On Tuesday, Yelp announced that it is working on deploying artificial intelligence-based “voice agents” to help service providers and restaurants handle calls, answer basic questions, and perform tasks such as adding a customer to a restaurant waiting list.
Yelp claims that its agents do not require complex setup or API integration and can use existing metadata as well as data from businesses, such as pronunciation guides, customized voice greetings, and call forwarding rules. For example, in the case of a restaurant, Yelp agents can connect to the restaurant management software to send reservation details to the customer after the call.
Yelp agents can also perform functions such as automatic spam filtering and call analytics. For more complex inquiries, they transfer the conversation to a human, and after each call, companies receive a summary of the conversation along with a transcript and recording.
“Often, professionals are working in difficult environments and can’t answer the phone,” Yelp CEO Craig Saldanha told TechCrunch. “We want to create a product that will help convert potential customers who might otherwise be lost.”
Yelp uses OpenAI’s real-time API to handle end-to-end calls. This allows Yelp agents, supplemented by the company’s knowledge graph, to ask and answer questions.
Yelp states that it is constantly evaluating new models for its products to get the best results in terms of latency, speech recognition accuracy, and overall customer experience.
Saldanha believes that voice technology will eventually become a commodity, and the point of differentiation will be the underlying data and how AI handles customer requests. He added that in these areas, in his opinion, Yelp has an advantage over competitors.
