Yelp can now call on your behalf to check wait times at a restaurant

Over the last few weeks, personal assistants like Instinct, Fo, and Muse have enabled users to call businesses for customer support and appointment booking. Following this trend, Yelp is adding the ability for its app users to get a voice agent to call a restaurant to check wait times.

The new feature, Check for Me, will show up on restaurant pages in the app, where users can enter their party size and phone number. The AI agent then calls on behalf of the user to check wait times and texts them the results to decide if they want to go to that particular restaurant.

Last year, Yelp debuted its voice solution for restaurants and service providers. With this new feature, the discovery platform is fulfilling the consumer side of the equation, though there is a possibility that a user’s agent will talk to the restaurant’s agent, and agent-to-agent communication might break down the conversation.

The company is also updating its Yelp AI assistant that helps users discover restaurants and services. With the new OpenTable integration, users can easily book a restaurant without leaving the app.

Yelp is adding better personalization to its assistant by having it remember preferences that you might have mentioned in previous chats. Plus, you can access your chat history from the past 30 days in the app, with full history available soon.