Customer Support

How to build a customer knowledge base as Fitness Studio Founders

Customer SupportFor Fitness Studio Founders2 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Your members ask the same questions every week: 'Can I freeze my membership?', 'What's your cancellation policy?', 'Which classes are good for beginners?', 'Do you offer family rates?' You're answering these in Instagram DMs, text messages, front-desk conversations, and email — sometimes all four for the same person on the same day. There's no single place where your policies, class descriptions, instructor bios, and FAQ answers actually live. New front-desk staff have to shadow you for two weeks just to learn what to say. And when you update your late-cancel fee, three people give the old answer for another month before anyone notices.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

Customer SupportFor Fitness Studio Founders2 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A searchable knowledge base that holds every policy, class description, pricing tier, and FAQ your staff and members need — pulled from your existing docs and updated without a Sunday-night spreadsheet session

An AI-assisted inbox workflow that drafts replies to member questions using your knowledge base as the source of truth, so the answer is consistent whether it's you, your front desk, or a future support agent responding

A system that flags when a policy doc hasn't been touched in 60+ days and prompts you to review it — so 'do you still offer the 10-class pack?' always gets the current answer

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Knowledge Management Email Agent

Data sources & config

Starch connects to Google Docs and Notion through its integration catalog (the agent queries them live when the knowledge base needs to pull or update content). Member emails come in through Gmail, which Starch syncs directly on a schedule — giving the email workflow access to incoming questions without manual forwarding. Mindbody and MarianaTek don't have open APIs for independent studios, so Starch automates them through your browser — no API needed — to pull current class schedules and membership plan details and keep the knowledge base in sync.

Prompts to copy

Build me a knowledge base for my Pilates studio. It should have sections for: membership plans and pricing, class descriptions and difficulty levels, cancellation and freeze policy, instructor bios, new member onboarding checklist, and studio rules. Pull the content from these Google Docs and flag any section I haven't updated in more than 60 days.

Set up an email workflow that drafts replies to member questions. When someone emails asking about pricing, class schedules, or our cancellation policy, draft a response using the studio knowledge base. Route anything about billing disputes or injury accommodations to me with a summary and suggested next step.

Every Monday morning, send me a list of the five most common member questions from last week's emails and DMs, grouped by topic, so I can see if there are gaps in what the knowledge base covers.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect Gmail — Starch syncs your inbox on a schedule, so the email workflow can read incoming member questions as they arrive.

2 Connect Google Docs or Notion from Starch's integration catalog; the agent queries them live to pull your existing policy docs, class guides, and pricing sheets into the knowledge base.

3 Tell Starch to build a knowledge base with the specific sections your studio needs — membership plans, class descriptions by difficulty level, cancellation and freeze policy, instructor bios, new member onboarding steps, and studio rules.

4 Starch automates Mindbody or MarianaTek through your browser — no API needed — to pull your current class schedule, so the knowledge base always reflects what's actually on the timetable this week, not last month's version.

5 Set a staleness rule: any section that hasn't been edited in 60 days gets flagged in your weekly digest so you can decide if it still reflects current policy.

6 Set up the email workflow: tell Starch to read incoming member emails, match the question against the knowledge base, and draft a reply you can approve and send in one click.

7 Define escalation rules in plain language — for example, 'anything involving a billing dispute, a medical accommodation request, or a complaint about a specific instructor should come to me with a summary rather than an auto-drafted reply.'

8 Run the workflow for one week and review the drafted replies. Edit any that missed the mark and tell Starch what to correct — the knowledge base entry updates automatically.

9 Share knowledge base view access with front-desk staff and any instructors who handle member questions, so they're reading from the same source you are.

10 Ask Starch for a weekly topic-cluster report: which questions came in most often, grouped by category. Use this to decide which knowledge base sections to expand.

11 When you change a policy — say, raising your late-cancel fee from $15 to $20 — update the knowledge base entry once and tell Starch to flag any email drafts that reference the old amount before they go out.

