Sonos may have led the charge and still rules the roost for wireless whole-home speaker systems, but even industry leaders make mistakes. In May, the company pushed out a major update to their mobile app for Android and iOS that led to numerous complaints from customers, even the Sonos-faithful who had been among the brand’s most ardent supporters.
Reports of multiple app bugs and failures were common, including basic features like switching between streaming sources and grouping speakers. Customers with large libraries of local digital files seemed to have the worst time with the update as simple things like searching for local songs in your music collection stopped working entirely. The company hosted an AMA – “Ask Me Anything” event on their user forum which resulted in an outpouring of complaints, which the company promised to address.
Fast forward five months later and the company has just issued a statement from their CEO, Patrick Spence on the company’s commitment to their customers and to restoring the Sonos app’s functionality and stability:
“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.” Spence continued, “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.”
The commitments Spence refers to were announced today, in a company press release. They come as the result of an internal review of the app release. Some of these focus on restoring app functionality and stability while others concentrate on restoring the trust of their customers.
Per the Sonos announcement, these are the seven commitments the CEO and company are making:
- 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 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: A new role of “Quality Ombudsperson” 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.
- Extend Sonos 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 theater and plug-in speaker products currently under warranty.
- Relentlessly Improve The Sonos App Experience with Regular Software Upgrades: We will roll out updated mobile software versions every 2-4 weeks to optimize 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.
The company says that many of these initiatives are already underway and others will be implemented through the remainder of 2024. And to show how committed they are to these commitments, the company stated that “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 went on to say that more than 80% of the app’s missing features have been reintroduced and the company expects to have almost 100% restored in the near future.
In closing, Spence said, “We’ve made good progress on addressing many of the software issues, and these new commitments will drive us to emerge from this period with an even stronger commitment to quality.”
The Bottom Line
The May update of the Sonos mobile app led to one of the worst consumer PR disasters in recent memory. For a company that built itself – and prides itself – on its advanced and simple user interface, it’s almost unimagineable that an update this shoddy would even have seen the light of day. The CEO’s recent statement suggests that they’re taking this issue seriously with even financial incentives for the whole executive leadership team to make things right.
But is this response too little, too late? Has too much damage been done to the brand already? Sonos customers – are you sticking with Sonos for the long haul or looking for a new whole home music platform? Sound off in the comments and let us know what you think about these seven commitments.
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