higher conversion rates.

Reference Deals

The Reference Deals tab shows records that followed a similar trajectory to the one you are currently viewing. Each reference record includes:

• The record name and owner
• The outcome (for example, Closed Won or Closed Lost)
• A short narrative explaining what happened, what actions were taken, what worked, and what the result was

If Zia is suggesting a technical workshop, you can see that similar deals where a workshop was conducted moved to closure faster, while deals that skipped it stalled or were lost.

Activity assistance

The Activity assistance tab provides preparation material tailored to the suggested action. The content here is dynamic and changes based on the type of activity Zia has recommended.

• For email suggestions: Zia generates an Email Draft that you can copy and use or adapt. The draft is contextual to the record's situation, referencing relevant deal details, customer concerns, and strategic talking points.
  
• For meeting or call suggestions: Zia generates a Meeting Prep or call preparation outline with specific agenda items and discussion points. These are drawn from the record's context, including past interactions, pending questions, and reference case data.

Enabling Next Best Experience

NBX operates on a goal-based configuration model. When you enable it, the system automatically maps each goal to its corresponding module and begins processing records to generate suggestions.

To enable Next Best Experience:

1. Go to Setup > Zia > Recommendation > System Recommendations.
2. Toggle on Next Best Suggestions.
3. Under the main toggle, you can activate or deactivate individual goals: 

1. Pipeline Optimization: Suggestions are available in the Deals module.
2. Customer Retention: Suggestions are available in the Contacts module.
3. Leads Nurturing: Suggestions are available in the Leads module.

NBX automatically begins analyzing records and generating patterns when minimum data criteria are met. If the data in your account does not yet meet the threshold, the system enters a waiting state until sufficient data is available.

Points to remember

• NBX suggestions are available on the detail pages of records in the Leads, Contacts, and Deals modules, based on which goals are enabled.
• The action button on the Next best action widget adapts to the suggestion type, it can be Create Meeting, Send Email, Create Task, or other actions depending on what Zia recommends.
• Activity assistance content in Detailed Insights is dynamic. Email suggestions generate a draft; meeting and call suggestions generate preparation material with agenda points.
• Reference Deals show records with similar patterns and their outcomes, giving you practical context for the suggested action.
• You can provide feedback on any suggestion using the like/dislike buttons on the widget. This helps Zia refine its recommendations over time.
• NBX learns continuously from interactions and adjusts suggestions based on both historical patterns and the record's current behavior.
• For Customer Retention NBX in the contacts module, Pipeline Optimization have to be enabled.