Your next member is calling. We make sure they show up.
We configure and operate an AI front desk under your gym's number. It answers while your team is coaching, gives callers a reason to choose you, books the intro, and chases the no-shows. You don't need to manage the tech.
- Built for
- Studios and gyms of 2–15 staff
- Price
- $1,200/mo + $900 setup
- Your effort
- About one hour, once
- Live in
- 2–3 business days
- Contract
- Month-to-month, cancel anytime
The transcript is the product
A lead calls at 6:12pm — mid-class. Here is what happens.
Good evening, Ironvale Strength Club — this is the front desk assistant. I can answer questions and book your first visit. What can I do for you?
Hey — I was looking at your site. Do you have anything for beginners? I've never really lifted before.
You'd start in Foundations — small group, built for people picking up a barbell for the first time. Can I ask what you're hoping to get out of it?
Mostly get stronger, lose a bit of weight. I work 9 to 6 though, so it'd have to be evenings. My name's Maya Torres, by the way.
Thanks, Maya. Evenings work — Foundations runs Monday and Thursday at 7pm. The way to start is a free intro session: you meet a coach, see the space, no workout required. There's one this Saturday at 10am.
Saturday at 10 works.
Great. Best number to text the confirmation to?
It's 206-555-0173.
Reading that back: 2-0-6, 5-5-5, 0-1-7-3. Correct?
Yep. Oh — how much is a membership?
Foundations memberships start at $159 a month, and your coach walks you through the options at the intro — nothing to decide on the phone. You're booked for Saturday, 10am, with Coach Reyes.
Cool. Do I need to bring anything?
Just training shoes and water. Your confirmation text is on its way with the address, and you'll get a reminder Friday evening. See you Saturday, Maya.
Same-day transcript to your inbox. Every call recorded. If a call is missed entirely, the caller gets a text back within a minute.
A scripted walkthrough of a configured front desk for a fictional gym — not a recording of a real call. The live demo lines do this on the phone, unscripted.
The industry, measured
Most gyms do not answer the phone. That is the whole market.
Methodology: 105 US fitness facilities called by researchers posing as would-be members (Replify, Q3–Q4 2025); 248 mystery-shop enquiries across North American operators (Keepme, 2025). Both studies were run by industry software vendors — no neutral body has run one, and we say so rather than pretend otherwise. Every statistic in this section links to its source.
What happened when 105 US gyms got a membership call:
- Answered live · 31%
- Voicemail · 28%
- Automated phone tree · 38%
- No answer at all · 3%
Public posts from r/gymowner, quoted verbatim — typos kept, vendor names redacted, every source linked. These are not our gyms.
“Half our leads call while we’re coaching or after hours, so having something that responds instantly would be huge.”
Gym operator, r/gymowner
“Most leads don’t say no they just never hear back.”
Gym owner, r/gymowner
Done for you
We run it. Your total effort is about one hour, once.
01
One setup call, 30–45 minutes
Your classes and intro offer, the questions you want callers asked, when a caller gets patched to your cell, access to your booking system and calendar. That's the whole meeting.
02
We build your front desk, days 1–2
We draft your script, configure the agent, wire your booking system — Mindbody, Zen Planner, PushPress, whatever you run — and set up missed-call text-back, intro reminders, and no-show follow-up. You approve by email — about 15 minutes.
03
Test calls, then forward your number
Joint test calls until you're satisfied, then your number forwards — about 5 minutes, with carrier-exact steps. Typically live in 2–3 business days.
What we operate every week after go-live
- Every call recorded and transcribed. The transcript reaches your inbox the same day.
- We read every week's transcripts and send written notes — what worked, what we'd like to change.
- Reminders before every intro and follow-up after every no-show — sequences we write and tune, not software you learn.
- Unlimited script iterations. A change is a text to us, not a dashboard for you.
- Monitoring with fallback routing. If anything upstream breaks, calls route to your fallback while we fix it.
When the AI can't handle a question, it says so, takes a detailed message, and flags the call. If it mishandles one, we correct the setup within 24 hours.
You finish coaching the evening block to intros on the calendar and transcripts in your inbox.
The price
$900 setup
+ $1,200 / month
- Month-to-month. No term contract. Billing starts at go-live, not signature.
- 300 lead calls a month included; $1 per call beyond. Spam, robocalls, and hang-ups don't count.
- Founding-gym rate, locked for life. Soon we will raise our prices, but yours will stay the same.
3–4 new gyms per month — because we really set up accounts ourselves, not AI or self-service
“It’s wild huh !! Spend $2000+ a month on generating new name, number email and don’t answer inbound.”
— Gym owner, r/gymownerAgreed. Answering it is the whole job.
