Yelp Now Has AI That Answers Calls and Converts Lost Leads

“We want to build a product to help convert the leads that [normally might be] missed.” That’s how Yelp’s Chief Product Officer Craig Saldanha frames the company’s latest AI new feature. Long seen as a go-to destination for restaurant reviews and service listings, Yelp is now thinking of itself as something much bigger: a real-time, AI-native interface between local businesses and consumers. Whether you’re booking a birthday dinner or scheduling a mechanic to inspect an oil leak, Yelp’s AI-powered voice agents and visual assistants want to manage the entire interaction conversationally, intelligently, and without human lag.

Yelp is already piloting AI voice agents that can answer calls, understand context, manage reservations, and escalate when needed, all without complex API integrations or manual onboarding. Using OpenAI’s Realtime API in conjunction with Yelp’s proprietary knowledge graph, these agents handle everything from customized greetings to post-call summaries and transcripts.

And that’s just one of the 15 new AI and product updates Yelp announced this week. The changes cut across the business from AI-powered photo recognition in Yelp Assistant, to response quality badges for service professionals, and even Zapier-powered lead integrations for multi-location enterprises.

CEO Jeremy Stoppelman is upfront about it:

“We plan to further develop our advertising technology and products to match consumers and advertisers even more efficiently… We see benefits all across the business.”

Voice as the New Front Desk

The centerpiece of Yelp’s AI wave is its AI-powered voice answering service, built natively into the Yelp platform. It allows restaurants and service providers to automatically answer calls, route questions, add customers to waitlists, and book reservations with no human intervention required. The agent is trained to recognize spam, apply custom rules for forwarding, and deliver transcripts with call summaries afterward.

“Often, pros are working in difficult conditions and can’t take a call,” Saldanha told TechCrunch. “We want[ed] to build a product to help convert the leads that [normally might be] missed.”

In one demo, a virtual receptionist calmly handles an oil leak inquiry, offers a preliminary assessment, and collects the caller’s contact info all without a second of hold music.

Yelp says setup is painless: no APIs, no integrations, just metadata, pronunciation guides, and the platform’s understanding of business offerings. For restaurants, the agent can even sync with Yelp Guest Manager to ensure seamless reservations or waitlist handling.

Crucially, these agents know when to escalate. They hand off complex calls to humans and log every interaction for post-call review.

Yelp Assistant

The AI overhaul isn’t limited to voice. Yelp’s Assistant, launched in 2024, now includes photo recognition capabilities that let users snap an image of a leaky pipe, a car dent, or even a landscaping idea and get matched with relevant service professionals.

“Now it’s an easy conversation,” says Stoppelman. “If you’ve got a leaky faucet or what have you, [Yelp Assistant] walks you through that process… then connects you with pros.”

Behind the scenes, large language models analyze the image, prompt the user with smart follow-ups, and pass detailed job requests directly to businesses. Yelp claims project submissions increased by over 50% from Q3 to Q4 2024 as a result of this new workflow.

Yelp Assistant’s photo recognition is currently available on iOS, with Android and desktop coming soon.

AI That Grades the Pros, Too

One of Yelp’s more subtle but powerful AI applications is the rollout of response quality badges, which rate service pros based on the helpfulness of their replies. Leveraging LLMs, Yelp analyzes whether businesses provide availability, quote ranges, relevant questions, or generic responses like “Call us.”

Pros who consistently provide rich, relevant answers earn badges such as “Excellent,” visible on their profile and in search results. Yelp also provides guided prompts in the Business Owner account to help improve response quality to gamify professionalism.

Currently available across five states, these badges will roll out nationwide soon.

For national service brands, Yelp is also moving to streamline lead intake. A new Leads API integration with Zapier lets businesses plug Yelp inquiries directly into 800+ CRM tools with no custom dev work needed.

Companies like SecureSpace, a self-storage provider, are already seeing benefits.

“It has significantly streamlined our lead management process,” said Christian Espinal, marketing director at SecureSpace. “We highly recommend this integration.”

Paired with Yelp’s Conversions API (CAPI), large enterprises can now not only receive leads more efficiently, but also track performance and ad ROI with greater granularity.

Restaurant Operating System

Yelp has also overhauled its Guest Manager platform with a suite of new features designed to bring greater visibility and efficiency to restaurant operations. Among the most practical additions is automated waitlist removal, which clears out unresponsive parties to keep seating projections accurate and hosts focused. A redesigned shift scheduling system allows for more flexible staffing and better section balancing, helping restaurants optimize labor across peak and off-peak hours.

Yelp has introduced detailed traffic attribution dashboards, breaking down booking sources by time and channel to give restaurants clearer insights into what’s driving footfall. For diners, the experience is becoming more transparent as well with the option to reserve specific seating areas, such as patios or bar counters, and track their waitlist status in real time via a live progress bar displayed directly on their iPhone lock screen.

Perhaps most impressive is the Guest Experience Survey, a short, automated post-visit questionnaire that generates Net Promoter Scores, staff-specific feedback, and ratings on food, service, and more  all visible in a centralized dashboard. Yelp says the tool is already driving both morale and actionable changes across early adopters like Lounge Group.

“It’s not just about fixing problems,” says Danielle Scribner, marketing director at Lounge Group. “It’s also a great way to celebrate wins… It’s been a great tool for boosting morale.”

Stoppelman isn’t shy about his ambitions. AI is the future Yelp is building into every layer of the business:

“There’s just so many facets of our business that are touched by AI, and it still feels like we’re in the early innings here.”

The company’s most powerful asset may not be its voice agent or even the Assistant but it’s the structured, trusted data Yelp has accumulated for over a decade. That data, paired with the flexibility of LLMs and real-world intent signals, gives Yelp the chance to become the de facto AI operating layer for local commerce.

“I think it’s a really exciting opportunity to re-invent the search experience,” Stoppelman adds. “And if you’re not Google [and] competing directly with us, you’re probably having a conversation with Yelp at some point.”