Ep. 258 | Yelp's New AI Will Answer Your Customers for $30 a Month

Yelp announced Smart Lead Reply, an AI agent that answers Request a Quote messages the moment they arrive, asks your questions, sorts real jobs from time wasters, and sends your scheduling link. Yelp says it rolls out in November for $30 a month to service businesses in eligible categories. Mike and Frank explain it in plain English. A quote request on Yelp is a message from a customer describing a job. Qualifying a lead means sorting the real jobs from the time wasters before anybody drives out: right service area, a job you actually do, a customer who's ready. Yelp says Smart Lead Reply draws on what's already in your Yelp for Business account and Yelp page, and you can customize it with a scheduling link, services offered, pricing or promos, the questions to ask, and how conversations should be handled. Every conversation is logged in your Yelp inbox, and you get a notification to review the qualified lead and pick up where the agent left off. What else to know: Yelp names movers, roofers, plumbers, home cleaners, contractors, and electricians among eligible categories, plus additional service businesses, but didn't publish a full list. The same release adds direct booking from Yelp for ServiceTitan and Housecall Pro users and lead hand-offs into Jobber and Workiz. Yelp also says about 10% of Request a Quote submissions in Q2 came through Yelp Assistant, its AI chatbot for consumers, so AI is already on the customer's side of the conversation. The risks are ordinary ones: stale page info gets repeated, any price you type becomes a promise, and a calendar link with fake openings books jobs you can't keep. Takeaway: before it shows up, do a ten-minute Yelp checkup. Read your Yelp page like a stranger would and fix hours, services, service area, and description, because that page becomes the AI's script. Write three things on paper: the questions you always ask, the jobs you don't take, and the one price sentence you're comfortable having an AI say (or none at all, and let it just book the visit). Then check your Yelp messages: count last month's quote requests and how many got an answer within an hour. If every lead already gets a fast reply, skip it. If leads sat overnight, that's your case for the $30. Sources: Yelp Fall 2026 Product Release (Business Wire) — https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261020237779/en/Yelp-Announces-More-Personalized-Yelp-Assistant-Agent-that-Checks-Restaurant-Wait-Times-and-AI-Tools-for-Service-Professionals · Yelp Official Blog, "Do more on Yelp" — https://blog.yelp.com/news/fall-product-release-2026/ · TechCrunch on Yelp's AI phone agent and Smart Lead Reply — https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/20/yelp-can-now-call-on-your-behalf-to-check-wait-times-at-a-restaurant/ · Yelp for Business, what's new (Calendly scheduling) — https://business.yelp.com/products/new-yelp-for-business-products-features/ More Control AI Profit: https://ctrlaiprofit.com · All episodes: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2596090 · Email the show: [email protected] Topics: Yelp · Smart Lead Reply · AI agents · lead qualification · Request a Quote · service businesses · scheduling --- Frequently Asked Questions What is Yelp Smart Lead Reply? An AI agent from Yelp that responds instantly when a customer submits a Request a Quote, answers questions, gathers project details, qualifies the lead, and can share your scheduling link. Conversations are logged in your Yelp inbox for you to review and take over. How much does Smart Lead Reply cost and when is it available? Yelp says $30 per month through the Yelp business owner account, rolling out in November 2026 to businesses in eligible categories that use Request a Quote. What should a small business do before turning it on? Clean up your Yelp page (hours, services, service area), decide what the AI may and may not say about price, list the questions you always ask, and check how quickly you currently answer quote requests. --- About the Hosts Michael is a small business owner and entrepreneur since 1983, founder of Cadenhead Services and 850 Media. He speaks from four decades of real operational experience — not whitepapers. Frank is an AI — an OpenClaw-powered agent serving as Digital Media Director at 850 Media. An AI co-hosting a show about AI for business owners is not a gimmick. It is a live demo of exactly what the show is about. Send us Fan Mail Support the show Ctrl AI Profit — Real AI. Real Business. No Hype. CtrlAiProfit.com X: @CtrlAIProfit TikTok: @CtrlAiProfit YouTube: @CtrlAiProfit [email protected] Produced entirely by AI. Yes, really....