An AI assistant for gyms and fitness studios

People decide to join a gym at odd hours: late on a Sunday, or on the first evening of a new month. Your front desk is closed and the gym floor may be open on access tags alone. So the questions go unanswered. What does a membership cost? Is there a lock-in contract? Can I try it first? Can I pause while I travel? Botsmith reads your website and answers them on the spot, in your words. It will not write anyone a diet or tell them whether their back can take a deadlift.

What people ask before they join

Someone comparing gyms wants a clear price and no surprises. If your site makes them hunt for the joining fee or the cancellation terms, they will ask, and if nobody answers they will assume the worst. A website assistant gives the same answer your best staff member would, including the parts people are nervous to ask about.

Ask a sample gym

This assistant belongs to Ironbark Fitness, a gym and studio we invented for this page. Every price, time, address and phone number is made up. Try asking how much a membership is, whether there is a lock-in contract, whether you can put a membership on hold while you travel, or how to cancel. Ask whether it has a pool. Then tell it you have a bad back and ask whether lifting weights is safe.

Before we put it on this page we asked it six questions a prospective member would ask: price, lock-in, freezing, the pool, a bad back and how to cancel. It answered all six correctly. It said plainly that there is no pool, gave the notice period for cancelling, and sent the bad-back question to a doctor.

Let it answer the cancellation question

Gyms have a reputation for making it hard to leave, and people ask about cancelling before they join for exactly that reason. A straight answer builds more trust than a vague one. If your terms say how much notice is needed, what an early exit from a fixed term costs and how a freeze works, the assistant will say so plainly, at the moment the person is deciding. The demo gym's knowledge has one entry that covers only pausing and cancelling, written with the words members use: pause, freeze, hold, suspend, cancel.

One thing it cannot do is act on a membership. It cannot see who the person is, what they pay or when their term ends, and it cannot process a freeze or a cancellation. It explains the rule and tells them how to lodge the request. Make sure your instructions say that, so nobody thinks a chat message was their notice.

Keep it out of health advice

Visitors will ask a gym's chat what they should eat, how fast they can lose weight and whether it is safe to train with an injury or while pregnant. Those are questions for a doctor or for a session with one of your trainers, not for a website widget. Botsmith answers only from your content and says it is not sure when the content does not cover something. You then add a standing instruction, which applies to every reply as soon as you save it. The demo gym's says never give medical advice, never say whether exercise is safe for someone's condition, never write a diet or weight-loss plan, and never promise results.

What it does not do

• It does not connect to your membership or billing system. It cannot look up a member, a payment or a booking.
• It does not sign people up, take payment, book classes, or process a freeze or cancellation.
• It does not know today's class has been cancelled unless your site says so. Keep one-off changes on a page it can read, or leave them to your app.
• If a visitor wants a tour or a call back, it can collect a name and phone number or email and send them to your inbox with the conversation attached. Read AI chatbot privacy for small businesses before you switch that on.

Getting it ready

1. Create a bot with your gym's website address and let it read your pages.
2. Upload or paste what is not on the site: the membership terms, the freeze and cancellation rules, the trial conditions. Keep one topic per entry. See what to put in a chatbot knowledge base.
3. Write your standing instructions: no medical or diet advice, no promises about results, and membership changes go to the front desk.
4. In the dashboard preview, ask what prospects asked your team last week, in their words. Include the awkward ones about fees and leaving.
5. Put the chat on your site, and put the chat link's QR code on the front door for people who turn up outside staffed hours. See the WordPress, Wix or Google Sites guides.
6. After a few weeks, check what it could not answer. How to tell if your support bot is working gives a ten-minute weekly routine.

What it costs

A single gym or studio fits Starter at US$19 a month: one bot and 2,000 messages a month. A group with several locations and a website for each can use Pro at US$49 a month for five bots and 10,000 messages. The trial is 14 days with no card. If most of your enquiries arrive when nobody is at the desk, read how to handle after-hours enquiries next.