Humanizing support at scale with Talkspace’s Donna Haddigan

Something that I say often to our team is, it's not just another ticket, don't think of them as tickets. These are people and they're all waiting for our help. Hello and welcome to the Conversations Vizendesk Podcast. I'm your host, Nicole Saunders. Today we're talking with Donna Hatigan, Senior Director of Client Support at Talkspace. Donna has nearly 10 years of experience leading the teams in customer facing departments of industry disrupting tech startups, including Rent the Runway, which reached a $1 billion valuation during her time there. And now she's at Talkspace, which went public in late June 2021. From working with clients directly to building training and quality assurance teams from the ground up, and now overseeing the full support operation at Talkspace, Donna has a deep understanding of what it takes to be successful within a multitude of support roles and uses this knowledge to build an incredible experience, not only for customers, but for her employees as well. Today we'll be talking about her work at Talkspace, how they've used Zendesk to scale their support operations while maintaining a deep infancy and human connection with their customers. Before we dive into that conversation, a quick reminder, Zendesk Relate is coming up and we have announced some truly amazing speakers. PetOridZendeskRelate.com to see that list of speakers and get your ticket. We'll see you in Las Vegas, April 16th through 18th. Also, we would love to hear from you. If you have questions you'd like to hear us answer, ideas for an episode theme, or just want to tell us what you think. You can reach us anytime at [email protected]. Also to stay in the loop on Relate, Zendesk News, and of course this podcast, be sure to follow Zendesk on LinkedIn. That is the home where we are sharing the latest, so be sure to join us there. All right, without further delay, Donna had again. Welcome to the Conversations with Zendesk podcast. Thank you, thank you for having me. So glad to have you here. I think Talkspace is so cool, but I know that not all of our listeners may be familiar. So tell us a little bit about what Talkspace does and what the company's mission is. Talkspace is, as of today, the largest in network virtual behavioral health provider in the US with over 130 million covered lives as of Q3 last year. Our providers offer either asynchronous text messaging with their clients, or we also have the option for live session phone call, which is a call sort of like FaceTime, but it's through a platform, hit the compliant, and they can schedule either a audio call, a video call, or a text messaging session that's live with their provider for in the moment feedback and therapy in the moment. So it's a really great platform. It's a great way to receive mental health for maybe somebody who doesn't have access to leave their home, or they have a really busy schedule, we all are super busy nowadays. And so having a therapist sort of in your pocket on your phone is a really great way to make sure you're prioritizing your mental health. Mental health is so important. And if we've ever learned that in our lives, it's definitely been the last few years. One of the things that you and I were talking about as we were preparing for this conversation is that you are feeling very motivated to explore new ways to reach out and connect with your members. And I imagine that kind of connection is really the important and critical to the mission of what Talkspace does. Tell us a little bit about some of the things that you're looking into, what is driving that exploration and how you're thinking about it. - Definitely. Since I joined the company at the end of 2020, we were an email-only support business. And we've heard a lot of feedback over the years, especially since my tenure, that they're looking forward in the moment-live support option. And I think it makes sense. I mean, we have a platform that is text-based. So in my opinion, always made sense to have a chat support option for our members. And so super excited to say that we launched chat support through our Zendass platform the end of last year. And we are currently exploring phone support, which is again, something that our members have asked for a really long time. And so it's something that I have prioritized within my tenure when I joined the company in this particular role. I knew it was something that was being really valuable to our members as well as our business. And so we're super excited about launching that very, very soon. - That makes a ton of sense. I imagine if somebody is engaging with a mental health practitioner, and they're, like you said, on a chat or on a video call, and maybe they get kicked out and can't get logged back in, or something like that happens. Not implying that it happens often, but the technology is technology. It makes a ton of sense that they would want those real-time channels. If you're having a real-time experience, you don't want to have a delayed support experience to reengage and get back into that system. So that really seems like is something that connects really effectively. - Yeah, absolutely. - How do you collect feedback from your customers about their support experiences? Obviously, there's gonna be feedback that you get on their experience with your service offering, but there's a different kind of feedback that you get about how that goes when somebody does engage with your support team. So I would love to hear how you collect that feedback, and then how does that influence your decision-making around things like what channels you're offering? - I'm really interested in understanding what somebody is looking for when they reach out to us for support. So what do they value? What do they appreciate