“So the cat is dead,” said Rachel Sandler, a new hire at Amazon-owned PillPack, as a pill-shaped candy rolled onto the floor.
Sandler was in the midst of the company’s new hire orientation at its Somerville, Mass., offices in early September. That orientation includes a half hour of “empathy training,” where employees get a better sense of what it’s like to be a typical PillPack customer.
PillPack, which was acquired by Amazon in mid-2018, built its business by focusing on senior citizens who are often juggling at least a dozen medications, with one or more chronic illnesses. The company specializes in delivering all the pills that people need in one simple package, so they don’t have to struggle with multiple bottles. Many of the company’s users have reduced vision, or are hard of hearing, and many struggle with mobility, so the company offers mail delivery and clear labels to make it easier for them.
CNBC was invited to sit in on one of these empathy training sessions in September.
Employees were given a timed test: They had to pack dozens of pills into a box, known as a pillminder, while parsing through complicated and sometimes vague instructions in tiny script, like “take one tablet Monday, Wednesday and Friday night, take two tablets Tuesday and Saturday. Skip Sunday.” To add a further challenge, they wore oversized gloves to restrict their mobility and thick prescription glasses to duplicate poor eyesight.
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