Six months. That's how long I lived with a broken refrigerator shelf because every search I ran returned overpriced results or expensive overseas shipping. Then I took two photos, dropped them into Perplexity, and had the exact part number, an upgraded replacement model, and two retailers – accurately – in under a minute. 

I bought it for $50. My original searches had shown me $80-100.

That one interaction covered awareness, evaluation, purchase decision, and a loyalty judgment about the retailer, all at once, all on my phone, in about five minutes. 

What surprised me the most was that the funnel was totally obliterated – not just compressed or a little reduced. It totally disappeared. .

This article covers why that AI shift is structural, what's driving it, and what it means for how CX and product teams need to work across the customer journey.

Why the classic funnel no longer describes what customers actually do

The awareness-consideration-purchase-loyalty model assumes customers move through stages over time. They don't anymore, at least not in sequence.

Research from Bain & Company shows 68% of AI-assisted research is about summarising, with users following up via chat rather than clicking through to external sites. And 6% of searches now result in zero clicks, meaning the journey ends before it ever reaches a brand's owned properties.

This follows a pattern we've seen before

The behaviour change didn't start with AI. 

In the late 1990s, people moved from browsing directories to using Google. Then they stopped searching five pages deep and trusted page one. Then they narrowed attention to whatever was above the fold. Each step involved handing more decision-making authority to an intermediary.

AI agents are the next step, not a rupture. Sure, the scale is different, but the pattern hasn’t changed.