Sonos details its bold redemption path to win back your trust

Key Takeaways

• Sonos leadership vows to forgo annual bonuses if the app issues are not resolved.
• The company is extending the warranty of its home theaters and speakers to boost customer confidence.
• Sonos will implement new roles for quality issues and form a Customer Advisory Board.

Sonos faced intense criticism following the launch of its revamped app in early May 2024. The half-baked app with missing basic features deeply frustrated existing Sonos users to the point the company even considered reviving its old app. Sonos CEO Patrick Spence has been at the forefront of receiving criticism and has publicly accepted his fault for pushing ahead with the rollout of the terrible app. As a part of its latest damage control measure, Sonos has announced a new strategy to set things right and avoid such mishaps in the future.

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Software woes affecting hardware

As part of its new commitment and to regain lost customer trust, Sonos says it will not launch products until they meet its "ambitious quality benchmarks." It will also expand its beta testing program to include a more diverse range of users, allowing it to gather more valuable feedback before a public release. Among all the other promises that the company is making today, two stand out.

First, if you own a Sonos home theater or speaker, you will be happy to know that the company is extending its warranty by another year. However, this will only apply to products currently under warranty. Also, external portable speakers from Sonos, like the Move 2 and Roam, are not covered under this.

Secondly, the Sonos leadership team will not take its annual bonus for the next fiscal year if the company fails to fix the buggy app and regain lost customer trust.

Sonos promises to continue improving its app rapidly

To ensure Sonos employees can more easily raise quality issues, the company is creating a new Quality Ombudsperson role that will report directly to the leadership and publish reports twice a year. Additionally, Sonos is forming a Customer Advisory Board that will "provide feedback and insights from a customer perspective to help shape and improve" their products and services before launch.

Going forward, it will release bigger app changes gradually so that users have more time to adjust to them. It will also continue improving its app, rolling out new features and changes every 2–4 weeks after adding all the missing features. The company says it has already added over 80% of the missing features to the revamped app and expects to reach full feature parity in the coming weeks.

The other commitments might sound more like PR speak, and if implemented properly, they will only show results in the long term.