Next Best Experience or Best Next Experience?

We’ve always wanted to go higher, faster, further. As marketers, we relish instant gratification – but as experience designers we place the customer first. Actually, it’s Why we do What we do that resonates with the hearts of our customers, at times helping them look past How we do it. Over the last few years, I’ve heard many a promise to help brands improve customer experience by identifying and executing the “next best action” for each of their individual customers. It’s been called many names – Real-time Contextual Marketing (RTCCM), Customer Decisioning, Marketing Automation and of course, next best action or just nba for short. Its quite simple and elegant in theory – we improve customer experiences at every (Omnichannel ) interaction, inbound or outbound, by arbitrating and executing the next best action (sometimes a sum of activities) at optimal time and channels. This essentially brings us ever closer to the one-to-one marketing nirvana/singularity – something I believe (just my personal opinion) is a theoretical limit, much like the number 0 or the concept of infinity. I feel everything is played out in the consumer’s heart; real-time or not, but alas we fail to recognise the relativity of “customer time”. There’s a marked difference in what’s best for us (brands) and what’s purposeful for our customers – this notion of “contextual customer time”; and ironically it may not always happen in real-time. More importantly “customer time” hinges on the right time – but reality bends again, as the best/right time may not be optimal. Simply put, we aren’t marketing to consumers the right way; in fact the word “marketing” itself could be a misnomer. I argue that it’s more “access to lifestyles, and lifestyles are sums of finite experiences and those in turn are made up of atomic activities. Customers are human beings and all human beings seek and demand authenticity – something that nba just isn’t. And simply renaming it to say, best next action doesn’t help. Hear me out.

The challenge with the concept of “next best action” is that it sounds selfish: Who is that action designed to help most–the customer or the brand? We’ve heard many times that growing customer equity can be counter intuitive to what corporate scorecards dictate. Sinek calls it playing the infinite game- it’s like playing golf, we are playing against ourselves. Wall Street violated that social contract by paying themselves before us/customers, but back to nba – the concept implies (feels, perceived) that it biased towards self gain and brand build only, less of whats in it for the customer. Just think about it- internal performance appraisals and remuneration are contingent upon (short-term) economic outcomes. That goes against the social contract, and customers can feel authenticity or the lack of, instantly. The problem manifests itself in many ways- “big brother is watching, breach of privacy etc”. These are comments verbatim from customers; but if it’s done in “customer time” they would feel happy; our P&L is really just a proxy to their happiness/satisfaction. Think about it that way- being less focused on hitting the ball, we hit the ball further (it’s all in the swing).

We have to look ourselves hard in the mirror as marketers and ask

1. What’s the purpose of next best action – it should

be experience driven (first)

2. The intent of next best action – is it to produce measurable financial/economic outcomes only – if so, it’s very shortsighted

3. Next best action for whom and should we call it best next experience instead? The latter just sounds more customer-centric

Forest and trees, see beyond the trees we raise ourselves above- most tech platforms (fancy way or saying integrated toolkits) and their “next best action” functionality is not to improve customer experience but to lift brands’ short-term sales and marketing results- it should be the reverse! Experiences and entropy are long term, and will always, always triumph over short-term (functions and features) goals; it may have worked before, but customers today can “feel” what’s true. Think about correcting our golf swing, stroke and the distance (economics) will surely follow, it’s a natural by product.

Many client case studies have shown an initial, rapid spike in $ returns, but this tapers off. The two are not mutually exclusive, but as we dive deeper, it becomes apparent prioritising the former over the latter can becomes inauthentic.

1. what’s the purpose of next best action – it should

be experience driven (first)

Activities make up actions and actions result in experiences. Imagine you’re a telco client calling their contact center regarding a recent bill discrepancy. Consider these sets of activities : agent delayed pickup) after incessant rings + after navigating down the IVR visual menu + repeated context (complain) + “how can I help you today” = would most likely trigger an emotional response. The sheer fact having to repeat context after the wait somehow breaches a social contract. Brands need to practice extreme empathy asking “permission” to understand context, all before solving the (actual) problem. The act of empathy can be up to 50% of the solution! Here again, the purpose of nba may seem unclear at first. Contact center vanity metrics implore us, agents (worse, outsourced 3rd party contractors ) be more efficient – consider a retail store/servicing experience where a set top box is being returned/upgraded. Natural queues might be prioritised for sales type transactions, when in fact the return might just take 3-5 mins tops to complete. True, the cost to serve these customers coming in-store might be considerably higher than say, an online appointment + pickup; but the authenticity of human contact/conversation (spending time, committing to come down to the store!) should represent a brilliant opportunity to share a positive experience.