about our service? What do they feel we can do better? So CSAT is always a great method for that, but not a lot of people will leave feedback if it's not something that they want to see improved. So I think it's also really important to stay really connected to our members in different ways that they like to provide feedback. Within tickets is really great. So making sure our agents feel really comfortable and rolling up that feedback to leadership so we can action upon it. And then also there's other things like app reviews that we are looking at or better business bureau reviews that we're looking at. It's all really helpful. It's all different ways that we can collect that feedback from our members and make sure we're meeting them where they are. - You implemented some new and innovative things with how you offer support when you launched your team space program. And I think the team space program is really interesting. So I'd love it if you had tell our listeners a little bit about what that program is. And then how you approached creating a differentiated support experience for that specific audience. - Definitely. So team space is a program that is offered through the city of New York or the Department of Health. And it is a basically free mental health services for teams in New York City. So any teenager who lives in any of the five boroughs would have access to a provider within our network. And on top of asynchronous messaging, they would also be able to have one live session per month with that provider. So when approaching team space, really wanted to make sure that I understood this demographic, right? So there's a lot of differences between how different audiences would connect with support when our help was needed. So looking at team specifically, obviously spent a lot of time on their phone, text messaging, social media, and things like that. So having that chat option was really important for us to launch. That is something that we made sure was available. And I think also with teams, they are really reluctant to reach out to support unless they cannot find the answer themselves. So besides making sure that all of the resources and self service instructions were available in our help center, we really wanted to make sure that, and not only with teams, but anybody who contacts support at talk space, that we're sort of destigmatizing the search for mental health support, right? So anybody who's contacting us already is taking that leap of faith in looking for services and mental health support and signing up for therapy, which could be a really big step for a lot of people. So the last thing that we want is for somebody to reach out to support and feel like it was a bad decision in any way. So making sure that we are not only being really supportive and helpful in answering their questions that they have now, but also thinking ahead, what are the questions that this person could have once we give them this answer? And how can we provide that information to them within sort of like a digestible format so we're not kind of overwhelming them with information, making sure it's really impactful when we do have their attention because I mean, I'm sure you know, I think the average attention span of a human these days is about eight seconds. So making sure that we are being really strategic with the information and giving people proactive education on the service when they do reach out and contact us to limit that need in the future. That's fantastic. What were some of the tactics or strategies that you employed to optimize that self-service experience to bring this new audience into your ecosystem? There is a different amount of energy or a different amount of resources that is needed to answer a question like, I need to reset my password or I'm about to run out of my medications. So just making sure that I understood all of those reasons and understood the urgency behind all of those contact reasons and then just making sure we prioritize the team and the resources that were available for that team and also our end users to make sure that everybody was able to get the answer that they needed as soon as possible. Absolutely. It's critical to understand what issues your customers might have that are really the urgent and make sure that you've got the workflows implemented to manage that effectively and make sure you're able to respond as needed. I mean, Talkspace sounds like an incredible service. You just talked about some new channels that you've launched and you program that you expanded. I'm also sure that your user base really grew during the pandemic, right? There was a time that a lot of people needed some mental health assistance and weren't necessarily able to go get it in person. I'm sure that it was a challenge to handle a big influx of members while maintaining that feeling of personal connection and empathy that is clearly necessary in the mental health space. How did your organization handle that and what did you learn from that period of time? I came in at the tail end of 2020. So I heard a lot of stories about the volume that had come in throughout the year, but I was also seeing it as well in life. So I think it was trying to figure out how to forecast volume that we could not foresee, right? The pandemic came out of nowhere. So I definitely saw a need to change the structure of the department to better support those more urgent contacts that we were discussing a little bit ago and kind of structured the team in a way that was better equipped to handle each contact type that had come in. So adding to that empathy was really important for us to have within all of our communications, making sure that all of our employees are trained to make sure that they're including that and all of their responses to our