12 Once Customer Support Agent launches (coming soon), it will connect directly to this knowledge base as its source of truth — so the knowledge base you build now becomes the foundation for 24/7 automated member support across chat, email, and DMs.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

Try it on Starch →

Worked example

Willow & Roots Pilates Studio — April 2026 Knowledge Base Setup

Sample numbers from a real run

Existing policy docs migrated from Google Drive	14
Class descriptions written and categorized by level	22
Member emails drafted by Starch in first week	47
Escalations routed to owner for review	6
Staleness flags triggered in week three	3

Willow & Roots is a 12-instructor Pilates studio running on Mindbody with about 340 active members. The owner, Priya, spent roughly 90 minutes a day answering member questions — mostly the same dozen questions about the freeze policy, beginner class recommendations, and whether the intro offer applied to returning members. She had 14 Google Docs scattered across Drive: a staff handbook, a class guide, a pricing sheet from 2024 that still listed the old 10-class pack, and several instructor bio drafts. In week one, Starch pulled all 14 docs, organized them into a structured knowledge base with six sections, and flagged the pricing sheet as containing a discontinued product. Starch also automated Mindbody through the browser to pull the live class schedule, so the 'which class is right for me?' section reflects actual availability rather than a static list. By the end of week one, Starch had drafted replies to 47 incoming member emails using the knowledge base; Priya approved 41 without edits and corrected 6, each correction updating the underlying knowledge base entry. The 6 escalations were all billing-related — exactly the category she'd flagged as needing her direct attention. Her front-desk staff stopped asking her what the late-cancel policy was.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Time to first reply on member email inquiries (target: same business day without founder involvement)

Percentage of member questions answered by staff without escalating to the owner

Number of knowledge base sections flagged as stale per month

Staff onboarding time — how many days before a new front-desk hire can answer member questions independently

Volume of repeat questions on the same topic (a proxy for knowledge base gaps)

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Notion wiki (manual)

Notion is great for storing docs, but it doesn't draft email replies, flag stale content automatically, or pull live class schedule data from Mindbody — you're still the routing layer between the wiki and member questions.

Mindbody's built-in messaging

Mindbody lets you send messages to members, but there's no knowledge base, no AI drafting, and no way to build a searchable internal resource your staff can actually use.

Zendesk or Intercom

Full-featured support platforms with knowledge base tools, but they're priced and designed for teams with a dedicated support function — overkill for a boutique studio, and they don't connect to your Pilates scheduling software without custom integration work.

Google Docs + a shared inbox

What most independent studios already use — docs that go stale and an inbox that only the owner knows how to triage. No AI drafting, no staleness detection, no automatic sync with what's actually on your class schedule this week.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — knowledge management, email agent all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Mindbody doesn't have an open API for independent studios. Can Starch still pull my class schedule into the knowledge base?

Yes. Starch automates Mindbody through your browser — no API needed. It logs in, navigates to your schedule, and pulls the current class list the same way a staff member would, then uses that data to keep your knowledge base current. The same approach works for MarianaTek, Wodify, and ClassPass.

What happens when I change a policy — like updating my cancellation fee?

Update the knowledge base entry once. Starch can flag any pending email drafts that reference the old policy before they go out, and your staff sees the updated version immediately since they're all reading from the same source.

Can Starch actually send replies to members on my behalf, or does it just draft them?

The email workflow drafts replies for your review — you approve and send. You can set it up to auto-send low-stakes replies (like directions to the studio or a link to the intro offer page) if you want, but anything involving billing, complaints, or policy exceptions routes to you with a summary and a suggested response.

Is this the same as the Customer Support Agent I've seen mentioned?

Related but different. Customer Support Agent — coming soon, request beta access to get notified — will handle member questions 24/7 across chat, email, and DMs automatically, using your knowledge base as its source of truth. The knowledge base and email workflow you build today is exactly the foundation that app will plug into when it launches. You're not starting over.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? My members' data will be in there.

Starch is not currently SOC 2 Type II certified. The knowledge base itself holds your policies, class descriptions, and FAQ content — not member PII. Member emails routed through the Gmail sync do pass through Starch, so if your studio is subject to specific data handling requirements, that's worth factoring in. Honest answer: if you need SOC 2 certification today, Starch isn't there yet.

My Google Docs are a mess — some are outdated, some are drafts. Will Starch just dump all of that into the knowledge base?

Starch pulls from what you point it at. When you set up the knowledge base, you tell Starch which docs to use as source material. It will flag content that looks contradictory or hasn't been touched in a while, but the curation decision is yours. Think of the first session as a review pass, not a blind import.