SugarCRM has boosted the artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities of its SugarPredict engine for marketing and sales intelligence, adding a sentiment analysis tool that determines prospects’ “emotional state and intent.”

SugarPredict is available on the Cupertino, California-based company’s Sugar Sell and Sugar Market platforms for automating and assisting with sales and marketing tasks. It’s also embedded in SugarCRM’s SugarLive multichannel customer communications application, the company said in a statement.

SugarLive is “designed to enable sales and service personnel to track the details of each customer interaction as it’s happening and effortlessly access customer information across all touch points and channels at the exact moment it’s needed,” SugarCRM said.

The omnichannel SugarLive customer service tool is available to SugarCRM customers with Sugar Serve licenses and provides real-time intelligence to customer service agents who are interacting with prospects online or on the phone.

Sentiment analysis works by using natural language processing (NLP) and AI to score the state of mind of a prospective or existing customer to determine best next steps, the company said. These could include escalating an interaction to a supervisor, presenting a “save-the-sale” offer, or moving to an upsell attempt.

Making the best first impression

SugarCRM chief technology officer Rich Green said sentiment analysis is intended to help SugarPredict users better handle crucial first interactions with prospective customers in the marketing process.

“You rarely get a second chance to make a great impression with a customer; it’s profoundly important to get each and every interaction right and connect on a deeply human level,” he said. “Sales and service professionals are under a great deal of pressure, as a customer’s business can be won or lost in a single misstep.”

Sentiment analysis is the latest in a series of AI-driven, marketing-centric improvements to SugarPredict. SugarCRM first released the software in January as a sales tool for SugarCRM’s Sugar Sell users. SugarPredict for sales is billed as an automated cloud software solution that can intelligently enrich the customer data entered into CRM systems to ensure quality and consistency.

In May, SugarCRM made SugarPredict available to users of its Sugar Market marketing intelligence platform to help marketing teams with automated predictive lead scoring.

Sugar Market is a customer lead-cultivating platform that helps marketing teams with tasks like quantifying how website visitors interact with digital marketing materials; assisting in the creation of emails, landing pages, and forms; qualifying leads with lead-scoring models; and aligning with sales via automated hand-offs of qualified leads.