members. So obviously our members are reaching out to us because they have lost access to their provider or their account and making sure that we're really sensitive to those inquiries because there's a lot of weight when somebody is not able to reach their provider. Maybe they had taken off from work to make sure that they're able to have this appointment. You know, they are struggling with a decision and they really need to discuss that with their provider. So making sure our team members are keeping all of that in the back of their mind when they're helping our members and something that I say often to our team is it's not just another ticket. Don't think of them as tickets. So it's really important to make sure you're keeping that perspective when you're helping our members because it's very, very important. They're reaching out to us for support to reconnect with their provider. So having that empathy within each and every communication is absolutely necessary and required for sure. Don't think it was another ticket. Think of it as people. That is a great statement. And I think that should apply to any support organization, not just those that are dealing with highly personal issues, like Talkspace does, but any company is going to benefit from remembering that you're not just trying to close out as many tickets as you can, trying to help as many individuals and as many humans as you can. Exactly. So it sounds like you've implemented a couple of new channels. You've expanded a bunch. How do you approach change management and what does that look like for your organization? It's something that's very important to me. Obviously being an employee myself, I know what it feels like to have a change come down the pipe where maybe you're not expecting it or you don't quite understand the reasoning behind it. Taking all of my past experiences in mind, I like to implement that with my own department, how I structure my own team and how I relay messages to my own department. So we're really aware when we do a lot of change, even if it's something that's benefiting our employees, it's a lot change that they have to be aware of and make themselves comfortable with maybe after something else had just recently changed. We always have this sort of like introductory period where if something is changing, we give at least two weeks notice or maybe some practice time, but it's something that I'm really aware of as a leader to make sure that our team feels really comfortable with any changes that are happening. They understand why it's happening and how it impacts them directly. And that's all very, very necessary to make sure everybody feels really comfortable and you maintain a morale within your team. Keeping that kind of trust with transparent communication seems like it's really integral to that change management. Like you said, making sure people understand not only what's happening and how it impacts them, but why it's happening so they can really get on board over thinking behind that. Absolutely. If another support manager came to you, I was saying, Hey, Donna, I hear that you've done a lot of these changes. I'm looking to implement a new channel or I'm trying to offer a new differentiated experience. Any key learnings or takeaways from the experiences you've had that you would share with that person. Paying attention to the feedback that you're getting from your members, it's really important to understand what they're looking for. You can have an idea of what you think the best support experience is, but if that's not where your clients are looking for, then it's not helping anybody. So making sure you're taking the time to understand who your audience is and what they're looking for from your support organization is really important and just making sure that you have as many tunnels of communication available for, you know, a multitude of preferences. I love what you said about making sure that you understand what your customers actually want because you can have the best design customer experience in the world. But if it's not the one that your specific audience wants, it's still not going to resonate. Right. We also talked about making sure that you're remembering that every ticket represents a human being. And it's important to keep that in mind. And then you were just really mentioning sort of the omnichandal piece of understanding that different people are going to want to reach out in different ways. And that's why it's so valuable to offer different channels so that they can reach out whichever way is going to work the best for them. Exactly. It's so important for us to meet our members where they are and make sure that we are prioritizing everybody's method of communication. So I think again, I think I'd mention this before everybody's so busy, there's so much stuff going on besides being a full time employee. I also have two very small children and there's summer camp and daycare and wellness checks and there's so much stuff going on. So it's really important to make sure that we are able to support all of our members in the way that is best for them and we're available where they need us. Well, Donna, we've talked a lot about where you've come from what things you've done in the past. Tell me a little bit about what you're looking to in the future and where you see the future of your customer experience going. Yeah. So this here is going to be another exciting year. We have a lot of growth that's happening within our department. So obviously as we scale and as our department gets a bit more sophisticated, there are other roles that are going to be opening. So just expanding the opportunity for my team members is really exciting for me. I love rewarding hard workers and I love seeing my team's passion for not only our company, who