For months Sonos has been dealing with the fallout from its disastrous app rollout which caused widespread problems with its audio systems. Consumers have been venting on forum sites and social media after their much loved, expensive Sonos music setups starting having issues.
So last week Sonos promised to make some big changes across the whole company.
“Our priority since its release has been – and continues to be – fixing the app. There were missteps, and we first went deep to understand how we got here, and then moved to convert those learnings into action,” said Sonos CEO Patrick Spence.
The only thing that matters right now for Sonos, is action. All the apologies in the world mean nothing without action. All the promises in the world mean nothing without action.
“We are committed to making changes to get us back to being the brand people love by offering the best audio system for the home and beyond. We must always do right by our customers, and I am confident that, with these commitments, we will.”
So what action has Sonos taken?
“Since the launch of the new app in May, the Sonos team has been working diligently to release new software updates approximately every two weeks, and rapidly roll out new features and meaningful improvements and fixes,” according to the company’s statement.
“More than 80% of the app’s missing features have been reintroduced and the company expects to have almost 100% restored in the coming weeks. The reliability and speed of the app has improved with each release.”
Sonos made the following commitments to its customers:
- Unwavering focus on the customer experience. To ensure that we deliver the highest level of customer experience, we will always establish ambitious quality benchmarks at the outset of product development and will not launch products before meeting these criteria. We will also enhance the tools necessary to measure the quality of the experience actually being delivered to customers to ensure that we maintain the standards our customers expect.
- Increase the stringency of our pre-launch testing phases. Our beta testing program will include more types of customers and more diverse setups for a longer testing period. This will allow us to find, diagnose and solve customer concerns more quickly before going to market.
- Demonstrate humility when introducing changes. In contrast to the all-at-once automated app release we issued in May, any major change to the Sonos app will be released gradually, allowing customers to adjust and provide feedback before it becomes the default. For new features smaller in scope, we will introduce an opt-in experimental features option in the app for customers who would like to participate in testing them.
- Appoint a Quality Ombudsperson. This new role will ensure our employees have a clear path to escalate any concerns in terms of quality and customer experience. This person will be consulted by executive leadership throughout the development process and before any product launches. In this role, the ombudsperson will guarantee transparency and publish a report to management and employees twice per year, and will present regularly to the Sonos board of directors.
In addition, we are also committing to the following to begin to regain the trust of our customers:
- Extend our home speaker warranties. To reflect our strong belief in the quality of our products, we will extend the manufacturer’s warranty by one year for all home theatre and plug-in speaker products currently under warranty.
- Relentlessly improve the app experience with regular software upgrades. We will roll out updated mobile software versions every 2-4 weeks to optimise and enhance the software experience, even once this issue is resolved.
- Establish a Customer Advisory Board. To ensure we never lose sight of the voice of the customer, this board will provide feedback and insights from a customer perspective to help shape and improve our software and products before they are launched.
Sonos says many of these these initiatives are already underway and others will be implemented through the remainder of the year.
“To demonstrate the significance of these commitments to the company, no member of the Executive Leadership Team will accept any annual bonus payout for the October 2024 – September 2025 fiscal year unless the company succeeds in improving the quality of the app experience and rebuilding customer trust,” the company statement concluded.
I really hope these changes work for the company. I hope they have absorbed a lesson that won’t require repeating. I want to continue to use my Sonos gear for many years to come.