of ChatGPT’s answers name Salesforce when a company outgrowing spreadsheets asks which CRM to buy. Gemini names it in 17%, Claude in 83%.
30 answers per assistant, from memory, August 2026. CRM report
Statistics / Data August 2026 / Updated October 2026
What AI assistants tell buyers, in numbers.
Statistics from 3,020 answers we recorded from ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude when buyers asked about CRM, HR and payroll, and email marketing software. Every number states its sample and links to the report it comes from. Quote them freely with a link to this page.
On this page
The assistants disagree
The same buyer question gets a different shortlist depending on which assistant answers it.
of Gemini’s answers name ActiveCampaign when a marketer asks for the best email platform for deliverability. ChatGPT names it in 13%, Claude in 53%.
30 answers per assistant, from memory, August 2026. Email marketing report
A few names take most of the answers
In each category, a handful of brands collects most of what the assistants say. Some well-known companies barely register.
of all brand mentions in AI answers about HR and payroll software go to three companies: Deel, Rippling and Remote. They lead in six of eight buying situations.
1,008 recorded answers, August 2026. HR and payroll report
of brand mentions go to Personio, which serves thousands of European mid-sized companies. Letting the assistants search the web lifts it to 2%.
1,008 recorded answers, August 2026. HR and payroll report
For every four mentions HubSpot gets in AI answers about CRM, Salesforce gets three: 25.2% of brand mentions against 18.7%, from memory.
1,007 recorded answers, August 2026. CRM report
of brand mentions go to GetResponse, after more than twenty years in email marketing. It clears our noise floor in none of eight buying situations.
1,005 recorded answers, August 2026. Email marketing report
The buying situation decides
Assistants do not rank a category once. They answer the situation the buyer describes, and the winners change with it.
of answers name Pipedrive when a small business asks for its first CRM. For enterprise sales teams: 8%. Our model would expect about 74% for a brand its size (modelled).
90 answers per situation, from memory, August 2026. CRM report
of answers name Microsoft Dynamics when small businesses, startups or budget buyers ask. In enterprise questions it is in every answer.
90 answers per situation, from memory, August 2026. CRM report
of answers name Mailchimp when a creator asks for a newsletter platform, while Kit and Beehiiv appear in every answer. For an online store it is 62% against Klaviyo’s 100%.
Share of answers per buying situation, from memory, August 2026. Email marketing report
of answers naming the best HR platform overall include Workday, and it is in every enterprise answer. Where a company buys its first HR system it falls to about 20%, and to zero on hiring abroad.
Share of answers per buying situation, from memory, August 2026. HR and payroll report
Where the answers come from
When assistants search the web before answering, they cite sources. Which sources depends on the category.
citations of hubspot.com, the most cited source in AI answers about CRM. The vendors’ own websites lead: pipedrive.com 64, salesforce.com 61, zoho.com 60.
287 answers with web search, 190 of them citing at least one source. CRM report
most cited sources in AI answers about email marketing are comparison lists on other websites, led by two affiliate review sites. The brands’ own sites carry 29% of all citations.
288 answers with web search, 213 of them citing at least one source. Email marketing report
of brand mentions from memory go to monday CRM. With web search its share rises to 5.8%, carried by its own content: search answers can move within weeks, memory over months.
1,007 recorded answers, August 2026. CRM report
Why it matters: buyers ask AI first
Other research, not ours. In G2’s survey of 1,076 B2B software decision makers (March 2026), AI chatbots were the most common source shaping vendor shortlists, named by 54%, ahead of review sites at 43%. 51% said they start software research in an AI chatbot more often than in Google, up from 29% in April 2025. Source: G2, The Answer Economy (2026).
How to read these numbers
- Share of answers
- The share of recorded answers to one buying question that name the brand. Used for single situations and single assistants.
- Share of brand mentions
- A brand’s share of all brand mentions across a category’s eight buying situations, weighted by situation. The shares of the ten tracked brands sum to 100%.
- From memory, with web search
- Answers written from what the model learned in training, and answers written after a live web search. Reported separately, never averaged.
- How the answers were recorded
- Through the assistants’ official developer interfaces in August 2026: eight buying situations per category, several phrasings each, about 1,000 answers per category. Stability between two halves of each sample: r = 0.84 to 0.99, depending on category and setting.
- What the numbers do not show
- Sales, market share or customer preference. Being named when buyers ask is a precondition for being chosen, not proof of it.
The full measurement rules are in our methodology. To check what the assistants say about your own company, start with our free guide.
Cite as
Kesterley (2026). What AI assistants tell buyers: statistics. Data August 2026. kesterley.com/stats
Updated when a new study is published. Brands named here did not commission or endorse the studies.