Yelp is launching a feature that lets its app users have an AI agent call a restaurant to check wait times on their behalf.
The new tool
The option, called Check for Me, appears on restaurant pages within the app. Users enter their party size and phone number. The AI agent then contacts the venue to find out the current wait time and texts the result back to the user. This allows them to decide whether to visit before heading there.
Yelp introduced a voice solution for restaurants and service providers last year. This update addresses the consumer side of that equation. There is a possibility that a user’s agent will speak to a restaurant’s agent. Agent-to-agent communication could potentially break down the conversation.
Booking and personalisation
The company is updating its Yelp AI assistant to help users discover restaurants and services. With OpenTable integration, users can book a table without leaving the app.
Yelp is improving personalisation so the assistant remembers preferences mentioned in previous chats. Users can access chat history from the past 30 days in the app, with full history available soon.
Users can ask the chatbot to set custom reminders, such as sending suggestions for weekend activities every Friday. The company is also letting users build their own lists, starting with two “Been Here” and “Want to Go” lists. You can filter your lists by location, category, and cuisine, reorder, add notes to items, and share them with others.
Next month, the company will start showing weekly personalised recommendations based on your saved items and rankings. Yelp is also working on converting collections to lists and giving the lists tab a new look, rolling out later in the year, along with a maps view.
Business tools
To cap off all these changes, Yelp has been thinking about enhancing customer support and business processes through AI. In the new update, the company is releasing a new paid product called Smart Lead Reply, which can reply to customers and engage with them to qualify a lead. Business owners, who will be charged $30 per month for these services, can specify how an agent should handle a conversation with a customer. Other companies like Meta have also been courting small businesses with AI offerings to handle inbound customer inquiries.
What it means
For diners, the friction of calling ahead to check a queue is removed. The system handles the phone call, leaving the user to decide based on the text message received. For restaurant owners, the new paid tool automates initial customer contact, saving staff time on basic inquiries.