Which begs the question- when we invest in a platform/program to produce “next best actions across all channels, Why do it? If we prioritise building positive experiences for customers vs short-term spikes we find the the returns (not just financial!) more encouraging. But it’s an inflection point, and counter intuitive at times- like in which company would we (ever) get business cases approved with “long -term” goals?! In which company, do we have the customer equity/franchise listed as an “asset”?

2. The intent of next best action – is it to produce measurable financial/economic outcomes only – if so, it’s very shortsighted

Drucker said “you can’t manage what you can measure.” So very true. If you want to know what business executives really care about, look at what they measure; hard and vanity metrics persist. We can’t fault businesses wanting to attain net ROI, but the “trick” is putting experiences first (and believing in a common purpose). It’s always about cross-sell, upsell ratios, churn saves, net saves, cost:income, revenue:expense and a plethora of other KPIs. Even wrapping all these with something like NPS and CES doesn’t help much. The real reason? We’re looking at the wrong thing. These experiences are best delivered by humans – especially complex transactions requiring trust and advocacy. If you think about it, all KPIs are lagging indicators. While nba should provide guardrails for experiential constructs (arbitration, decisioning , inferences, suggestions) , the actual activity in delivering the said experience is innately human – and therefore authentic. True tech amplifies reach, but they also magnify inauthenticity; imagine a chatbot gone awry, or e-commerce payments “lost in translation” between the merchant, bank and processor. The list goes on..

Start with Why, pivot on Purpose and authenticity of all our actions; if improving customer experience is a priority, then what success looks like for nba should be measured by customers’ wants & needs – not just our own. If it’s (nba) a sales engine and conversion multiplier that’s fine too, just call it as it is.

3. Next best action for whom and should we call it best next experience instead? The latter just sounds more customer-centric

Next best action implies that a non engagement/interaction (aka not doing anything) may be optimal. Obviously, if an inbound call is hostile, we need to earn the right to sell; and that can only be accomplished by empathy and actually, authentically, solving the customer’s problem first! There’s been a lot of such breaches to the social contract (for lack of a better word). For example, clicking on mindless banners and pop ups hoping to access relevant content that’s promised. Maybe a broken/phantom link when you need to transact/pay? What about badly designed sites that loop? Call center agents that don’t seem to have a grasp of technical specifics, 3rd party installers coming into your home to fix/upgrade connectivity issues etc, etc. The perennial list goes on..

There’s always a catch; how do we actually/really live true to our Purpose? Trust me, it will show, manifest in all the emails, banner ads, sales scripts, telemarketing rundown sheet etc that we use to communicate with our customer franchise. To build organic customer equity we need to strive to deliver positive experiences throughout his/her lifecycle/tenure, every (single) time. When, not if, the equity of the customer franchise increases, we will observe positive influences and economics in the lifetime value of each. It’s that simple (theoretically), but winning heart counts internally is very challenging; it’s a paradigm shift, when employees feel they’re within the inner circle (of trust) and that their leaders actually put them first, they in turn will look after the customers.

It’s really scary, not having a North Star. The short term gains may seem encouraging (lull us into thinking we’ve nailed it) at first but the market (made up of consumers) corrects itself. Here’s something to grapple with: nba may actually erode customer value and equity over time. Nba may not work for the brand, your brand, like how it was intended to; for it to be really sustainable (as with anything else), focus on long-term customer impact, satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy; metrics such as NPS and CES are a good start.

Let’s practise empathy; imagine your favourite brands inundating you with offers and messages (nba) trying to get you to engage, click, shop and buy – how would you feel? And what exactly would an authentic “next best action” to you feel like?