The next era of retention isn’t reactive — it’s predictive. Inside the AI-driven shift reshaping how gyms engage and retain members.
For years, retention in fitness has been treated like a checklist: onboarding emails, a few follow-up touches, maybe a discount when someone threatens to cancel. But according to Dheeraj Koneru, co-founder of Zenoti, that approach isn’t just outdated — it’s fundamentally broken.
“Talk to gym owners and everyone agrees engagement matters,” Koneru says. “But very few actually execute on it. They have good intentions — a plan for the first 30 days, setting member goals like coming in three times a week or encouraging the member to try personal training — but they don’t have the tools to follow through consistently.”
That execution gap is where retention quietly fails. Not because operators don’t care, but because traditional systems were never designed to support individualized, ongoing engagement at scale. And in an industry where members increasingly expect experiences tailored to them, that gap has become impossible to ignore.
Retention, Koneru argues, isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing what matters — for the right person, at the right time. However, that level of hyper-personalization is virtually impossible for staff members to implement.
One of the biggest problems Zenoti sees is that most gyms simply don’t know what’s happening inside their member base.
“Many owners don’t know who is unhappy, who is at risk of canceling or who their promoters are,” Koneru says. “They don’t have visibility. And if you don’t know who’s struggling or who’s thriving, you can’t act.”
Instead, retention efforts tend to focus on the very end of the lifecycle — the moment someone is already ready to cancel. By then, the relationship is often beyond repair.
“The irony is that the most important work happens much earlier,” he explains. “It’s all the small things that get lost — whether it’s easy to book a class, whether communication feels personal, whether staff are engaging members the right way, whether people feel good when they walk in.”
Without real insight, operators are forced to guess. And guessing doesn’t scale.
How AI Makes Personalization Possible
Zenoti’s approach reframes retention entirely — not as a reactive effort, but as a continuous, data-driven system of care.
“At a high level, we look at members in three buckets,” Koneru explains. “People who are at risk, people who are doing fine and promoters — the ones getting great results and talking about that to their friends and family, and other members.”
AI allows Zenoti to analyze behavior across the entire member base and identify which bucket each person falls into, and more importantly, why.
“For someone at risk, the reason matters,” he says. “One member might not be coming in enough. Another might be coming regularly but not seeing results. The solution for each of those people is completely different.”
This is where personalization becomes actionable. AI doesn’t just flag risk — it recommends what to do next. Set milestones. Suggest personal training. Encourage consistency. Celebrate progress. And then execute those plans automatically.
“That methodical approach is what’s been missing in retention,” Koneru says. “AI allows you to identify the problem and immediately take the right action.”
Reading Signals Humans Can’t
What makes AI so powerful in this context isn’t just speed — it’s pattern recognition at a level no human team could realistically achieve.
“AI looks at every piece of data we have on a member,” Koneru explains. “It doesn’t decide upfront what’s relevant. It looks at everything — visit frequency, spending patterns, use of amenities, even factors like how far the member lives from the gym — and finds correlations.”
Zenoti’s models analyze roughly 15 core parameters, learning from the behavior of members from the past and applying those insights forward.
“Humans can’t track thousands of scenarios in their heads,” he says. “AI can.”
That predictive power allows gyms to understand members earlier, before disengagement turns into churn, and with far greater precision.
But knowing what a member needs is only half the equation. The real challenge is delivering it consistently. Zenoti bridges that gap by embedding intelligence directly into staff workflows.
“Employees want to do the right thing,” Koneru says. “They just don’t always know what that is in the moment.”
Through Zenoti’s mobile tools, staff can see exactly what a member needs right on their phone and immediately interact with them — recommended services, potential issues, suggested outreach. The system even prompts staff when it’s time to follow up.
“If it’s been a week since a milestone or check-in, the system reminds them,” he says. “That makes engagement far more likely to happen.”
All communication — calls, texts, messages — flows through the platform, keeping data centralized and consistent. The result is better service, better coaching and a better experience for both staff and members.
“When employees feel like they’re actually helping people succeed, they enjoy their jobs more,” Koneru adds. “That matters.”
What the Next Gym Experience Looks Like
Looking ahead, Koneru believes the transformation will happen faster than most operators expect.
“Gym owners consistently underestimate how quickly AI will change their business,” he says. “Those who wait too long risk falling behind in ways that are hard to recover from.”
He envisions a future where the member experience is seamless and deeply informed by real-time data — from check-in to workout to recovery.
Gyms already have security cameras, which Koneru says can be combined with AI to change the game. “When someone walks in, the system knows who they are and checks them in,” he explains. “It knows how long they stay, what equipment they use, how often they come, where there are bottlenecks on the floor.”
That data doesn’t replace human connection — it enhances it.
“This frees staff from administrative tasks and allows them to focus on real relationships,” Koneru says. “It’s actually about getting back to human connection.”
If there’s one piece of advice Koneru wants gym owners to take into 2026 and beyond, it’s this: stop limiting what you think is possible.
“Don’t constrain yourself too early, and don’t think of AI as simply Chatgpt,” he says. “It’s so much more than that. Ask what your ideal member experience looks like. Ask what would actually help people succeed. Then look for partners who can build that solution.”
AI, in his view, isn’t just another tool. It’s a fundamental shift in how gyms understand and serve their members.
“Retention isn’t about more touchpoints anymore,” Koneru says. “It’s about meaningful ones. When engagement is personal, consistent and aligned with someone’s goals, people stay.”
