AI-call answering services Yelp Host and Yelp Receptionist help restaurants and local businesses never miss a call
Yelp Inc., the company that connects people with great local businesses, announced its most significant AI update yet as part of its 2025 Fall Product Release. Introducing more than 35 new features and updates, Yelp’s latest release continues to transform the experience with AI to make local discovery more conversational and personalized. Yelp Assistant will now answer any question about a restaurant, bar, local attraction, retailer and more. Menu Vision will let diners scan menus with their phone camera to see photos and reviews of dishes. Natural language and voice capabilities now support conversational queries. AI-powered Popular Offerings among other updates further enhance the consumer experience. For restaurants and local businesses, the company is also rolling out AI-powered call answering solutions, Yelp Host and Yelp Receptionist.
“This release is a significant leap forward in Yelp’s AI transformation making discovery faster, answers instant, and experiences more personalized than ever,” said Craig Saldanha, chief product officer at Yelp. “By combining advanced LLMs with Yelp’s massive trove of authentic human content, we’re able to provide recommendations and answers that are grounded in real experiences. With the latest evolution of Yelp Assistant, natural language and voice search, and the new Menu Vision, we’re making Yelp conversational and removing friction for consumers. For businesses, Yelp Host and Yelp Receptionist have already demonstrated how these solutions can efficiently resolve customer inquiries without staff, enabling teams to focus on customer service and streamlining operations. We’re excited about the opportunities ahead to continue to transform Yelp with AI.”
The Next Evolution of Yelp Assistant Delivers Instant Answers About Businesses
Yelp Assistant, first introduced in 2024 to diagnose consumers’ service needs and connect them with pros, will now answer consumer questions directly on business pages for restaurants, bars, local attractions, retailers and more. Powered by large language models (LLMs), Yelp Assistant draws on reviews, photos, business page information and the business’s website to deliver concise, relevant answers with supporting photos and reviews for anything about a business. When logged in, users will see “Ask Yelp Assistant” on eligible business pages on iOS and Android, with suggested prompts to get started.
Yelp Host and Yelp Receptionist Help Businesses Never Miss a Call
Yelp Host and Yelp Receptionist use AI to answer and triage incoming calls so staff can focus on guests and clients. Both solutions come pre‑trained on Yelp business data, work out of the box and are customizable. The AI can answer inquiries, ask intelligent follow‑ups, take and summarize messages, transfer calls and filter spam. Designed with a proprietary multi-provider voice AI stack, the solutions are built for speed, natural conversation and business-level customization.
Yelp Host is available now for table‑service restaurants and integrates with Yelp Guest Manager to manage reservations, waitlists, and SMS follow‑ups. Pricing starts at $149 per month ($99 per month for Yelp Guest Manager customers). Restaurants can sign up directly in the “Yelp Host” tab when logged into their Yelp for Business account.
Also Read: Databricks and OpenAI Partner to Bring AI to Enterprises
“Yelp is truly the go-to platform for restaurants and the service industry. I’ve already been very satisfied with the return on ad spend, and now having the AI answering service increases the overall value,” said Jongpil Kim, CEO of MUN Korean Steakhouse. “It’ll save a lot of money for restaurant owners by handling calls that usually distract servers and pull them away from serving diners, especially on busy nights. It elevates the guest experience because the servers or host can pay more attention to those already on site, making Yelp Host money well spent. So just those two things are something every restaurant owner would kill to have.”
Yelp Receptionist is rolling out for eligible local businesses. It captures project details, helps vet leads and delivers call recordings, transcripts and summaries to the Yelp for Business inbox. Pricing starts at $99 per month. Eligible businesses can sign up in the “Yelp Receptionist” tab when logged into their Yelp for Business account
“Yelp Receptionist genuinely sounds human, which makes it easy for me to trust it to handle our leads while my team stays focused on the projects at hand,” said Krzysztof Jarecki, owner of FLOORecki Floors and Stairs. “It exceeded my expectations because it feels like you’re talking to a real person, not a robot.”
Additional features and updates from Yelp’s 2025 Fall Product Release
- Menu Vision uses AI, augmented reality and text recognition to read menus via consumers’ phone cameras and surface dish photos and review snippets, helping diners decide what to order while at a restaurant. Rolling out on iOS and Android, it’s available at the top of the media gallery on eligible restaurant, food and nightlife business pages; a more visual Menu Vision experience arrives early next year.
- Natural language search lets users search with conversational, full-sentence queries, returning more relevant, intent-driven results. Additionally, voice search on iOS enables speech-to-text.
- Popular Offerings, expands Yelp’s Popular Dishes and Popular Drinks features to more than 100 categories, including auto shops, hair salons, clothing stores, parks and more. Using LLMs, it pairs review mentions with photos to surface the most frequently mentioned items, services or experiences on business pages. It’s available on desktop and iOS for select categories, with Android coming soon.
- Since acquiring RepairPal in November 2024, the company is now integrating RepairPal’s booking system into Yelp search results and business pages to make it easier to schedule appointments with auto shops.
- AI-grouped before and after photos help showcase a business’s work for more than 100 visually driven services on desktop business pages; available on iOS in the coming months.
- Review Insights is now expanding to services categories on iOS business pages, using LLMs to analyze reviewer sentiment on aspects like customer experience, pricing, facilities and job quality with scores displayed above reviews to help consumers quickly find these details.
- The nationwide rollout of AI-powered response quality badges help consumers identify pros who have excellent communication. Business owners now receive real-time AI-powered guidance to improve their replies.
- AI‑stitched videosare now scaled nationally and available on the home feed on iOS and Android. These videos turn human-generated reviews, photos and videos into short narrated previews that highlight what makes a restaurant or nightlife spot unique.
With these new updates and features, Yelp aims to build on its foundation of trusted content and further enhance the way consumers and businesses connect in a more conversational and seamless experience.
Source: Businesswire
