Zenoti’s Dheeraj Koneru explains what it takes to leverage artificial intelligence (AI), how it can clearly transform your business, and why now is the time to start.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer just a buzzword or a concept worthy of scrutiny. It’s an innovative tool available to most fitness and wellness companies that helps streamline and optimize critical tasks like answering phones, booking workouts, and managing inventory. The result is a more efficient system, more members and better retention.
In the ATN webinar “AI and the Future of Fitness: What Separates the Leaders from the Laggards” (available on demand below), Dheeraj Koneru, co-founder of Zenoti, a cloud-based software platform that powers more than 30,000 brands in the space, explains how operators can adopt the technology quickly and shares actionable recommendations and important context to get started.
Koneru argues that leveraging AI starts with recognizing that the industry is moving beyond a SaaS model built around dashboards and manual workflows. The next wave will not be defined by better screens, Koneru argues, but by AI agents. For example, these agents can handle all reservation operations, such as answering phone calls, creating reservations, and updating reservations. “We’re going to start seeing this change pretty quickly, late this year, early next year, because this is what everyone is focused on right now,” he said.
To maximize the ROI of AI, Koneru says operators need to embrace machine learning, a category of AI that finds patterns and makes decisions. This means preparing your company data. First, reduce where your data is stored by consolidating your member management, loyalty, marketing, and other platforms as much as possible. The more dispersed your data is, the harder it is for AI to connect the dots, learn what is working and what isn’t, and make favorable decisions.
“It may never be 100%, but the more we come together, the better,” Connell said. “Why is that important? Because then within that platform, all your data is unified rather than distributed and having to be understood.”
Connell, who previously ran a gym chain, emphasizes the common challenges faced by similar companies and the speed with which agents address them. He tackles all-too-common day-to-day problems one by one, from lost leads and cancellations to low member engagement and inefficient workflows.
He also takes ample time to answer the most burning questions from real business owners, giving viewers early access to Zenoti’s 2026 Fitness Leadership Roundtable. The roundtables are a series of in-person conversations across the country designed to help executives dig deeper, compare notes, and build a clearer path forward.
Watch the webinar below to learn more.
- Where AI actually moves the needle inside the gym
- How to add AI to your daily workflow without changing the way your club operates or disrupting your team.
- A simple way to convert more walk-ins, keep members engaged longer, and get your work done with less manual work.
- What sets top-performing gyms apart – the habits, systems, and automation that make them stand out
- How major carriers are already applying these ideas and seeing results
- Why generic solutions that aren’t built specifically for your industry no longer work
