How Yelp's latest AI updates better connect restaurant owners and diners

Yelp began revamping its offerings with generative AI as the technology became popular. Now, the restaurant and business review platform’s latest update continues improving the service with new AI features and updates.  

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On Tuesday, Yelp’s spring release included 15 new features and updates to its platform. The two biggest standouts are AI-powered updates to its Yelp Assistant, which helps connect users to local professionals for their task needs, and Yelp Guest Manager, to give diners and restaurants a better understanding of when they can dine. 

Yelp Assistant

Yelp Assistant, which launched a year ago, is designed to help users find service professionals for anything from home improvements to haircuts using a conversational chatbot interface. Using Yelp Assistant is as easy as giving the chatbot details that may help it understand the project or task you are trying to solve. Now it is getting even easier. 

Users can now upload an image of the project, and Yelp Assistant will be able to identify what service you are looking for and connect you to the right professional for the job. 

For example, in the photo below, a user uploads an image of a dishwasher that is not functioning. The chatbot identifies the error and suggests troubleshooting before contacting the pro. The feature is available on iOS now, but will come to Android and desktops in the future. 

Once you are connected to an actual professional, large language models will evaluate the quality of the responses and then add quality badges to spotlight service professionals who have repeatedly provided high-quality, helpful, and informative answers. This is meant to help users identify the best person to message for a project need and help them avoid the generic “call us” reply. 

Businesses will find their scores in their Yelp for Business profile and will be given guided prompts they can use to improve their score quality. According to Yelp, the badges are being displayed across home, professional, local, auto, pets, event planning, real estate, and financial services categories on iOS. It is also available on desktop in Arizona, Washington, Oregon, Illinois, and Indiana, and is coming nationwide.

Yelp also unveiled its Leads API to help businesses manage leads. This no-code integration can automatically sync and manage leads within existing workflows — and it is available now. 

Guest Experience Manager updates

The Guest Experience Manager is where restaurants can learn insights about their clientele and understand how to better streamline their operations. To make the experience more efficient, Yelp introduced several updates to the platform, including a new Guest Experience Survey. 

As the name implies, the Guest Experience Survey collects feedback from diners through automated surveys. Businesses can then access the results in a dedicated dashboard within the Business Owner Account, which includes ratings on food, drinks, service, and feedback on specific staff members. The intent is for these insights to promote optimizing the business in a way that benefits both businesses and customers.

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To optimize feedback collection, Yelp is improving its phone number collection, which businesses can use for additional confirmation and reminders. Yelp’s Guest Experience Survey is available as an add-on for Yelp Guest Manager Plus and Enterprise customers. AI-powered analytics will be added in the coming months. 

A new guaranteed seating area feature allows users to make reservations for specific restaurant sections, such as the patio, bar, or booth. Restaurants can power this feature through the floor plan editor within the Business Owner Account.  

Restaurant goers can access a live progress bar on their iPhone lock screen after joining a waitlist.  Users can also login using their phone’s biometric capabilities, with passkey on iOS and Android support coming next month.

Yelp also rolled out an enhanced Traffic Attribution Dashboard in their Business Owner Account, which allows restaurants to view their peak periods and busiest days by source, time, and day of the week. 

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Restaurants can also generate booking links they share on social media platforms for diners to make reservations. The dashboard will also track insights, such as traffic from these links. 

Yelp also unveiled several other updates to help restaurants enhance front-of-house operations, such as a redesigned party management interface, automated Waitlist removal options, and flexible shift scheduling capabilities, which you can read more about on the blog.

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