talks space and what we do in our mission, which I want to call out is really important. I think everybody that we have hired into support specifically has really had the mission of the company resonate with them. And it's really important for us to make sure that we have a team of people who are empathetic and who understand the mission of the company because it helps them give the best service possible. So it's really exciting, rewarding for me to be able to give those promotions and see people's growth and have like a front row seat and play a role in that. That's really exciting for this year. And then also obviously looking into other innovations that are available to us, like AI was really exciting and it's never a replacement to create a super user or a better experience for our member, but it's never a replacement for a human. I think a lot of people who contact talk space support specifically are looking for that human to human interaction. And it's very for me to maintain that as well. So there's definitely going to be a lot of enhancements coming this year and super excited for where we have begun the year and I think it's only going to go up from here. That's so exciting. I'd love to dig into that AI piece just a little bit more. Like you said, especially for your industry, you don't want to be replacing agents with AI because they want that human touch. Where do you see it fitting into the support experience? Is it more on the agent help side or are there some customer facing applications for it? What kinds of things are you thinking about? I think it's valuable on both sides. I think it's valuable internally to surface answers to agents easier, especially in our business. It's so complex with healthcare and just sort of a platform and how it works. Our knowledge base is really, it's complex. So it's really important to have that piece of searchability and being able to have our team members find what they need fast that they can provide that really quick service that our members are looking for. And then also on the end user side of things, I think it's really important to also surface that knowledge to our end users. Maybe somebody isn't had time to search through our help center to find the exact article that they need. So having AI available within a messaging experience so that somebody can find that information that is available in the help center, but maybe not so easily found would sort of enhance the experience. So again, if somebody needs an agent support being able to route that customer to our team member, but again, if it's just a self service instruction that's needed, just being able to give that information to that end user and have them get back to their day as quickly as possible. So it's very beneficial on both sides of the coin internally and with our end users as well. So looking forward to exploring that much more this year. Awesome. Those are some really great applications of AI and I too am really excited to see where it goes and how it can help with things like search and not just pointing you to what article might have the information, but where in the article has the information or summarizing it or those things that just make it that much more efficient to be able to get that answer. Right. Our final question, and this is our favorite question that we love to ask every guest that comes on the podcast, which is, have you ever as a customer had an experience with a company that you think is a great example of a good customer experience. So maybe you've gone through a support interaction or something like that went really well. Now's your moment to put the spotlight on someone else. Yeah. I mean, when I think of a really great support experience, Norge to always comes to mind. There was a time where I had ordered a Christmas present and for whatever reason, I decided to keep it wrapped in the box and not look at the order when it arrived to me, which is a really big mistake. And I should not have done that because when I did. - I really remember. - When I did open up the box, it was a necklace instead of. I think it was a wallet or something that I had gotten. So it was quite a bit of a shock and I called Nordstrom fully expecting to have to go through this whole process of proving that I received this necklace instead of what I had actually ordered. But they were really helpful and understanding and sympathetic because I think it was around Christmas time. So they were very helpful and helped replace the item very, very quickly. So I always think of that when I think of a really great experience. But I think anybody who is or any support service that is friendly and welcoming and personable is always a great one. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that and shout out to Nordstroms. Donna, it's been so great having you. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you. So nice to be here. Absolutely. And for our listeners, just to call out, you know, talk space. We just learned a lot about the things that they offer and employers and organizations have the ability to partner with talk space to offer their services to their staff. So whether you're a startup or a large enterprise organization, you can go ahead and see what talk space is really able to offer for your staff. Quality mental health services are linked to greater engagement in customer retention. And we all know, especially given everything that's happened the last several years that offering mental health services to employees is really valuable. So visit business.talkspace.com to learn more and request a demo. All right, that is our episode for this week. I hope to see many of you at relate coming up very soon here. And until next time, I'm Nicole Saunders, present desk, the Intelligent Heart of Customer Service.