On Tuesday, Yelp announced that it is developing AI-powered “voice agents” designed to assist service providers and restaurants with handling calls, answering basic questions, and performing tasks such as adding customers to a restaurant waitlist.
Yelp reports that these agents do not require complex setup or API integrations. They can utilize existing metadata along with business data, including pronunciation guides, customized voice greetings, and call forwarding rules. For restaurants, Yelp’s agents can connect to management software to deliver reservation details to customers after calls.
Additionally, Yelp’s agents are equipped to perform automatic spam filtering and call analytics. They will transfer calls to a human operator for more complicated requests, and after each call, businesses receive a summary that includes a transcript and recording.
Yelp’s Chief Product Officer, Craig Saldanha, explained to TechCrunch that the aim is to build a product that assists professionals in converting leads, which might otherwise be missed due to challenging working conditions preventing them from taking calls.
The company utilizes OpenAI’s Realtime API for end-to-end call handling, enabling the agents, enhanced by Yelp’s knowledge graph, to ask and respond to follow-up questions.
Yelp is continuously assessing new models to improve latency, speech recognition accuracy, and overall customer experience. Saldanha believes that while voice technology may become commoditized, the differentiation will lie in the underlying data and the AI’s handling of customer queries. He asserts that Yelp has an advantage in these aspects over its competitors.
