Project
Concierge is a white-glove therapist matching service that Joyable offers as an employee benefit at employers that we partner with.
We aimed to overcome barriers to accessing mental health help by creating a warm and personalized experience that connects people to a mental health provider that fits their needs and preferences.
Role + Timeframe
I partnered closely with my design manager, engineers, clinical team, and product manager over two months. I worked on iterating and improving Concierge's user experience, conducting user research, prioritizing insights, and creating polished designs.
Additionally, I worked closely with engineers to document edge cases and constraints for implementation.
The Problem
Joyable offers digital-based therapy programs based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy that users can easily access via mobile app or via desktop. However, the digital programs are best suited for users with mild to moderate severity of a mental health conditions. This potentially leaves a gap in the care for our users who might be in need of a higher level of support or would prefer seeing an in-person therapist.
The process of finding a therapist can be daunting due to effort, availability, insurance coverage, and finding in a good fit. On average, we saw most users would have to take time to contact a few different therapists and hope one would have availability. In some extreme cases, finding a therapist in some locations such as the Bay Area took up to 70 calls.
How Might We Overcome Barriers to Mental Health Care?
An early iteration of Joyable’s Concierge service which was done primarily via phone was successful and we saw the value in further building out this service digitally as a way to address our large user pain point of difficulty surrounding accessing care. Additionally, we found an opportunity to differentiate our offering from other competitors in the mental health space.
Understanding Pain Points
When we kicked off this project, we began with early-stage discovery work to hone in on value props and messaging that would resonate with our users. We also needed to figure out where we needed to optimize this service for scalability.
In our first round of user interviews, we took a qualitative approach and spoke to a variety of users with different severity of mental health issues.
High-level user insights include:
1. Barriers can damper motivation to seek mental health support
We found that there was a desire for in-person therapy but users found the process of getting a therapist to be painstaking. For many it became another difficult hurdle to cross when they needed the support the most.
2. There is a capacity issue with therapists
For some users, they found that their insurance provided outdated information for in-network therapists and when they were able to find the correct contact to call for availability, the therapist had a full patient list.
3. Unclarity with how therapy should work can be stressful
And finally, when they were able to meet with a therapist, we learned that for many users seeking therapy the first time, they felt stressed about what to expect. Additionally, a negative experience or poor connection with a therapist may dissuade some from seeking care altogether.
“Multiple therapists listed on my insurance website were no longer in the same office or didn’t take my insurance. After contacting so many, I felt like giving up before even starting.”
- Alice, Concierge User
User Goals
From the insights we learned and the drop off we saw in our own onboarding in our users' readiness to continue to seek support, we were able to validate the user pain points we wanted to address with the following goals.
As a user I want to:
1. Receive support in finding a therapist that fits my preferences.
2. Trust that I can receive the quality of care I need from my therapist.
3. Feel empowered to start my first therapy session.
Hypothesis
If we can create a successful onboarding experience that matches users to a therapist that fits their needs, we can create a high-value service that differentiates our product from competition and drive higher utilization.
Constraints
Once we had our user goals defined there were compliance and logistical constraints we had to consider in our designs.
1. The user had to get on an initial call with us.
In order to use our Concierge service, a user had to schedule a call with our care guide in order to get a therapist match. This would potentially cause drop off in our onboarding, but it would be difficult otherwise to gauge fully all of the user’s nuanced preferences for a therapist.
2. We could only provide 1 initial therapist match.
Logistically there would be too large of a request volume for our small Concierge team to provide a user with multiple therapist matches. So for scalability and sustainability reasons, we decided as a default to only provide a high-quality initial match and rematch a user if it didn’t work out.
Respecting Users Where They Are
After completing our discovery work, I set to create design explorations surrounding the intake of our user’s preferences. Some challenges I had to consider included how many preferences and data points we wanted to take in from our users, and what would be the most effective way to understand what they wanted out of therapy.
We also had to be mindful that we were designing responsibly. There was a balance between encouraging users to be motivated to seek help while respecting that they may not always feel comfortable with continuing on if they didn’t feel ready.
How does Joyable's Concierge Work?
• Joyable’s Concierge team takes the manual leg work out of finding an in person therapist or psychiatrist.
• Users work with our care guide to get matched with an available therapist based off of their personal preferences and insurance.
• Once matched, users can reach out to the therapist directly and start to build a relationship.
• Users are provided with resources to make the most out of an initial therapist call.
Initial Launch and Learnings
In our initial launch, we had a positive response to the level of care the service was providing. However we saw some drop-off surrounding the logistical constraints we had in requiring users to speak with our care guide on the phone first. Additionally we saw that many users had strict preferences that could impact the potential pool of therapists they could be matched to and draw out the matching process.
With this feedback we made a second iteration with updated visuals and reframing the intake process to create more clarity for users in sharing their preferences.
Overall Impact
After our second iteration, we saw improvements all across and hit our targeted utilization rate.
• Additional revenue secured from our partners with a 10% utilization rate
• Over 90% on time match rate
• Expanded providers in Joyable database to 8,000+ therapists
• Average NPS score of 4 or above: 92%
