Brandi AI Reveals Who’s Winning the AI Conversation in the CRM Market
AI Visibility Index Methodology and Measurement
Brandi AI’s AI Visibility Index for the CRM Market Universe analyzes how AI answer engines discover, frame, and prioritize Customer Relationship Management (CRM) brands when responding to likely buyer questions across the B2B funnel. This report focuses on competitive visibility inside AI-generated answers, where buyer perceptions are now shaped.
As AI becomes a primary entry point for product research and vendor comparison, this report shows which CRM brands AI consistently includes, emphasizes, and cites across awareness, evaluation, and decision stages. The findings identify which brands currently influence AI-mediated buyer understanding, which are gaining momentum, and which sources AI relies on to explain the CRM category.
This report measures visibility inside AI-generated answers. All findings apply only to the CRM Market Universe and reflect observable AI behavior during the reporting period of Dec. 23, 2025 – Jan. 21, 2026. This analysis is based on more than 17,264 answers to the most likely AI buyer prompts, run daily for 30 days across seven AI answer engines—ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, Grok, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity.
Results represent a point-in-time snapshot, providing a practical view of who is winning the AI conversation in CRM today.
Who Is Winning the AI Conversation in CRM?
Top 8 CRM Brands by GEO Awareness
How often AI includes a brand when answering unbranded buyer questions across discovery, evaluation, and decision stages—where the brand is not named in the prompt.
Example prompts:
- Discovery Stage: How can CRM platforms improve customer relationship management?
- Evaluation Stage: Which CRM platforms offer multi-region customer support management capabilities?
- Decision Stage: How do I choose the best marketing and CRM software for my enterprise needs?
| Ranking | CRM Brand | % of CRM AI Mentions |
| 1 | Salesforce | 55% |
| 2 | HubSpot | 48% |
| 3 | Zoho | 39% |
| 4 | Freshworks | 25% |
| 5 | Pipedrive | 24% |
| 6 | Microsoft | 23% |
| 7 | Zendesk | 16% |
| 8 | Intercom | 5% |
Top 8 CRM Brands by GEO Share of Voice
How much of the Market Universe conversation a brand controls when AI answers both direct and adjacent buyer questions, where multiple relevant brands compete for inclusion and narrative emphasis within the same response.
| Ranking | CRM Brand | GEO Share of Voice (SOV) |
| 1 | Salesforce | 14% |
| 2 | HubSpot | 13% |
| 3 | Zoho | 10% |
| 4 | Freshworks | 7% |
| 5 | Pipedrive | 6% |
| 6 | Microsoft | 6% |
| 7 | Zendesk | 4% |
| 8 | Intercom | 1% |
Top 8 CRM Brands by AI Sentiment
On a scale of 1-10, with 1 as the lowest (most negative) score and 10 being the highest (most positive).
| Ranking | CRM Brand | AI Sentiment Score |
| 1 | HubSpot | 8.0 |
| 1 | Iterable | 8.0 |
| 3 | Zendesk | 7.5 |
| 4 | Pipedrive | 7.0 |
| 4 | Freshworks | 7.0 |
| 4 | Microsoft | 7.0 |
| 7 | Zoho | 6.9 |
| 7 | Salesforce | 6.9 |
Top 8 CRM Brands by AI Sentiment Across Key Product Attributes
| Ranking | Analytics & Reporting | Customer Service | Innovation | Price | ROI & Time to Value |
| 1 | Salesforce | Zendesk | Salesforce | Zoho | HubSpot |
| 2 | Zendesk | HubSpot | Zendesk | Freshworks | Pipedrive |
| 3 | HubSpot | Keap | HubSpot | Pipedrive | Iterable |
| 4 | Microsoft | Freshworks | Microsoft | HubSpot | Zendesk |
| 5 | Zoho | Pipedrive | Freshworks | Keap | Freshworks |
| 6 | Freshworks | Zoho | Zoho | Microsoft | Zoho |
| 7 | Pipedrive | Microsoft | Pipedrive | Zendesk | Keap |
| 8 | Keap | Salesforce | Keap | Salesforce | Microsoft |
What Are the Top Sources for AI Answers on CRM?
