Sonos recommits to improving user experience in a new blog post

Another chapter has begun in the Sonos Fumble Saga, which means that the company has once again committed to doing better using PR-speak and pledges ranging from vague to middling.

Today, Sonos announced some new promises, centered around the idea of setting new standards and rebuilding trust with their customer base. This comes after a failed new app launch in May that resulted in complaints from users due to extensive bugs and missing features, which Sonos CEO Patrick Spence has apologized for, and acknowledged has caused product delays and impacted expected earnings for Q4 in 2024.

Sonos wants to make amends

The company acknowledges it “fell short” and has learned from its mistakes

Today’s blog post from Sonos includes seven key commitments that the company is making, from the very vague “unwavering focus on customer experience” based on not launching products until they meet some unnamed criteria, to the more specific extension of some current home speaker warranties by a year.

“We are committed to making Sonos even better than it was before, and to never fall short of our promise again,” said Spence in an accompanying video.

Further down the blog post, Sonos calls back to its previous commitment of releasing software updates to its new app approximately every two weeks, writing that “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.” Additionally, Sonos writes that reliability and speed have been improved as well.

Other commitments include new roles, and potentially forgoing bonuses

These action items are a bit more tangible, but not by a ton

Sonos

Interestingly, the fourth commitment centered around quality assurance is that Sonos will be appointing a Quality Ombudsperson, who will “ensure employees have a clear path to raise concerns regarding quality and customer experience,” with this ombudsperson reporting to the executives, providing reports, and regularly meeting with the board of directors at Sonos.

On the surface, this commitment may seem like a big one, since it’s adding a whole new person into the mix of quality assurance. In practice, an ombudsperson is a liaison, and the net effect of making a company increasingly bureaucratic might not necessarily be a positive one, and may even have the effect of slowing down improvement.

Sonos is also committing to establishing a Customer Advisory Board, to “provide feedback and insights from a customer perspective,” with the hope that it will improve software and products prior to launch. Hopefully those on the board know to look at Reddit.

Another notable point that Sonos sees as a “demonstration of the significance of these commitments” is that the executive leadership team at Sonos “will not 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.”

What either of those conditions will look like in practice remains unclear, and since it’s clear that any corporate executive team makes incredibly high salaries to begin with, this commitment specifically feels more like posturing than anything. The Globe and Mail reported that Spence made $5.9 million in 2023, with a bonus of roughly $72,000.

With these commitments, some vague and seemingly empty, and some more actionable, let’s hope that Sonos can move forward from the “listening and learning” portion of this fumble and make some tangible improvements, and hopefully those “improvements” don’t include laying off another 100 people.