For years, mobile apps sat at the center of customer experience (CX), giving brands a direct, owned channel to consumers and offering users easy access to the brands they loved.
That model made sense in the “tap-and-swipe era,” when convenience meant a clean interface and touchscreen navigation. But with the rise of new technologies, consumers are redefining convenience, shifting from polished designs to effortless dialogs: which is an area where AI assistants excel.
We are seeing that AI assistants are starting to rival apps by providing the same capabilities through simpler, more natural interactions.
This was highlighted in a consumer poll from my firm, TELUS Digital. One in three respondents said they had replaced at least one app with an AI assistant last year, and 36% expect to rely on AI even more a year from now.
Although AI assistants are capturing a growing following who use them for some everyday tasks, traditional apps remain relevant. According to our poll, 58% of consumers reported no change in their app usage over the past year, and nearly a quarter actually said they used them more.
Respondents highlighted several factors that keep them engaged with apps, including loyalty rewards and perks (51%), ease of browsing (37%), and familiarity and habit (35%).
Apps may also have an advantage when it comes to customer support escalations, particularly when they are integrated into a brand’s CX ecosystem.
When customers escalate from branded apps to live agents, the agents can access their purchase histories, account details, and in-app activities: context that standalone AI assistants can’t yet provide.
With this in mind, the question for brands isn’t whether to invest in apps or AI assistants. Instead, it is determining which customer interactions, from first touch to long-term loyalty, should take place on which channel.
And, critically, how to make that customer journey frictionless. As examples, consumers conducting product research on the AI assistants, making purchases in the apps, and doing account management on the websites.
Understanding the Shift
For years at TELUS Digital we’ve said that every consumer app and website will need to be rebuilt with an AI-powered voice and multimodal interface. These take advantage of technology advancements to create more natural and intuitive human-computer interactions.
Until now, chat interfaces were primarily about information. But as we move towards having third-party apps that can be used directly within chats, they’re becoming about execution.
The recent introduction of tools like ChatGPT’sApps SDK highlights this shift, enabling businesses to integrate their apps directly into AI assistant conversations. In this fashion, users can complete tasks, from booking appointments to processing payments, without ever leaving the chat interfaces.
ChatGPT Apps represents a convergence of both AI assistant and app channels. The AI assistant handles tasks where natural language and adaptability excel. It also seamlessly invokes custom app experiences when familiar interfaces or complex transactions are needed.
This hybrid model allows the AI to intelligently route users’ requests while maintaining the branded, intuitive experiences consumers expect from traditional apps.
Looking ahead, the most compelling CX will come from AI assistants that incorporate app experiences and vice versa. A bidirectional integration where the channels become invisible and the customer journeys become seamless.
The brands that move first in this next wave of customer engagement will have a clear advantage.
The AI vs Apps Scorecard Everyday Tasks
A closer look at our consumer poll data revealed that channel preferences were influenced—sometimes significantly—by the type of task that was being performed (see BOX 1).
Notably, our data found AI assistants dominate in speed and adaptability, with a slight edge in personalization (see BOX 2). But key drivers such as familiarity, loyalty, rewards and perks, and ease of use keep consumers coming back to using their favorite brands’ apps.
Implications for CX and Contact Centers
User expectations are evolving rapidly, driven by AI systems that are moving beyond simple responses to autonomous action.
Gartner predicts that by 2029, AI agents will independently handle 80% of routine customer service issues. This represents a fundamental shift from AI that generates answers to AI that completes tasks end-to-end.
This evolution is already underway. AI assistants are becoming multimodal, allowing customers to interact in ways that feels most natural for the tasks at hand, including through text, voice, images, or a combination.
Whether typing a question into ChatGPT, speaking to Google Gemini, or uploading an image for analysis, customers are gravitating toward interfaces that let them communicate on their terms.
The result? A more intuitive, frictionless experience where AI assistants are becoming a channel that can handle multiple services, such as billing, support, account information, and troubleshooting.
