For Healthspan, AI adoption wasn’t about chasing a trend. It was about solving real customer service challenges in a practical, iterative way.
Throughout their journey with Talkative, the leading UK health and wellness brand has taken a measured, thoughtful approach to digital transformation and AI adoption.
By adding live chat and messaging support to start, then layering AI automation for chat and email support, Healthspan gradually built the confidence and foundations needed to expand into Voice AI.
Today, that approach has helped Healthspan create an AI-driven, omnichannel support operation that improves efficiency, supports agents, and gives customers 24/7 access to instant help across channels.
The challenge: Modernising a traditional, voice-first contact centre
Healthspan is a UK-based brand specialising in vitamins, supplements, and wellness products, with more than 30 years of experience and a strong reputation for science-backed nutrition.
As a direct-to-consumer business, customer service has always been central to Healthspan’s brand. Many of their customers need reassurance, product guidance, and help choosing the right supplement for their needs.
This makes Healthspan’s contact centre a vital part of the customer experience.
With a 50+ seat contact centre handling high volumes of customer interactions, Healthspan had traditionally supported customers mainly through phone and email.
With Talkative, they introduced live chat and messaging as the first step towards digital transformation.
But customers weren’t just reaching out during office hours. They needed fast, convenient support on the channel that suited them best, including when the contact centre was closed.
At the same time, Healthspan needed to protect the quality and consistency of its service.
That was especially important given the nature of its product range.
With over 200 products spanning vitamins, supplements, sports nutrition, and more, customer questions could be detailed and wide-ranging - from order updates to dosage advice, ingredients, and product recommendations.
Healthspan needed a solution that could:
- Handle large volumes of customer queries across channels
- Provide fast, accurate responses based on trusted information
- Reduce pressure on agents by automating repetitive tasks
- Support customers outside normal contact centre hours
- Maintain strong customer experience and brand consistency
- Give customers easy access to human support whenever needed
Rather than trying to transform everything at once, Healthspan chose a more careful, staged route.
The approach: Start small, build confidence, expand
Healthspan’s AI journey was deliberately phased.
Rather than trying to roll out everything at once, the team focused first on clear, high-value use cases where AI could improve efficiency without compromising customer experience.
That measured approach helped Healthspan build trust in the technology, prove value internally, and expand with confidence over time.
As Rob King explains:
“Start small and build confidence. Don’t try to implement everything at once in one big hit. Begin with clear use cases where you’re going to get the most benefit from automation, measure your success, and then expand from there.”
This mindset shaped Healthspan’s wider AI strategy across both digital and voice.
Introducing the AI Product Professor
One of the biggest milestones in Healthspan’s AI journey was the launch of its digital AI agent: the Product Professor.
Designed to assist online customers and help them find the right products for their needs, the Product Professor gives instant answers to questions using Healthspan’s own approved knowledge base.
It can also support common operational queries, including order status lookups, helping customers get answers faster without needing agent support for every interaction.
For a business with more than 200 products, this was a major opportunity.
Healthspan's customers regularly have questions about ingredients, benefits, dosage, and which products are best suited to their needs.
Traditionally, those conversations would have required support from a knowledgeable agent. But at scale, that creates significant pressure on the contact centre.
With Talkative, Healthspan was able to introduce an AI agent that could handle these queries quickly, accurately, and consistently, while staying firmly grounded in trusted brand-approved information.
As Rob explains:
“The product knowledge base is something that we at Healthspan are completely in control of. All of the answers that are generated by the AI tool are only looking in the product knowledge base, which we’ve created and we’re responsible for.”
This control was essential. As a health and wellness brand, Healthspan needed confidence that every AI response was based only on information its team had created, reviewed, and approved.
The result was a trusted AI experience that could resolve large volumes of online queries, while still allowing customers to hand over to a human agent whenever more support was needed.
The results: 90% resolution rate and improved CSAT
Healthspan launched its AI chatbot in May and initially achieved a 30% resolution rate.
Through optimisation and knowledge base improvements, that figure has risen to 90% resolution for product-related queries. At the same time, customer satisfaction scores increased to 89%.
For Healthspan, this was a major milestone.
It showed that AI could do far more than reduce workload. It could also improve the customer experience when implemented carefully.
Rob reflected:
“Achieving a 90% resolution rate has been massive for Healthspan and our contact centre. Agents now have far more time on their hands to concentrate on other tasks... Overall, getting Talkative AI is a no-brainer. It's mindblowing to see the responses it gives.”
Using AI to improve email efficiency
Alongside the Product Professor, Healthspan also introduced AI into email handling.
Using Talkative’s email AI capabilities, the team began generating responses to common customer email enquiries, helping agents work through inbox volume more quickly and consistently.
This gave Healthspan several immediate benefits, including faster backlog clearance, quicker responses to common questions, and a more consistent tone of voice across customer communications.
Importantly, AI was used to support agents rather than replace them.
Each AI-generated email response was still reviewed by a human before being sent, giving Healthspan the right balance of efficiency, quality control, and brand consistency.
That meant the team could speed up email handling while maintaining confidence in every response.
The success of email AI and the Product Professor also did something crucial internally: it built trust in AI. That made the next step in Healthspan’s journey much easier.
The next step: Implementing AI for voice
Although Healthspan had evolved into a true omnichannel contact centre, voice remained a critical support channel.
In fact, for many of its customers, it was still the preferred one.
So after building confidence through digital AI, Healthspan came full circle, returning to voice with a stronger foundation, clearer use cases, and a proven model for success.
Rob explained:
“Everything that we’ve done previously led us to this point. The Product Professor was incredibly well received, so we felt this was the next logical step to take.”
Healthspan’s Voice AI was designed to handle simple, repetitive phone queries in the same way digital AI had already done across chat and email.
This included:
- Order status requests
- Product questions
- Guidance for customers looking for the right supplement or health product
Just like the Product Professor, the voice experience was built around trusted knowledge and practical use cases.
The goal wasn’t to stop customers speaking to people.
It was to reduce waiting times, make support available around the clock for common queries, and free up agents for more valuable conversations.
Why Voice AI made sense
For Healthspan, the move into voice wasn’t a leap into the unknown. It was the result of incremental progress.
By the time Voice AI launched, the business had already:
- Introduced digital channels successfully
- Proven customer appetite for AI-supported service
- Built reliable internal processes
- Created trusted knowledge sources and prompts
- Involved teams across the business
- Reassured agents that AI was there to support them, not replace them
Voice AI now helps Healthspan provide support for phone queries 24/7, even though the contact centre itself is not open around the clock.
That means customers can still get helpful answers out of hours, without Healthspan needing to increase staffing levels to cover those times.
It also helps protect the customer experience during high-volume periods, where simple calls might otherwise increase queues and waiting times unnecessarily.
Rob put it simply:
“AI shouldn’t replace great customer service. We feel that it enables it. The technology works best when it’s there to support people, not replace people.”
Overall, Healthspan’s AI journey is a powerful example of what thoughtful, staged adoption can achieve for contact centres and their customers.
Considering AI Customer Service for your contact centre?
Healthspan’s success shows that you don’t need to do everything at once to get results with AI.
Start with the right use cases. Build trust. Measure what works. Then expand.
If you’d like to explore what implementing AI customer service could look like for your business, reach out to the Talkative team today.
