Insights
How agentic AI is reshaping brand sentiment management
by Mark Wagner
1/16/26
Why brand sentiment matters more now than ever
Controversy or not, the abilities of an organization to track, understand, decide, and take appropriate action are critical functions of any brand that invests in its brand reputation to maintain equity in the market. The brands that cannot respond or proactively manage their perception in the social sphere risk severe damage, or at a minimum, losing pace with the ever-shifting consumer sentiment of the times.
However, the upside of staying on top of a brand has significant benefits, as managing and responding to customer commentary has shown to boost retention, and thus, recurring revenue (McKinsey).
This is also especially true in customer service contexts. Companies that respond quickly to customer inquiries in a timely fashion see those customers spend 20–40% more. And ignoring them drives churn rates up by 15%. Moreover, resolving issues on the first contact can reduce customer churn by as much as 67%. (electroiq.com)
The real challenge of speed, process, and cost
Most organizations don’t struggle to collect unsolicited brand feedback. The ambition of an organization to act on brand sentiment is also not in short supply. And social listening is not a new feature. The platforms that leverage this ability to do have been around a long time.
Rather, the challenges are universally driven by several common realities:
- Siloed customer feedback lives across social platforms, forums, and support tickets creates inefficiencies and missed opportunities because the dots are not connected across all teams.
- Marketers often compile this feedback manually, slowing down insights and action unnecessarily.
- Product teams often starve for fresh insights from online conversation, but they struggle to parse them and focus their efforts to optimize or innovate in a timely fashion.
- Customer support teams often ingest and action ticket logs, but often they fail to address key service pain points in a timely fashion or get an overall understanding of operational service issues that may be emerging.
A myriad of social listening tools exist today, but they are often one-size-fits all, can be costly to implement, have complex licensing fees, and don’t integrate.
A business case for sentiment analysis with Agentic AI
While the chatter around Agentic AI has saturated the headlines for the last 18 months, the case hasn’t always been clear on whether and how to invest beyond a proof of concept that shows cool features.
LLMs are very adept at processing natural language and parsing unstructured conversation is a ripe pool of value to mine when it comes to monitoring brand perception. For brands who spend a lot of time, money and energy conducting social listening, the time is ripe for reinvention.
Furthermore, the investment in an AI feedback solution should be framed not as a cost center but as a strategic asset with a quantifiable return on investment. Proof points that can help underscore the investment rational could be:
- Brands that empathetically respond to social feedback on relevant and timely topics experience improved sentiment. (Business Think)
- Automating sentiment analysis and feedback handling can reduce manual review time, accelerate response rates, and drive customer retention. (flowgenius.ai)
- 83% of customers are more likely to stick with a brand that responds and resolves their complaints. (Khoros)
- Organizations are increasingly integrating agentic AI which help shift from traditional slow, manual pipelines to real-time, intelligent workflows. (Forrester.com)
What actionable Agentic AI sentiment management looks like in practice
Agentic AI can change the equation by shifting sentiment analysis from passive monitoring to active decision support.
In an ambitious effort to innovate on these challenges and opportunities, Horizontal’s AI product innovation team created Sense™, a custom Sitecore marketplace application that leverages AI, agentic workflows, and the power of Sitecore’s platform to tackle these exact challenges and capitalize on real business value across marketing, product, and service functions.
Built on the back of common-and-ever-popular LLM technology, Sense accelerates a brand’s ability to analyze and act on public customer sentiment across brand, product, and retail challenges.
Rather than simply reporting what customers are saying, this programmed automation helps teams understand what matters, why it matters, and what to do next, which ultimately driving operational efficiency, business growth, and elevated customer experiences.
Turning intelligence into action
Sense, which analyzes sentiment and brand voice, moves beyond a simple monitoring dashboard and become a driver for a company's overall customer experience strategy:
Instructed with proprietary brand information and insights, Sense continuously collects relevant brand, product, and service conversations and retail store reviews.
It synthesizes brand sentiment while also identifying detractor signals and language that are not aligned with the goals and guidelines of a brand. It also suggests specific tactics to minimize customer churn in specific instances.
When prompted, it provides specific actionable insights for teams, empowering them to tune marketing and brand messaging, troubleshoot product and services issues, and collect innovative product ideas.
Sense is designed for seamless integration into existing platform environments like Sitecore. It’s easy to integrate and intuitive for teams to use, and it can fit neatly into marketing, product, and service team workflows.
Agentic AI offers cross-functional value across the enterprise
While not the original intention, the Horizontal innovation team discovered that harnessing AI in this fashion unleashed more use cases than originally thought, which helps underscore greater business value. What started as an effort to simply help marketing teams monitor brand sentiment in a handful of locations extended into a variety of use cases:Marketers and brand managers who want to understand whether their brand resonates with customers in ways originally intended through analysis of customer’s brand experiences and perceptions, and adjust content, messaging and campaigns based on those insights.
Product teams who want to understand what in-market product issues exist that might influence future purchase decisions, and to gather ideas for product improvement and innovation.
Operational service teams who want to pinpoint customer needs and opportunities at retail and triage ways to support customers at stores or online to prevent churn and drive retention.
The business return on AI-driven sentiment management
The business value proposition for harnessing Agentic AI extends beyond simple efficiency gains. With Sense, Horizontal has unlocked product innovation that can help teams impact revenue through higher customer retention and lifetime value, while simultaneously reducing operational costs and significant time spent on manual data analysis.What this means for brands planning their AI roadmap
While our future in digital invariably involves AI at every step, AI will increasingly become the backbone of how brands engage, respond, and innovate. The question is no longer if brands should leverage AI, but how they can do so strategically. Agentic AI offers a clear path forward: moving from passive monitoring to proactive, insight-driven action that strengthens brand health and customer loyalty.The roadmap begins with identifying high-impact use cases, piloting solutions that deliver measurable ROI, and scaling intelligently across marketing, product, and service functions. By doing so, organizations can transform fragmented feedback into actionable intelligence and turn sentiment into a competitive advantage.
Why Horizontal Digital?
While many technology partners claim to integrate AI in many of their solutions, at we orchestrate enterprise transformation with it. The combination of AI through intelligent connected experiences, our expertise in AI integration, connected experience strategy, and platforms like Sitecore ensure your organization moves beyond reactive listening to predictive engagement.If you’re ready to explore how Agentic AI can elevate your brand’s sentiment management and customer experience, connect with us to start building your roadmap today.
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