Against the alternative most gyms actually price
| Front-desk hire | FirstContact | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | $31,470/yr average wage alone, before taxes and benefits | $1,200/mo flat |
| Coverage | 40 hrs/week — and the desk empties when a class runs | 24/7/365 |
| Two callers at once | The second caller waits or bails | Answered in parallel |
| When they quit | Weeks to rehire and retrain | Nothing to rehire |
| Record of each call | Whatever got written down | Recording + transcript, same day |
| Follow-up after a miss | When someone finds a minute | Text back within a minute, every time |
| Time to live | A hiring cycle | 2–3 business days |
At $1,200 a month, break-even is roughly 2–4 recovered leads — against an industry that misses 39% of its membership calls.
Bought piece by piece — a fitness AI receptionist runs $300–500 a month and a follow-up automation stack $249–450; that adds up to $550–950 in software alone, and it still doesn’t write its own scripts or read its own transcripts. The difference is the model: flat retainer, your scripts, every call transcribed, a named human reviewing weekly.
If you already have front-desk staff you like, keep them. We cover class hours, early mornings, nights, weekends, and overflow.
01
Walk away anytime
Month-to-month; cancel whenever. You keep the scripts, the sequences, and every transcript.
02
14 days: read the transcripts, then decide
Read every transcript from your first 14 days of real calls. Not convinced — 100% back, including the $900 setup fee. No forms, no questions.
03
The 24-hour fix
If the AI mishandles a call, we correct the configuration within 24 hours and send you exactly what changed. You'll see the mishandle yourself.

Founder's letter
I'm helping to close the gap between AI and business results.
Before FirstContact I helped large education and coaching businesses fix the same leak — leads calling, nobody answering, revenue quietly walking away.
When I build one of these systems, the agent scenario is my main concern.
I don't build a simple AI chatbot, but I'm really trying to give the AI a good offer and meaning, so that you will actually convert more members from the calls.
And grow your business with my solutions.
- Master's in AI Product Engineering
- 4 years of SWE and Product experience
Objections
The questions gym owners actually ask.
If yours isn't here, ask directly: hello@befirstcontact.com
It doesn't improvise. Off-script questions get an honest scripted response: it says it doesn't know, takes a detailed message, and flags the call for follow-up. You see every flag in the same-day transcript. If a call was mishandled, we correct the configuration within 24 hours and send you exactly what changed.
Some people hate AI on the phone, and we don't argue with them. But at 6pm on a Tuesday the realistic alternative is a phone tree or voicemail — a 2025 secret shop found only 31% of gyms answer live — and callers who hit voicemail dial the next gym on the list. Judge the voice on the thing itself: call the demo line and give it 60 seconds. If a caller asks for a person, the AI transfers the call or takes a message. Your members still get humans — the AI answers the calls nobody was answering: new leads, mid-class, after hours.
Keep it — we wire into your booking system, not around it. Intros land on your calendar, leads land in your CRM. The text-back and nurture features those platforms sell are checkbox tools someone still has to configure, write, and watch; none of them answers a phone call live. That someone, and that answer, is us.
The average front-desk wage at a US gym is $31,470 a year before taxes and benefits — for 40 hours a week, and the desk still empties every time a class runs. If you have staff you like, keep them; we cover mid-class, early mornings, nights, weekends, and overflow. If you don't, $1,200 a month buys answered calls at every hour instead of a hiring cycle.
Up to half of booked intros never show — and 55% of gyms send no reminder at all before the visit. Your setup includes a confirmation text at booking, a reminder the evening before, and a follow-up sequence when someone doesn’t show. Owners who run automatic reminders report show rates near 100%. We build the sequence, you approve it, it runs on every intro.
The AI software alone retails at $65–500 a month, follow-up tools at $249–450, and you could run them yourself: write the scripts, wire the booking system, build the sequences, read the transcripts, tune what breaks. You aren't paying us for software. You're paying for the person operating it — gym-specific setup, monitoring, unlimited script changes, a weekly read of every transcript, and a 24-hour fix when a call goes wrong. The $900 setup fee is deliberate too: no fitness software vendor charges one — and none of them wires your booking system, writes your scripts, and builds your sequences before day one. That's what it buys.
In most states, only one person on a call has to know it is being recorded. In others — California, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Washington among them — everyone on the call has to agree first. Every call here is recorded and transcribed, so your setup includes a spoken disclosure line written for your state: we draft it, you approve it, and it runs at the start of every call. It is part of setup, not an add-on.
Send us a message — that's the whole process. Month-to-month, no term, no cancellation fee; billing started at go-live, so there's nothing prepaid to claw back. You keep the scripts, the sequences, every recording, and every transcript.
Hear it answer. That's the entire pitch.
A 105-gym secret shop found 39% of membership calls never reach a live person. We make sure every call to your gym gets answered. Probably worth it.
And I personally guarantee a 100% refund if you don't like the product.
— Wladyslaw Kudinov, founder