I doubt it would be much fun to read Sonos CEO Patrick Spence’s emails from customers over the past few weeks. Ever since the company released a majorly redesigned mobile app that was rebuilt from the ground up to allow for greater customization and improved performance, the Sonos forums, and especially its subreddit, have been in an uproar. The new software ships without a number of features that were present in the outgoing version. Basic features like sleep timers and alarms were nowhere to be found. And local music search/playback was a mess – an insult to some of the company’s longtime customers.
In the immediate aftermath, Sonos hit the ground running, and the company’s chief product officer said it took “guts” to introduce an entirely new user experience. That answer…didn’t come off well either. In general, the redesign has its advocates. Whether you love it, hate it, or fall somewhere in between depends entirely on your individual use case and how you typically use your Sonos system. Some people just play music on their speakers with AirPlay or Spotify Connect and are none the wiser for this whole fiasco.
But it’s easy to see why many say their trust in Sonos has been shaken after suddenly losing access to features with zero warning just for pressing the “update” button. Instead of doing a public beta preview or temporarily offering the new app side by side with the old one, Sonos forced everyone at once. (The Ace headset and Roam 2 speaker wouldn’t work with the previous app.)
I’ve heard from private beta testers who tell me they’ve gone out of their way to tell the company that this app isn’t exactly ready for prime time. I’ve also heard on good authority that Sonos customer support requests have gone through the roof since the redesign, so this is proving to be a rough patch on many levels. Unforgivably, the new app also fell short in terms of accessibility, something the company is working quickly to resolve.
“What I would like us to do is probably communicate the roadmap a little more clearly.”
Last week I spoke briefly with Spence about the new Sonos Ace headphones. Predictably, he’s very excited about them and thinks the headphones will live up to the Sonos brand in terms of sound quality, comfort and the exclusive TV Audio Swap feature.
But obviously I had to touch on the app situation. Spence has no regrets about Sonos making the leap when it did, and says the company’s internal data shows the benefits of the new app are very real and being felt by (less vocal) customers.
Here is that part of our discussion:
Patrick Spence: There were two things that customers had been emailing me and providing feedback about for years. One of them was headphones, but the other was the app. I would say probably the entire time I’ve been at Sonos, but since I’ve been CEO, I’ve heard from customers saying, “You need the app to be easier and more modern to navigate. It should have faster response and lower latency” and all these things. I’ve been using it since Christmas. Everyone at Sonos has been testing it for months. Deliver – we know from data and feedback – that it’s easier to navigate. But it’s a change for customers. It’s faster and more responsive and provides a better overall experience.
“Once you add a feature to a platform, it can become the most important thing to a person.”
But of course there is a period of time when people have to adapt to this change and we are going through that period. We have the most passionate customers in the world. This architecture and everything we’ve done around it allows us to move a little bit faster. Basically we took a monolith and broke it down into modular parts, allowing us to move faster in certain elements. Things like the alarm issue was a bug right? So we could faster than in the past address it. And we’ll find other bugs as we go through it. We’re keeping our heads down and making sure to pay attention to them.
What I would like us to do is probably communicate the roadmap a little more clearly.
Chris Welch: A message is better, saying “These features will be absent at launch.”
PS: Exactly. And “this is when they will come.” Because we already had a plan to get through it. But the “why now” was because it’s actually much easier to navigate, more responsive, and just a better overall experience, and that’s the thing for 99 percent of customers you’ll never hear as you walk through it.
But we have to remember that we have the most passionate customers in the world. Once you add a feature to a platform — that’s the important thing to remember as we go through this — once you add it, it can become the most important thing to a person, and that’s the most important thing to them. I think it’s important to just make sure we have a plan and communicate well about it. And we’ll get better as we go through it.
Just yesterday, Sonos released another update for the new app with several bug fixes focused on accessibility, local music playback, and more. And provides a timeline for other improvements in the works. The company is no doubt hoping that in six months this will all be a distant memory, the new app will have reached feature parity (and then some) with the software it replaced, and all will be forgiven among its loyal customer base.
But for now, much of the community is still on edge as Sonos nears the all-important launch of its Ace headphones and enters a huge new product category that could drive growth amid waning demand for speakers and soundbars.
