Yelp adds AI phone wait-time checks and new assistant features

Yelp added Check for Me on in-app restaurant pages: users enter party size and a phone number, and an AI agent calls the restaurant to ask about wait times, then texts the result back so the user can decide whether to go. Yelp launched voice tools for restaurants and service providers last year; this adds the consumer side. The report notes a user agent may end up talking to a restaurant agent, and agent-to-agent conversations can break down. The Yelp AI assistant also gets upgrades: OpenTable integration enables in-app booking; the assistant remembers preferences from earlier chats and shows the past 30 days of history, with full history coming later. Users can set custom reminders, such as weekly Friday weekend-activity suggestions, and build Visited and Want to Go lists with filtering, sorting, notes and sharing by location, category and cuisine. Next month Yelp will show weekly personalized recommendations based on saves and sorting; later this year collections become lists and a map view launches. For businesses, Yelp launches Smart Lead Reply, a paid product that auto-replies to customers and qualifies leads through interaction, at $30 per month, with merchants able to specify how the agent handles conversations.