How a 7,500-Member Gym & Aquatic Center Is Improving Customer Service and Sales with AI

Four Seasons Health Club, the only truly local health club in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, wanted more from AI than efficiency. The club wanted happier members and a happier front desk team. Members who call now get an instant, accurate answer at any hour, over the phone or in live chat, and anyone who prefers a person is transferred live to staff thanks to Replify's live transfers. The front desk team, no longer racing to a phone that rang non-stop, can give the member standing in front of them undivided attention. The numbers behind that experience: roughly 50% fewer calls reaching the front desk, 2,608 AI conversations in May and June 2026 (including 2,274 phone calls), 166 qualified leads, 1,310 live transfers to staff, and an increase in online joins. This is how they did it, told largely in the words of Melissa Alcorn, the club's Director of Engagement and Membership.

The club: a local institution, not a franchise

Most conversations about AI in fitness focus on fast-growing franchises. Four Seasons is the other side of the industry: a family-oriented, local club that has served the Bloomington-Normal community for more than 60 years with a stated purpose of transforming lives by creating a healthier community. "Stronger Together" is the club's rallying cry, and the membership reflects it, with generations of the same families calling Four Seasons their home club.

The operation spans two facilities and roughly 7,500 members. The Airport Road flagship (ages 15+) offers more than 120 group fitness classes across multiple studios, 150+ pieces of equipment, personal training, The PIT Strength & Conditioning, Pilates, massage therapy, and advanced recovery services. The Legacy Center adds courts, aquatics, an indoor track, childcare, open play, and family programming.

That breadth of programming creates a very specific communication problem. Members, many of whom prefer to pick up the phone rather than search a website, call the front desk constantly. And the front desk in a college town is staffed largely by part-time students.

"To expect them to know everything all of the time to me is an unreasonable request. It’s a part-time minimum wage position. So to ask them to memorize the goings on and all the policies and all the things and all the programs and all the services, it's just unreasonable.‍"

Melissa Alcorn, Director of Engagement and Membership

The team was getting pulled in a thousand directions: delivering great service to the person at the desk while a phone rang non-stop with questions whose answers were already on the website.

AI Receptionist and AI Sales Results at a glance

Why Replify: the AI agent interface had to be turnkey

Four Seasons evaluated other AI options before choosing Replify, including one platform still in beta testing. The deciding factor was the product itself. Melissa needed software she could learn quickly, show to someone else just as quickly, and put to work immediately.

"I wanted something that was going to be really turnkey for me. I did the demo, and I'm like, I feel like I can easily jump into this and make it work. It cannot be more user-friendly than it is."

Melissa Alcorn

The referral path is worth noting too. Melissa first heard about Replify from a fellow operator in her REX Roundtable, the same peer network where several Replify clients compare notes on campaigns and use cases. In an industry where operators trust operators, that word of mouth carried more weight than any ad.

Onboarding: the AI knowledge base forced a long-overdue cleanup

Setup started with uploading the club's website into Replify's knowledge base. The import worked as designed and revealed something useful: years of hidden and outdated pages that had never been fully removed. Building the AI's knowledge base doubled as a website audit.

"It really forced my hand on needing to clean up our website. It had been on my list. I needed to do it anyway."

Melissa Alcorn

Her one lesson learned for other operators: be intentional about what you feed the knowledge base. Four Seasons also imported a manually built knowledge base from a prior system, which duplicated information already on the website. Cleaner inputs make for a cleaner agent. Start with your primary source of truth, then add only what is missing.

The phone side went smoothly, including a wrinkle that will sound familiar to independent clubs running on regional telecom providers. Four Seasons uses a carrier that was not yet on Replify's list of pre-tested configurations. Once the team explained the goal (a simple call transfer), the setup worked without issue.

Melissa also rolled out in phases: web chatbot first, then phones once she trusted the answers. That step-by-step approach is one we often recommend, and it lets her validate the AI's responses in a low-stakes channel before putting it on the front line.

