Zia's Next Best Experience removes the inconsistency in sales engagement by analysing the signals in each customer record and surfacing the most relevant next action, guided by what has worked with similar customers in comparable situations. Rather than relying on a generic playbook, it draws on the full breadth of behavioural and engagement data stored in your CRM.
Three Goals, Three Modules
Next Best Experience is structured around three distinct goals, each targeting a different part of the customer lifecycle:
| Goal |
Module |
What It Does |
| Lead Nurturing | Leads | Guides representatives on the optimal next action to move a lead through qualification and conversion, based on engagement signals and the paths taken by similar leads who converted successfully. |
| Customer Retention | Contacts | Identifies the most effective next touchpoint for existing customers, supporting account managers in maintaining strong relationships and addressing early warning signs. |
| Pipeline Optimisation | Deals | Recommends the next action most likely to progress a deal at its current stage, drawing on deal stage history and comparative analysis with similar deals that closed successfully. |
How Zia Determines the Next Best Experience
The feature synthesises multiple data sources to generate its guidance rather than applying a fixed ruleset. The signals Zia analyses include:
- Engagement metrics: Email open rates, link clicks, call outcomes, and meeting attendance — building a picture of how actively the customer is engaging with your team.
- Deal stage history: How long records have spent at each pipeline stage, and whether progression has accelerated or stalled compared against the typical journey for similar deals.
- Voice of the Customer data: Sentiment signals and feedback drawn from the VoC tools in Zoho CRM, where configured, incorporating how the customer has expressed themselves in previous interactions.
- Comparative analysis: How the current record compares with similar records in your CRM, identifying what worked with analogous leads, contacts, or deals and applying those patterns to the current situation.
Zia's model continuously learns from your team's outcomes. As representatives act on the guidance and deals close or leads convert, the recommendations adapt and improve in relevance over time.
Enabling Next Best Experience
Each goal can be switched on independently, allowing you to phase the rollout across lead nurturing, retention, and deal management:
- Navigate to Setup > Zia > Recommendation > System Recommendations. This is the central configuration area for all system-generated recommendation features.
- Locate the Next Best Suggestions section within the System Recommendations page.
- Enable the master toggle to turn on Next Best Suggestions at organisation level. This does not activate individual goals — it enables the feature overall.
- Activate individual goals — Lead Nurturing, Customer Retention, and Pipeline Optimisation — depending on which parts of your customer journey you want to enhance first.
Continuous learning note: Next Best Experience requires a period of data accumulation before its guidance becomes particularly reliable. In the early weeks after activation, recommendations are based on comparative analysis of existing records. Quality improves progressively as outcome data accumulates.
Availability
| Requirement | Detail |
|---|
| Zoho CRM Edition | Enterprise and Ultimate |
| Setup Path | Setup > Zia > Recommendation > System Recommendations |
| Learning Approach | Continuous — improves as outcome data accumulates |
Need help? 1 Cloud Consultants help UK and Ireland businesses activate and optimise Zia's Next Best Experience — from initial configuration through to embedding the guidance into your sales team's daily workflow.
Book a discovery call.