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.
Appendix: AI Visibility Index for the CRM Market Universe
Report Identity & Intent Declaration
Report Name: AI Visibility Index for the CRM Market Universe
Publisher: Brandi AI
Publication Date: February 3, 2026
Report Type: AI Visibility & Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Analysis
Primary Purpose: Measure observable AI answer behavior
Intended Use: Brand visibility benchmarking, content strategy, and authority diagnostics
Audience: Brand leaders, marketers, revenue executives, analysts, media, and AI visibility practitioners
This report analyzes how AI answer engines discover, prioritize, describe, and cite Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms when responding to B2B buyer-intent questions. The analysis evaluates AI behavior directly, rather than relying on surveys, analyst rankings, SEO performance, or self-reported vendor claims.
Market Universe Definition
This report evaluates commercial CRM software platforms actively marketed and sold to business customers in the United States.
Included:
- Enterprise and SMB CRM platforms
- Sales, marketing, and service CRM solutions
- Cloud-based and SaaS CRM systems
- Multi-module and platform-based CRM offerings
Excluded:
- Point-solution tools without core CRM functionality
- Internal-only or proprietary CRM systems
- Industry-specific tools that do not function as general CRM platforms
- Consulting services, agencies, and implementation partners
Geographic Scope: United States
Audience Context: Business-to-Business (B2B) buyers, including revenue, marketing, sales, operations, and IT decision-makers
Methodology Overview: What Is Being Measured
The AI Visibility Index measures competitive visibility inside AI-generated answers, where B2B buyer understanding is increasingly formed before direct vendor engagement.
As AI becomes a primary entry point for CRM research, evaluation, and vendor comparison, this analysis identifies:
- Which CRM brands AI includes
- Which brands AI emphasizes or uses as category examples
- Which brands AI treats as credible reference points
- Which sources AI relies on to explain CRM capabilities, tradeoffs, and use cases
Data Collection Window
Reporting Period: December 23, 2025 – January 21, 2026
Measurement Frequency: Daily
Total AI Answers Analyzed: 17,264
Results represent a point-in-time snapshot of AI behavior during the reporting period.
AI Answer Engines Included
This analysis evaluates responses generated by the following AI answer engines:
- ChatGPT
- Microsoft Copilot
- Google Gemini
- Grok
- Google AI Mode
- Google AI Overviews
- Perplexity
All platforms were weighted equally. No manual adjustments were made for response length, citation density, or platform-specific behavior.
Prompt Framework (Buyer-Intent Aligned)
Prompts were designed to reflect real B2B buyer questions across the CRM purchasing funnel.
Prompt types included:
- Discovery-stage prompts (e.g., “How can CRM platforms improve customer relationship management?”)
- Evaluation-stage prompts (e.g., “Which CRM platforms support multi-region customer operations?”)
- Decision-stage prompts (e.g., “How do I choose the best CRM software for my enterprise?”)
Brand names were excluded from awareness prompts and permitted in evaluation and decision prompts to reflect natural buyer behavior.
What This Report Is / Is Not
This report is:
- A measurement of observable AI answer behavior
- A competitive AI visibility benchmark
- A GEO and AI citation analysis
This report is not:
- A consumer or buyer survey
- A brand favorability or preference study
- An analyst ranking or quadrant
- An SEO ranking report
- A review aggregation or sentiment analysis
Temporal Interpretation Notice
AI visibility is dynamic. Rankings reflect AI behavior during the reporting window and may change as content signals, source authority, competitive positioning, and AI models evolve.
Metric Definitions
GEO Awareness — Definition
GEO Awareness is the percentage of unbranded buyer-intent AI answers in which a CRM brand is mentioned at least once, regardless of citation or sentiment.
- Measures inclusion, not endorsement
- Applies only when the brand is not named in the prompt
GEO Share of Voice (SOV) — Definition
GEO Share of Voice measures how much of the total CRM Market Universe conversation a brand controls when AI answers prompts where multiple relevant brands compete for inclusion and narrative emphasis.
- Reflects narrative dominance
- Indicates whether AI uses a brand to explain the CRM category, not merely list it
Sentiment — Definition
Sentiment reflects the extent to which AI frames a CRM brand positively or negatively when it appears in answers, based on tone, qualifiers, tradeoff language, and recommendation framing.
- Scale: 1 (most negative) to 10 (most positive)
- Does not reflect customer reviews, ratings, NPS, or survey sentiment
Citation Authority — Definition
Citation Authority reflects when and where AI treats owned or third-party content as evidence to support its CRM-related responses.
This includes:
- Brand-owned domains
- Media and technology publications
- Analyst and research firms
- Peer review and comparison platforms
- Professional and expert reference sources