Meet Summer: an AI receptionist with a personality that fits the brand

Four Seasons named its AI agent "Summer," a nod to the club's name, with a possible seasonal rebrand to "Autumn" later in the year. Small touch, real effect: the agent feels like part of the club rather than a bolt-on utility.

Summer's job has expanded steadily:

Answering routine calls. Hours, class schedules, program details, policies. The questions that used to interrupt in-person service every few minutes now get consistent, accurate answers on the first call.

Collecting membership freeze details. Instead of staff and members trading voicemails to establish how many months and why, Summer gathers the information up front so the team can process the freeze immediately.

Sharing a promo code and capturing leads. Four Seasons rarely runs promotions. When the club launched a summer offer, Summer shared the promo code with interested callers and chat visitors, and online sign-ups increased.

"I kind of joke, hey, Summer got another sale, and I didn't even have to pay commission on it."
‍
Melissa Alcorn

The AI result that changed daily operations: 50% fewer calls at the desk

The platform data backs up the staff's experience. Across May and June 2026, Summer handled 2,274 phone calls. Roughly half of those conversations were resolved entirely by the AI, and the other half were live-transferred to a person when the caller needed one. Members win on both sides of that split: an instant answer with no hold queue, or a warm handoff to a human whenever they want one. And every call the AI resolves is a ring that never interrupted a front desk interaction.

"Cutting our phone calls at the desk in half has been really game-changing for our staff. I really want the in-club experience to be top-notch. That's hard to do when you're answering the phone every three seconds while trying to have a conversation."

Melissa Alcorn

This is the pattern we see across clubs of every size, from Gold's Gym DC Metro to Club 24: the value of AI phone automation shows up twice. Once on the phone, where every caller gets an immediate answer, and again at the desk, where staff can give the member in front of them undivided attention.

The unexpected AI use case: an encyclopedia for the front desk

The most interesting outcome at Four Seasons was one nobody planned. The front desk staff now use the AI as their own reference tool. When a member asks a question a part-time staffer cannot answer, the guidance is simple: keep the website open and ask Summer.

"It's like me answering the phone every single time and being able to speak to everything we have going on. With staff, I can share memos, do smoke signals, put the information in front of them… they're not going to remember all of the details. It’s too much. It's not just about having somebody answer the phone, but somebody gets to answer the phone and have the answer on demand every time."

Melissa Alcorn

For a club with more than 120 weekly classes, two facilities with different hours, childcare hours, holiday hours, court rentals, aquatics schedules, and constant special events, a single always-current source of answers means every member hears the same correct information whether they call, chat, or walk up to the desk.

Melissa's practical tip for keeping that source accurate: write for a literal reader. When a department submitted court availability described as "daily," she caught that the facility is closed two days a week and rewrote it precisely. Feeding the AI the same clarity you would want from a new employee's training manual pays off in answer quality.

What's next for Four Seasons AI deployment

The club is rolling out capabilities in the same phased style that worked for launch:

SMS text messaging. Texting sign-up links and promo codes to callers on mobile devices is next on the list. (Operators planning this should budget for the one-to-two-week carrier approval process for outbound texting.)

Outbound calling for past-due accounts. The club's accounts manager is preparing to use AI outbound calling for billing follow-ups. The AI dials, leaves voicemails when nobody answers, and transfers to a human when a member picks up, removing hours of manual dialing.

Member management software integration. Connecting Replify to the club's membership platform is planned as a next-phase project to automate more of the freeze and account workflows end-to-end.

Melissa's advice to other operators on using AI

"I would highly recommend Replify to anybody. It's only going to be a tool that helps you. You’ll spend less time answering the simple questions, capture more leads, and give the right information, all while freeing up more of your time. So just jump in and try it."

Melissa Alcorn

And on working with the Replify team:

"Your customer service has been great too. I don't know how big your team is, but it feels like you always have somebody available to help."

Melissa Alcorn

Four Seasons Health Club AI Case Study Frequently Asked Questions