Humanizing support at scale—with Talkspace’s Donna Haddigan

No matter the size of the issue, Talkspace’s Head of Customer Support, Donna Haddigan, always tries to put herself in the customer’s shoes.

“I say often to our team that it’s not just another ticket. Don’t think of them as tickets,” she said. “These are people and they’re all waiting for our help.”

In the mental health space, help can feel especially urgent if a member is unable to reach their provider or has run out of medication. But even for simpler requests like a password reset or an insurance inquiry, the team is trained to connect with their customers on a human level—bringing empathy and understanding to each interaction.

It’s something Haddigan describes as “absolutely necessary and required,” even as the business grows and expands into new territory, including a recent addition of Teenspace, a program to bring therapy to teenagers in New York City’s five boroughs.

“Anybody who’s contacting us already is taking that leap of faith in looking for services and mental health support…which could be a really big step for a lot of people,” she said. “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.”

Tune in for more on how Talkspace is scaling their unique brand of customer support, what advice they have for other teams, and how AI fits into their plans for the future in our latest episode of Conversations with Zendesk.

Have a question for a Zendesk expert, interested in being a guest, or want to suggest a topic for a future episode? Drop us a line at cwzpodcast@zendesk.com—we’d love to hear from you.