Sonos Announces Reforms After Internal Review

After completing an internal review of its new mobile app disaster, Sonos says it will make internal reforms to address the issues that led to what I call Sonosgate and rebuild customer trust.

“Our priority since its release has been–and continues to be–fixing the app,” Sonos CEO Patrick Spence says. “There were missteps, and we first went deep to understand how we got here, and then moved to convert those learnings into action. 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.”

Sonos has been working to fix the functional regressions it introduced in its new mobile (and web) app, and the company says it’s now reintroduced over 80 percent of the features the app was missing at launch. It expects the missing features to be 100 percent restored in “the coming weeks,” and it’s made big reliability and performance gains as well. To make this happen, Sonos has released app updates every two weeks. But once the issues are fixed, Sonos will continue updating the app every 2 to 4 weeks with new enhancements and optimizations.

Sonos is also extending the warranty of supported home speakers by one year. It will expand its beta programs to include more types of customers and more diverse setups for longer testing periods. It will establish a customer service advisory board to help shape new software and hardware products before they’re released. And it has created a new Quality Ombudsperson role, so employees can escalate concerns and ensure they reach company leadership. (But I don’t see a “without fear of retribution” clause in there.)

More controversially, Sonos also said that its Executive Leadership Team will not “accept” annual bonus payments for the October 2024 to September 2025 fiscal year “unless the company succeeds in improving the quality of the app experience and rebuilding customer trust.” So I have to assume that the plan is to accept those bonuses when they’re offered a year from now.