Yelp Exec on AI and Authenticity
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An interview with Yelp’s Chief Product Officer offers an example of an executive positioning his company in light of AI advances.
Craig Saldanha begins with a clear objective—to focus on the core business success:
Just to set the table, our stated mission hasn’t changed. Our goal is to connect consumers with great local businesses, and that hasn’t changed over time.
Then he achieves the following:
Explains the company’s early adoption of AI (which any business leader will say and is true—at a basic level)
Describes how newer (generative) AI improves the customer experience, particularly in parsing reviews and search
Reinforces Yelp Assistant, a new voice technology to connect consumers and businesses (video of Saldanha here)
Assures customers of human reviews and connection
His examples illustrate each point well. However, he claims they’re using generative AI to help people write reviews:
we are now using AI — and specifically Gen AI — to give you gentle nudges and prompts to help you remember what made your experience special. So as you’re typing, if you talk about the ambience, it will give you a little tag that says, “You’ve checked off the ambience, now you can talk about the service, you can talk about the food, etc.” We’ve rolled this out for restaurants, we’re rolling this out for other categories. That really helps with the depth and the quality of the reviews.
The support is minimal. I started typing a review, and yes, a little green box shows when I mention service, but that’s it. I don’t suppose that people want more guidance, particularly to avoid misleading, inauthentic reviews. But why mention it? Saldanha has stronger points, including upcoming features, for example, the ability to find a business based on a photo or video.
Overall, Saldanha does what we expect an executive to do. He represents the business well.