Top 5 Domains Cited by AI in CRM-Related Answers
| Ranking | Corporate Domains | Media Domains | Peer Review Domains | User-Generated Content Domains |
| 1 | Salesforce | Forbes | TrustRadius | |
| 2 | Nutshell | TechRadar | G2 | YouTube |
| 3 | Monday.com | PCMag | TechnologyAdvice | |
| 4 | Zendesk | Business News Daily | Gartner | Wikipedia |
| 5 | HubSpot | Solutions Review | Capterra | Medium |
January 2026 Highlights
Market Narrative Leader: Salesforce
Salesforce established clear leadership across the metrics that most directly shape AI-driven buyer understanding—GEO Share of Voice and GEO Awareness. The company also led all CRM brands in domain citations, posting a 13% advantage over its nearest competitor. This indicates that Salesforce currently exerts the strongest influence over how AI answer engines frame, source, and explain the CRM category. In January, Salesforce demonstrated sustained dominance across multiple stages of the B2B buyer journey within the CRM Market Universe.
Market Narrative Gainer: Intercom
Intercom historically accounted for less than 1% of AI mentions within the CRM Market Universe before January. In the last 30 days, the company experienced a notable shift in AI visibility, achieving a nearly 5% increase in its GEO Awareness score in a single month. This rapid increase, as tracked by the Brandi AI platform, reflects a meaningful gain in AI Share of Voice and inclusion in AI-generated answers, positioning Intercom as one of the fastest-rising brands in AI answers about CRM-related topics.
Most Cited Media Link: PCMag
The most frequently cited individual link across all AI-generated CRM answers in January was PCMag’s “The Best CRM Software for 2026,” published on Jan. 5. The article emerged as a primary reference point for AI answer engines, indicating strong alignment with buyer-oriented queries and comparative evaluation prompts within the CRM category.
Media Momentum: Solutions Review
Solutions Review had the largest increase in media domain citations in January, rising 324% in less than one month. This growth followed the publication of a CRM buying guide designed to address high-intent buyers’ questions. Published on Jan. 5 and first cited by AI answer engines on January 15, the article has since appeared consistently across multiple platforms and 10 different AI prompts. Within one week, Solutions Review surpassed all other media outlets in citation growth.
Why AI Visibility Must Be Treated as an Operational Discipline
AI visibility reflects whether a brand has earned repeatable authority inside AI-generated answers, reinforced across independent sources and sustained across multiple AI answer engines. Influencing these outcomes requires treating AI visibility as a measurable, operational system, rather than a one-time content initiative.
Brandi AI is designed to make AI visibility observable and actionable. Instead of focusing solely on where a brand appears, it reveals how AI interprets the brand, which sources reinforce that interpretation, and where targeted intervention is required to change outcomes.
What Brandi AI Helps You Measure
- AI Mentions: Whether a brand is included—or absent—across major AI answer engines.
- AI Share of Voice: Whether AI uses a brand to explain the category, compare options, or simply list it.
- Citation Authority: When and where AI treats owned or third-party content as evidence.
- Narrative Themes: The attributes and concepts AI consistently associates with a brand.
- Platform Gaps: Differences in visibility across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and other systems.
Together, these signals establish a clear baseline for AI inclusion, authority, and narrative framing.
What Brandi AI Helps You Improve
From that baseline, Brandi AI’s Content Compass and recently expanded Optimization Hub provide clarity on where and how to act, including:
- Which existing pages should be expanded, clarified, or restructured to earn citations
- Which themes are missing and require new content development
- Which content formats AI consistently rewards
- Where third-party validation or authoritative sourcing is needed to strengthen trust
- What platforms to post and/or syndicate content
If you’re not measuring these signals, AI will decide which brands get included, cited, and trusted—without you knowing when it happens or why.
Schedule a Brandi AI demo to get a clear view of how AI currently interprets your brand, which content and sources are reinforcing that interpretation, and where specific adjustments can improve inclusion, citation authority, and narrative positioning across buyer-stage questions.