The customer journey no longer belongs to just one person

For the past decade, customer journey design has been built on one core assumption: the decision-maker is human.

A living, emotional, information-overloaded person.
Someone who hesitates, postpones decisions, and needs reassurance and trust signals.
Someone for whom a sense of progress, control, and logical movement from intent to choice is essential.

All marketing strategies—from UX and content to paid search and CRM—have been designed around this assumption.

Read more about how to create an effective website structure.

But in 2026, that assumption no longer holds.

Artificial intelligence agents are increasingly influencing how people search, compare, choose, and buy.
They filter results, create shortlists, book services, and, quite likely, will soon begin negotiating on behalf of users.

While much of today’s AI usage is still task-based (find, collect, compare), this already represents a qualitative shift.
The moment AI becomes an intermediary in how information is gathered, filtered, and prioritized, it begins shaping decisions themselves—even if the final word formally remains with the human.

The customer journey is no longer linear

This means the customer journey is no longer single or straightforward.

Today, it splits into two paths:

• the human journey;
• the agent journey.

These paths intersect, but they operate according to fundamentally different logics.

This article does not promise ready-made answers. The landscape is evolving too quickly.
Its goal is to explain why this shift is critical, what a dual customer journey looks like, and where marketers should begin if they want to design strategies for both.

Read more about how AI responses are changing search and user trust.

Visibility is formed before human contact

When an AI agent filters 200 options down to just three, the potential customer sees only the tip of the iceberg.

The real competition for visibility happens much earlier—before the person is even aware they are making a choice.

AI agents are not just another distribution channel.
They are increasingly becoming gatekeepers of the decision-making process.

This means that the modern customer journey has two layers:

• the path a human follows;
• the path an agent follows.

Ignoring either one is a strategic mistake.

Humans and agents make decisions differently

The human journey is emotional and non-linear.

We get distracted.
We postpone decisions.
We need reassurance and confirmation that we are choosing correctly.
We are influenced by wording, tone, design, and brand feel—not just facts.

AI agents operate differently.

They do not:

• get distracted;
• need persuasion or motivation;
• “fear” risk—they evaluate it;
• get overwhelmed—they act based on rules, logic, and data.

As a result, the same content can be effective for a person and completely ineffective for an agent.

A person may skim a page and think:
“This brand understands me.”

At the same time, an agent may:

• scan the entire site;
• fail to find a critical attribute or structured signal;
• and simply remove the brand from the shortlist.

Without notification.
Without a second chance.

When a marketing strategy tries to treat these two journeys as one, it risks missing both.

Why this is becoming critical right now

If your content does not clearly state that free delivery is available, or that next-day delivery applies above a certain order value, you risk being excluded entirely.

Even if your offer would appeal to a human, they will never hear about it if an AI agent:

• cannot find that information; or
• cannot correctly interpret it.

This is why marketers must already be designing for different lengths of agent journeys.

In some cases, agents act as assistants:

• scanning information;
• filtering options;
• returning a concise shortlist to the user.

In other cases, they go much further:

• comparing conditions;
• evaluating value;
• excluding brands before the user ever sees their name.

In all of these scenarios, agents need access to the most critical marketing messages.
Even in the cleanest, most structured environments, your value propositions must be:

• clear;
• unambiguous;
• surfaced prominently.

Typical gaps already emerging

Today, most brands still design journeys only for humans—and this is where critical gaps for agents appear.

Common scenarios already include:

• AI agents bypassing brands due to missing key data fields.
• Pages failing to match the structures agents are trained to analyze.
• Competitors winning not because of a better product, but because their data is cleaner, more complete, and easier to parse.

At the same time, designing only for agents is just as flawed.

In many categories, the final decision still belongs to a human.
Emotion, brand feel, tone of voice, and trust remain essential.

This is not a choice between two approaches.
It is not “either-or.”

It is both.

You now have two audiences:

• the human;
• the agent acting on their behalf.

And you need to be visible to both.

Learn more about 7 key areas of AI development in search engines in 2026.

How to start designing dual customer journeys

There is no perfect playbook yet. But several principles can guide early experimentation.

Make information work on two levels

Copy should resonate with people.
Structure should support agents.

One does not replace the other. They work together.

Minimize ambiguity

People can tolerate gray areas.
Agents cannot.

This is especially critical for:

• pricing;
• delivery conditions;
• availability;
• constraints and exceptions.

Create agent-friendly representations of value

You do not need separate pages.
You need different representations of the same proposition.

Emotion and empathy for humans.
Logic, validation, and clear attributes for agents.

Identify where agents already shape the journey

Product filtering.
Cost estimation.
Condition comparison.

Agents are already present at these points—we just don’t always acknowledge it.

Redefine trust

People trust:

• stories;
• tone;
• design.

Agents trust:

• structured data;
• information freshness;
• source strength and authority signals.

Both forms of trust matter equally.

Test and learn

No one is doing this perfectly yet.
But brands that start testing today will gain a strategic advantage tomorrow.

Practical steps to take in 2026

To move from theory to action, focus on foundational but critical steps:

• Audit your site from two perspectives: human readability and agent interpretability.
• Map current customer journeys and overlay the agent journey.
• Close data gaps that could prevent an agent from recommending you.
• Ensure key attributes are structured and complete.
• Surface critical value propositions in machine-readable formats: delivery rules, price thresholds, availability, authority signals.
• Help teams see agents not as a technical layer, but as a new audience.
• Experiment with conversational search to better understand how agents interpret information.

This shift may be as significant as the move to mobile—just less visible.
Many decisions are now being made before the customer ever reaches your site.

The convergence point between humans and agents

The rise of AI agents in search and decision-making is changing not individual tactics, but the architecture of the customer journey itself. Marketing can no longer assume that all decisions are made solely by humans. Part of the choice now happens earlier—at the level of algorithmic filtering—where brands either make the shortlist or disappear before any human interaction occurs.

For mid-sized and large businesses, this requires a shift from linear thinking to a dual interaction model. The human journey remains emotional, contextual, and trust-driven. The agent journey is rational, structured, and dependent on data quality. Ignoring either creates a strategic blind spot.

The core challenge is not replacing one approach with another, but synchronizing them. Content must persuade humans while remaining interpretable to machines. Offers must evoke emotion while being precisely described through attributes, rules, and constraints. Trust must be built through both brand narrative and structured authority signals.

Over the next 12–18 months, the ability to design customer journeys for both humans and AI agents will become a competitive advantage. The winners will be companies that act now—revisiting their data, structures, and influence points, and learning to see agents not as technical noise but as full participants in the decision-making process.

In this new reality, visibility is no longer guaranteed by being present in search. It is earned much earlier—where algorithms decide what is worth showing to a human. And that is where a new area of marketing responsibility is now taking shape.

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