This shift also supports stronger self-service adoption and higher customer containment by fully resolving issues within an automated or self-service channel without needing a human agent.
As consumers are increasingly preferring quick, independent solutions, and brands are prioritizing efficiencies, AI assistants are delivering both at scale.
So, how can brands maintain exceptional CX as expectations shift in this new era?
Operational Best Practices
- Audit your service channels, and map out how many interactions happen through apps, websites, chatbots, and voice assistants. Then ask yourself how that mix will shift as AI assistants take a bigger role.
- Unify your customer data from across all channels. Pull data from apps, AI assistants, and traditional channels. This way both human or agentic agents can see the full picture and reduce repeated questions, making every interaction feel effortless.
- Strengthen data readiness so that unified customer data is accurate, accessible, and actionable. AI systems and human agents can then deliver consistent, personalized experiences at scale.
- Train agents for hybrid (channel-agnostic AI, app, human) customer journeys. Make sure agents understand what AI can and can’t do and give them the tools to quickly verify AI-generated information to seamlessly pick up customer conversations where the AI assistants left off.
Technology infrastructure
- AI orchestration isn’t optional; it’s the backbone of modern contact centers, internal CX operations, and customer-facing channels.
- Connect internal service bots and CRM systems with external AI assistants to deliver seamless, cross-channel experiences.
- One of the most powerful emerging trends is third-party app invocation, a technical term for when AI interacts with a third-party app.
- For example, imagine a customer asking an AI assistant to book a hotel room. The assistant opens the hotel’s app behind the scenes, checks availability, reserves the room, and confirms the details. All without the customer leaving a chat window.
- Combine your apps with AI assistants to create agentic commerce experiences that anticipate intent, streamline decisions, and complete end-to-end actions so customers get what they need instantly. This saves time and eliminates effort.
- Work with trusted partners to build end-to-end processes that cover the full customer journeys, from mobile check-ins and room service orders, to chatting with bots or human agents.
- Equip your CX agents with AI tools that provide real-time guidance, surface context-relevant knowledge, and suggest next-best actions so they can resolve issues faster on any channel.
The Time to Experiment is Now
The convergence of AI assistants, apps, and traditional consumer channels isn’t a distant future scenario. It’s happening today, and brands that wait for a clear playbook will find themselves behind.
To set themselves up for success, brands must start designing a customer journey with multiple entry and exit points, between AI assistants, apps, and websites, and for different customer personas. This includes planning for seamless live agent connections that preserve context across channels.
Providing agents with a real-time 360-degree customer view and quick and easy access to customer history reduces frustration and friction. It also enables faster resolution regardless of where the customer journey began. This will help ensure every customer gets what they need, where they naturally engage.
Additionally, forward-thinking brands are designing API-first services so that machines, apps, and AI agents can use them as easily as humans can, making integration and automation seamless.
However, the technical reality is that connecting AI assistants to your existing systems requires the right infrastructure.
The convergence of AI assistants, apps, and traditional consumer channels...it's happening today...
While new standards like model context protocol (MCP) are emerging to make AI integrations easier, most brands today still need traditional API connections to bridge AI assistants with their business systems and customer data.
This approach enables cross-platform consistency in tone, empathy, and resolution quality while maintaining human oversight to handle nuance and complex calls.
This is critical. While AI offers efficiency, experience quality matters. If AI responses are wrong or the tone is off, customers may abandon the brand or escalate to a human.
The brands leading this transformation aren’t waiting for perfect conditions. They’re testing, learning, and iterating toward seamless, channel-agnostic experiences. Start by identifying one customer journey that spans multiple channels, map the friction points, and experiment with solutions.
The question isn’t whether this shift will happen, it’s whether you’ll be ready when your customers expect it. Brands that deepen human values, empathy, reliability, and transparency are going to win the CX game, regardless of where the conversation begins.