Yelp announced on Tuesday that it’s rolling out AI-powered voice agents designed to assist restaurants and other service businesses in managing phone calls, responding to common inquiries, and carrying out tasks such as adding customers to waitlists. The platform explained that its voice agents won’t need complicated setups or API integrations, as they can access existing metadata alongside customized data provided by the businesses, such as pronunciation guides, personalized voice greetings, and call forwarding rules.
For restaurants, these new voice agents can also seamlessly integrate with management software, automatically sending reservation details to customers after calls end. Yelp further noted the system includes automated spam filtering and advanced call analytics. When more complex requests arise, the voice agents will hand over conversations to a human operator, ensuring customer needs are appropriately met. Each completed call generates a summary report for businesses, complete with a full transcript and an audio recording.
Craig Saldanha, Yelp’s Chief Product Officer, explained that many service providers often have trouble managing calls due to demanding working conditions. He emphasized that the goal of the technology is to help businesses capitalize on leads that might otherwise slip away.
Yelp is partnering with OpenAI and using their Realtime API for end-to-end call handling. Thanks to this integration, Yelp’s AI voice agents can utilize the company’s knowledge graph to understand context, allowing them to handle follow-up questions effectively. Yelp added that it continuously evaluates AI models to optimize performance, considering key metrics such as latency, speech recognition accuracy, and overall user experience.
Saldanha shared his perspective that voice technology is heading towards becoming broadly commoditized. He believes that the key differentiating advantage in this industry will lie increasingly in proprietary data and the AI’s capability of effectively addressing customers’ needs, areas where he feels Yelp is uniquely positioned compared to rivals.
