Yelp has announced that its users can now message business owners directly with any questions or feedback they have. "While some customers prefer to pick up the phone, others would much rather communicate via a keyboard, so this feature adds one more way to reach out to businesses," the company said in a blog post yesterday. If you're hunting for information that's not readily available on the listing page, a new "message the business" option will let you fire off a quick note. It also offers a last-ditch chance to resolve a bad experience you've had somewhere before posting a review about it for the whole world to see.

Business owners will receive an email resembling the one above containing your question, and responding is pretty straightforward: all they need to do is reply to the email itself. Yelp will also indicate how long it usually takes businesses to reply (assuming they haven't opted out). So you'll have a good idea of how long you'll be waiting to hear back — and whether your question is urgent enough to warrant picking up the phone and getting an answer the old-fashioned way.