At an all-hands meeting on a Friday afternoon in December 2016, employees gathered in a 13th-floor conference room. The pingpong table was folded up so that Ms Sacco and Ms Frank could sit on the floor, cross-legged and back to back, for a dramatic reading. Ms Sacco played the role of the therapist; Ms Frank played a female version of Mr Lori.
John Reilly, a lawyer for Talkspace, said:"At the time, the employee expressed great pride over their Talkspace treatment with their therapist and willingly told multiple co-workers that the transcript was theirs." Mr Lori said he did so only after it became clear that his identity was widely known. Neil Leibowitz, Talkspace's chief medical officer, said: "Talkspace has democratised access to therapy and psychiatry by meeting patients where they are in their lives and making treatment more affordable. The need is profound, especially now in this time of unease, and we are so proud of what our team of therapists is achieving."Signing up with Talkspace is quick.
Mr Lori said Talkspace gave employees"burner" phones to help evade the app stores' techniques for detecting false reviews."They said: 'Don't do it here. Do it at home. Give us five-star ratings because we have too many bad reviews'," Mr Lori said. Posting fake online reviews is considered a deceptive business practice and can violate laws against false advertising. The New York attorney-general and the Federal Trade Commission have fined companies for posting such reviews, though consequences can also be less severe. After the FTC accused cosmetics brand Sunday Riley of posting fake reviews, it simply made the company agree not to do so again.
Talkspace also has been analysing transcripts in order to develop bots that monitor and augment therapists' work. During a presentation in 2019, a Talkspace engineer specialising in machine learning said the research was important because certain cues that a client is in distress that could be caught during in-person sessions might be missed when a therapist is only communicating by text. Software might better catch those cues.
"The beauty of text-based therapy is we are meeting clients where they are and giving them access to something different," said Reshawna Chapple, a Talkspace therapist whom the company made available for an interview."It's about convenience for me."
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