Sonos has a plan to win back your trust, and here it is

Sonos continues to be in the throes of the biggest controversy in its history, and this is a product the company made itself. Now, a few months after the launch of the revamped app in May badly damaged the brand’s reputation, CEO Patrick Spence said: unveiled a multi-part plan to right the ship.

You can divide the strategy into two main goals. First, Sonos has taken steps to understand exactly how everything is going so wrong It somehow got into this stalemate – both with its software development practices and its underlying corporate culture – to begin with. Second, the company is launching a broad effort to rebuild customers’ trust and convince them that nothing like this will happen again.

For once, there are real risks involved, however small. Sonos says executive leadership team It will not accept annual bonus payments “unless the company is successful in improving the quality of the app experience and rebuilding customer trust.” This will inevitably cause some people’s eyes to roll; these executives are still highly paid and own lots of Sonos stock. But I guess so some Motivation to keep moving in the right direction.

If you’ve purchased a Sonos speaker in the past year, there’s something important to know: The company is currently extending the manufacturer’s warranty by another year for certain products that are still under warranty. This won’t bring older devices back into range, but it will provide a little more peace of mind as Sonos works on this tricky patch. (Note that the extension only applies to “home theater and wearable speaker products,” meaning it excludes Sonos Move, Move 2, Roam, and Roam 2.)

Now let’s get back to the rest of this plan. Some of the things Sonos is promising today are pretty vague. Take, for example, this entire clause from the company’s press release, which doesn’t say much:

Unwavering focus on customer experience: To ensure we provide the highest level of customer experience, we will always establish ambitious quality criteria at the beginning of product development and will not launch products without meeting these criteria. We will also develop the necessary tools to measure the quality of experience delivered to customers to ensure we maintain the standards our customers expect.

Maybe this has significance within the company, but from the outside it looks like pure PR talk. Fortunately, Sonos is being more specific elsewhere, promising to implement a more stringent testing phase and beta program for all products, both hardware and software, that will “include more customer types and more diverse setups for a longer testing period.” “This will allow us to find, diagnose and resolve customer concerns faster before they go to market.”

Spence confessed. Many times, with the new app, Sonos moved too quickly and failed to recognize the full brunt of bugs, missing features, and reduced functionality, leading to largely negative reception after its launch in May. Basic features like queue management, native library support, alarms, and even some accessibility options were either missing or broken.

Sonos released its latest progress report today, saying: “More than 80 percent of the app’s missing features have been reintroduced, and the company expects nearly 100 percent to be restored in the coming weeks. “The reliability and speed of the application has increased with each release.”

In hindsight, Spence acknowledged that Sonos should have introduced the new software in beta, leaving the old “S2” app in place and making the two equal over time. But that’s not what happens, which brings us to the next quote:

Be humble when introducing changes: Unlike the all-in-one automated app version we released in May, any major changes to the Sonos app will be rolled out gradually, allowing customers to make adjustments and provide feedback before it becomes the default app. For new features that are smaller in scope, we will offer an optional option of experimental features in the app for customers who want to participate in testing them.

For anyone whose trust in the company has been shaken, this is the most significant change outlined in today’s press release. This is at least proof that Sonos has learned a critical lesson and will never put its customers through this kind of trouble again.

Sonos is also taking steps to increase transparency both inside and outside the company. Following pre-launch meeting reports involved screaming and yelling Due to the difficult situation of the new implementation, the company is creating a “quality ombudsman” role that will “ensure our employees have a clear path to raise any concerns in terms of quality and customer experience.” The ombudsperson will “consult with executive leadership throughout the development process and before any product is released” and will issue a report twice each year, as well as make routine presentations to the Sonos board of directors.

I’ve heard from multiple sources at the company insisting that concerns were raised and alarms were sounded during the app’s development, but Sonos’ leadership still pushed ahead with the app’s release. “They weren’t just told; they were warned,” an employee told me. The appointment of an ombudsman is clearly an attempt to prevent the same scenario from happening again in the future.

Morale at Sonos has taken a serious hit, and after such a monumental, unforced mistake, there’s been a lot of finger-pointing, with some employees questioning chief product officer Maxime Bouvat-Merlin’s decision. But Sonos chief strategy officer Eddie Lazarus told me in an email that no changes are expected in the product division. “As a leadership team, we made the decision together to launch the app,” he said.

Sonos customers will at least soon be given a louder voice at the table: The company says it will create a customer advisory board that will “provide feedback and insight from a customer perspective to help shape and improve our software and products before they are released.” ” Lazarus said details about what the advisory board will look like are still being finalized.

That’s the general rundown of where Sonos is heading in the next few months. As it looks to get back on the road, I can report that the company will continue its planned hardware releases in the coming weeks, starting with the Sonos Arc Ultra and Sub 4. Arc Ultra will be first product to include ‘groundbreaking’ transducer Technology developed by startup Mayht Sonos acquired in 2022. Codenamed Lasso, the soundbar will deliver a much richer sound than the original Arc and offer more bass power.

Still, this implementation debacle is certain to have repercussions far into the future. Sonos managed to self-sabotage the impact of its first headphone, the Sonos Ace. The ace quickly fell by the wayside thanks to this ordeal and has yet to gain much momentum. Improvements keep coming, but early sales of the headphones are reportedly dismal.

More importantly, questionable decisions by company management had serious consequences for dedicated, hard-working employees: In August, Sonos laid off 100 people. The cuts included roles in software quality, platforms/infrastructure, marketing and other departments.

Among those laid off were two employees who, at the time, were doing their best to address the growing backlash against the new Sonos app. community Q&A in mid-May.