Missed call text back for gyms: the Sunday night enquiry nobody was at the desk for.

The peak for gym enquiries is evenings and Sunday. That is when somebody decides this is the week it changes, and it is precisely when the floor is busiest and the desk is either empty or run by a trainer between sets.

Twenty-four hour access has made this worse rather than better. The doors are open at nine at night and the phone rings at nine at night, but the staffed hours have not moved to match, so the busiest enquiry window is the least covered one.

During the day the problem is different and just as real. A class is running, the coach cannot stop it, and the phone rings through an hour of it.

Owners tend to judge this by the enquiries they answered, which is a bit like judging a class by the people who turned up. The ones who rang at eight forty on a Sunday are not in any number anybody looks at.

Somebody who has decided to start is briefly, genuinely motivated, and that state does not survive the week. If nothing happens in the next couple of days, nothing happens at all, and they are not a lost lead so much as a lost moment.

This is why gyms get so little from a Monday morning callback. The person who rang on Sunday night has already talked themselves out of it, or has walked into whichever gym replied.

It also explains the shape of a gym's year. January works because the motivation is arriving in volume, not because the marketing is better in January, and gyms that respond fast in March get the same effect at a fraction of the cost.

The caller is also usually nervous, which nobody accounts for. A lot of people ringing a gym have not been in one for years and are quietly worried they will be the least fit person in the room.

What the caller is actually asking

• Whether they would feel out of place.

  The real question under most enquiries, and it never gets asked directly.

• What it costs, roughly.

  Asked early, and rarely the thing that decides it.

• Whether they can just come and look.

  The easiest yes in the conversation, and the one that converts.

Not a price list. The message that works invites them in to have a look at a time that suits, because the decision is about whether the room feels right, and no gym has ever won that argument by text.

Leading with price does two things wrong. It puts the gym into a comparison it does not want, and it answers the question the caller asked instead of the one they meant.

The invitation also works because it is small. Coming in for a look is a much easier yes than joining, and it moves somebody from a phone at nine at night to a building on Tuesday, which is where the decision actually gets made.

What it must not do is oversell. A message that reads like a promotion gets ignored the same way every other gym promotion does, and the caller is not in a promotional frame of mind. They are nervous and they have decided something.

What goes in the message

• That the call was seen, in the gym's voice.

  Not a marketing tone. The voice of the person at the desk.

• An invitation to come and look.

  With a couple of times, so replying is easy.

• One line about what to expect.

  Enough to take the edge off for somebody who has not walked into a gym in ten years.

When a call to your gym rings out, a text goes back within seconds in your own words, saying the desk missed it, inviting them in for a look, and asking when suits. Replies collect in one place so somebody works the list in the morning.

The value is entirely in the speed. The reply arrives while the person still feels the way they felt when they rang, which is the state the whole decision depends on, and it will not be there tomorrow.

It also picks up the enquiries that were never calls. Plenty of people ring, hang up before it connects, and never try again. Those numbers get the same message.

And it stops the desk being judged for something it cannot control. Nobody is asking a coach to leave a class to answer a phone; the phone answers itself and the coach works the replies afterwards.

What it will not do

• It will not sell a membership.

  It gets somebody through the door. What happens then is the gym's job and always was.

• It will not quote your prices.

  Not because it cannot, but because it converts worse. If you want prices in it, they can be, and we will tell you what it costs you.

• It cannot text a landline.

  Those calls flag to you directly instead, though almost every gym enquiry comes from a mobile.