In case you haven’t been paying attention, Sonos released a new app experience earlier this year, which didn’t work to most user’s satisfaction dropping a number of key features and being a lot less functional than the previous app, which was a big reason why people loved Sonos to begin with.
Whilst the app has already come a long way in the last few months, CEO Patrick Spence has today detailed how it will win back the trust of its customer. Since the app launched in May, Sonos says that more than 80% of the app’s missing features have been re-introduced (said to be 100% in the coming weeks) with the reliability and speed improved with each release.
You can find all of the improvements that the company will introduce below with the two major ones being extending the consumer warranty by a year for all of its speakers currently under warranty, and also introducing a beta testing program that will allow people to opt in rather than being forced into an update.
WAYS SONOS PLANS TO WIN BACK TRUST
- 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 ?nd, 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 re?ect 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.
