Imagine someone is looking for a place to eat tonight. They find your restaurant, check out the photos, and want to know how long they will have to wait for a table. But instead of placing a call, they ask an artificial intelligence to do it for them.
On the other end, your employee answers the phone. Without realizing it, they are talking to a machine.
This is already part of what Yelp, the local business recommendation platform, is adding to its app.
Its new feature, called Check for Me, lets an artificial intelligence assistant call a restaurant to ask about wait times for a group. The user specifies the group size and provides a phone contact. The AI places the call and then sends the answer via text message.
However, Yelp is moving beyond phone calls.
It is also upgrading its assistant to recommend establishments based on individual preferences. Now it allows booking tables through OpenTable, remembering past conversations, and organizing lists of places the user knows or wants to visit.
The platform is also preparing personalized recommendations based on those preferences.
And there is another update particularly relevant to businesses: Yelp introduced Smart Lead Reply, a 30-dollar monthly tool that uses AI to answer inquiries from potential clients and identify which ones show greater interest. The owner can define how those conversations should be guided.
Why it matters
Until now, when someone wanted to know if a restaurant had availability, they usually had to call, write, or search for the information on their own.
Artificial intelligence is starting to take care of that task.
Think about what this means for a medical clinic receiving calls about open appointments. Or for a real estate agency constantly answering questions about properties. Or for an auto repair shop where customers want to know when they can bring in their vehicle.
These are simple conversations, but they take up time. And many happen right when staff members are busy helping someone else.
The novelty is not just that a machine can answer questions. It is that now it can also ask them on behalf of the consumer.
This creates an interesting scenario: the customer's assistant could end up talking directly to the business's assistant.
Yelp acknowledges that these conversations between automated systems could present difficulties. The technology still has limitations.
However, the direction of change is clear: more and more business interactions could begin without a person dialing a number or writing a message.
What it means for your business
You do not need to install artificial intelligence tomorrow to take advantage of this trend.
The first step is understanding what information your customers need before making a buying decision.
In a restaurant, it might be the wait time. In a clinic, available schedules. In a store, product availability. In a real estate agency, property details.
If those answers depend entirely on someone having time to reply, there is an opportunity to improve.
Tools like the one presented by Yelp show how AI can handle initial inquiries, while your team focuses on conversations that require personal attention.
However, automating does not mean answering just anything. Information must be accurate and instructions must be clear.
This week, review the latest inquiries received by your business. Identify the five most repeated questions and write a brief, precise answer for each one.
Even if a human still answers them, you will have taken the first step toward preparing your customer service for a world where, increasingly, the person asking may not be human.