Yelp's Spring Product Release improves the service's experience with new AI-powered features

The Yelp Spring Product Release includes over 15 new features and updates aimed at transforming the user experience. The highlights of the Spring Product Release are the AI-powered Yelp Assistant, Yelp Fusion AI API, and Yelp Guest Manager. Yelp Assistant leverages the power of conversational AI to discover and connect with local service professionals. The Yelp Fusion AI API is a service to empower Yelp's partners to build ordinary language search experiences fueled by Yelp's data. Yelp Guest Manager is meant to assist restaurants to boost their front-of-house efficiency.

The Yelp Assistant combines the OpenAI LLMs with Yelp's dataset, which includes Request a Quote, business information, and other data sources to guide users toward the right business or professional for their tasks and projects. Yelp Assistant achieves a contextual understanding of users' queries and asks clarificatory follow-up questions before suggesting businesses and professionals highly qualified for the queried tasks or projects. For businesses, Yelp Assistant's efficient and accurate matching capabilities translate to relevant and detailed leads that simplify the assessment of the project, empowering organizations and professionals to deliver high-quality proposals that increase their likelihood of being hired for the job.

One of Yelp Assistant's most notable attributes is that users do not need to be clear on the kind of specialist they need to hire. Once the user describes their project, the AI engages in a personalized conversation to collect the necessary details a professional would need to evaluate the job. To reply, users can type in their responses, choose from several single-click already-made responses, or ask questions to the AI to tailor their responses to what the Assistant needs. Once users approve the final version of the project request, Yelp Assistant submits the latter to a selection of relevant service providers, empowering them to reply promptly with accurate quotes and availability. Yelp Assistant is available for iOS users on the 'Projects' tab and will roll out for Android users over the summer.

The 'Projects' tab is home to Project Ideas, a recommendation system designed to assist with tasks such as finding inspiration for home upgrades, avoiding decision paralysis, and easing the process of requesting quotes from local professionals. Other improvements, like Saved Replies, benefit service professionals by simplifying question-answering processes by enabling them to save templates for commonly asked questions, and enabling better organization practices, like automatically distinguishing previously replied conversations from new leads, or assigning location labels to different service areas.

The Yelp Fusion AI API enables third-party partners to integrate Yelp's content into their products to create novel conversational AI experiences that leverage Yelp's substantial database. The AI API is the next step for Yelp Fusion, a service that enabled users to access information about businesses on the Web (outside of Yelp's website), on mobile devices, cars, and homes. The LLM-powered solution enables ordinary language search experiences even for partners with no previous AI products or experiences. Partners can enable conversational queries like "Find a vegan brunch place with a patio open this Sunday at 10 AM" and receive contextual responses with business information, ratings, reviews, and more from Yelp's database without the need to acquire or manage additional data. The API is available for current Yelp partners to integrate into their platforms, and interested parties can access a 30-day trial or get in touch with Yelp to learn more. The Fusion API supports single-turn conversations, with upcoming multi-turn support.

Restaurants using Yelp Guest Manager can profit from new features geared towards streamlining front-of-house operations, enhancing analytics for restaurant owners, and improving Yelp Waitlist and Kiosk to boost efficiency in their operations, seat more diners, and improve guest experiences. Updates include Shift Notes for staff communication, Table Usage Analytics for owners, and text message waitlist updates for diners.

With the Spring Product Release, Yelp demonstrates its continued innovation in enriching local business discovery and connecting people with great services. As it approaches 20 years, Yelp aims to create smarter, more intuitive interactions tailored to consumer and business needs.