Sonos Staff

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Our New Quality and Customer Experience Commitments

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Hi all,

We’ve been sharing app updates with you all over the last several months, and today we wanted to share commitments that we are announcing following our internal review of the app release in May of this year. In addition to all we have been doing to get you back to enjoying your Sonos products, these commitments will drive us to emerge from this with an even stronger commitment to quality. You can read highlights of the commitments below, and read more here: www.sonos.com/commitments.

To address the root causes of the problems of the app release, we commit to:

Unwavering focus on the customer experience. To deliver the highest level of customer experience, we will always establish ambitious quality benchmarks at the start of product development. We will not launch products until they meet these criteria. We will also enhance the tools needed to measure and maintain the standards our customers expect.
Increase the stringency of our pre-launch testing phases. Our beta testing program will include a broader range of customers and more diverse setups, helping us diagnose and resolve issues faster 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 your trust:

Extend our home speaker warranties. To reflect our strong belief in the quality of our products, we will extend the manufacturer’s warranty by an additional year for all home theater and plug-in speaker products currently under warranty.
Relentlessly improve the app experience with regular software upgrades. We will continue to roll out updated mobile software versions every 2-4 weeks to optimize and enhance the app experience, even after the current issues are fully resolved.
Establish a Customer Advisory Board. We will form a Customer Advisory Board to ensure we never lose sight of our customers' voices. This board will provide feedback and insights from a customer perspective to help shape and improve our software and products before they are launched.

As a demonstration of the significance of these commitments, the Sonos Executive Leadership Team 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.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Thanks for all of your support and patience the last several months - we’re excited to move forward and get you back to enjoying the quality that Sonos is known for.

Your Sonos team.

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Gaham

Headliner I

@Keith N I would like to have seen a clear commitment to more frequent, transparent communications with greater detail on what is fixed, what is broken and what we can expect in the near future.

almazri

Prodigy I

A comment. After 5 months of dealing with this POS system this isn’t nearly enough.

But whatever this means in terms of new process to avoid big or small issues in the future I hope it works.

F

furacaopr

Prodigy III

Hi @Keith N, the commitment at https://www.sonos.com/en-us/blog/commitments mentions:

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.

I don't believe Sonos is even close to 50% of the missing features. Please, share with the team this list of pending issues: https://github.com/amp64/sonosbugtracker/issues

jgatie

The description of the “Appoint a Quality Ombudsperson” appears to be identical to the description for “Demonstrate humility when introducing changes”.

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Gaham

Headliner I

The description of the “Appoint a Quality Ombudsperson” appears to be identical to the description for “Demonstrate humility when introducing changes”.

It’s just a copy and paste issue of you check the link the details are there.

https://www.sonos.com/en-us/blog/commitments

P

Premo-Audio

Lyricist I

Looking forward, the measures make sense and will work in my opinion. All missing features restored in the upcoming weeks needs to happen asap, but the urgency and focus on the app is obviously the right thing to do right now. Look forward to hearing more about the trade desk partnership and future product developments at the ER in early November.

melvimbe

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.

If it all feasible, I think it would helpful to establish certain versions of the firmware/apps software that customers can install and still be supported, particularly if a major change exists in new versions. This could work similar to S1, but these versions would not be supported forever, just until consumer confidence in the current version is well established. I’m not suggesting that Sonos support all versions at all times, just that the establish 1 or 2 anchor points that users can rollback to, or stay on, if they are not comfortable moving forward.

I realize this is rather difficult to do with Apple products since they don’t allow side loading and it could put a significant strain on support. Perhaps it’s not really needed if the ‘opt-in’ architecture works well. Just a thought.

As a demonstration of the significance of these commitments, the Sonos Executive Leadership Team 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.

This statement is rather vague, and probably needs to be quantified in some manner. Maybe it is internally measured. From a customer perspective though, it’s likely going to look bad unless Sonos makes huge undeniable progress in customer satisfaction. If the goals are met, but there are a significant number of customers don’t agree, this will look like an empty promise. Given how the internet tends to amplify those that are not content over those that are, this seems likely. If the goals are not met, then customers are obviously still not happy. Feels like a lose/lose proposition unless you totally knock it out of the park.

Danny

Iain59

Collaborator II

"Quality Ombudsperson," because nothing says innovation like creating a job title no one can pronounce.

melvimbe

"Quality Ombudsperson," because nothing says innovation like creating a job title no one can pronounce.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/ombudsperson

Danny

G

GC3

Headliner I

That's a lot of arm waving without saying much.

Try delivering as promised and on time. For example, zero mention of "TrueCinema” on the Ace since the feature was discussed live in June with plan to rollout by the end of July. Today's October 1st....

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