In addition to a press vent that detailsseven commitments Sonos is making to its customersfollowing acatastrophic update to its platform and applicationearlier this year , the ship’s company offered an executive for an interview . I spoke withEddie Lazarus — the society ’s chief scheme policeman since January 2024 , and chief legal officeholder since January 2019 — for about a half - hour over Zoom . ( He also served as chief financial officer from August 2022 to January 2024 . )
We have-to doe with on what happened , and if it really was just a problem with the app — or a larger trouble with the expectant Sonos platform . ( Spoiler : It was both . ) We talk about the finding of the company ’s intimate review . We blab out about whether its initial reaction was enough . We talked about CEO Patrick Spence accepting responsibility for the slaughter , and why customers should have faith in him — and in Sonos — going forward . ( Not everyone does . )
There are n’t a lot of easy answers here . As anyone with a Sonos system understand — and sorely experienced — there are a million agency to ramp up a Sonos system , from the products themselves , to the home electronic internet being used , and the home base in which the systems survive . It was , if you ’ll rationalise the doctrine of analogy during hurricane season , a perfect tempest of kind .
Lazarus and Sonos seem to be capable to see spark at the last of the tunnel , as bug fixes and app update keep calendar week by week . Whether that brightness level is as bright for customers as it is executives ? Only time will tell .
This interview was lightly edit for length and clarity .
What went wrong …
Phil Nickinson : I never felt like we really got a actual sort of context of use for what give way wrong . We keep blab about better the app , sterilise the app , but it ’s obviously more than an app . There ’s also a weapons platform side of the equation . Can you talk a little act about sort of where things went haywire , or was it just a culmination of everything ?
Eddie Lazarus : You started out with on the button the chronicle I would tell , which is , look , we had an app that was not modern . It had been around for a long time . It had actually started to get somewhat loony . It was written in computer terminology that no one really use anymore . We needed to altogether modernise it . We needed to do it — not only the undercarriage of the app , but the substance abuser experience side of the app , and the player side as well . So it was a very complex undertaking . Andwhen we range it out , you know , we were very unquiet to get a New platform into the hands of our users , but we missed a set of public presentation issues in our testing that have turned out to be quite unregenerate . We ’re making a lot of progress towards resolve them , and we ’re heads down making trusted that we lick the rest of them . We alsohad some missing feature article , which we recognize about . But putting the lineament back slowed down , because we had to gear up all the other execution issues . Now over 80 % of those features are now back in play . We ’re really proud of . And we ’re head , you recognize , head up the scale towards 100 .
I get that there are a million different permutation of Sonos systems . There ’s no one room to do it , which is what makes it kind of magical . How much of the retrieval is that the miss features are back , and how much is just the stableness getting back to where it should be ?
Eddie Lazarus : On the missing feature side , we ’re well over 80 % now , which is a great start . We have a petty ways to go still . The performance effect have been the one that have been more stubborn — the stability , or the apparatus , those are also improving quite a bit . We still have a little means to go there , and we ’re not going to stop with getting to the same level we were at before . The whole estimation of this is to make the experience a lot secure . One of our commitments is to keep rolling out the updates every two to four weeks , so that the experience gets back to what multitude wait of us , which is the rank dear , easiest and most dependable scheme in the world . That ’s what we have to be for our client , and we ’re dedicated to doing that .
“ We ’re not going to roll out another app on an all - or - nothing basis the way we did . ”
Obviously Sonos has been watching the comment and Reddit . But it seemed like the public acknowledgement of what was proceed on just took a while . Crisis comms are not well-situated , and you need to actually have some patience in that . I really do appreciate that . But it did sense like it engage maybe longer than it should have .
Eddie Lazarus : It take us a little longer than it should have to agnise the scope of the trouble . And once we did , the first matter we want to do was to apologize to our user base . We ’ve let them down . And Patrick did rationalize . The next stage is the one we ’re go through now , which is we did a very cryptic introspection , and we wanted to do two thing with the commitments that we put out . One is we wanted to get to the base causes and actually make some systemic alteration so that this does n’t happen again . And the second is we have to start the process of winning back our client trust . And so some of the dedication are around that as well .
We ’re going to be establish these experience metrics up front and every product , verify we ’re not going to launch until we ’ve met those metrics , verify we can essay to verify that the quality is stay consistent once intersection are establish , more genus Beta examination through a broader array of setups .
People have very advanced Sonos systems . Some honest-to-goodness products , some newfangled Cartesian product . I think one of the issue for us was we need an even broad circle of setups for make certain we ’re catch all the experience problems ahead of time . We ’re not going to roll out another app on an all - or - nothing basis the way we did . We ’re go to do things gradually , so that if there are problems , we catch them early and we can make adjustments before we have all our users on the new scheme . And internally , we ’re going to have a quality ombudsperson , because some of the reflection internally were that maybe we did n’t hear as many of the cautionary voices as we should have , and we require to ensure there ’s a highly well-thought-of senior person with direct admittance to aged leaders and to the control panel , if for some reason our ordinary process are n’t are n’t working the way they should .
Was it a matter of just not get enough multitude testing at a declamatory enough scale of measurement ? Or was it that there are a million different ways to run Sonos , and internet connectivity and just everything that function into that .
Eddie Lazarus : I think the complexity of it was a big piece of it . Maybe not having the breadth of frame-up . We want to make certain that we give peradventure a lilliputian more time to the physical process . And so one of our commitments is to do all of that . To broaden thing out , give it a little more airwave time before we go public with something .
Did you see performance upshot on one platform more than another ? At the in high spirits level , you ’ve got Android on one side , iOS on another . But you also have PCs and Macs . And did you see one shin worse ?
Eddie Lazarus : It ’s actually motley by which thing , which problem you ’re talk about . Some have been a little worse on one , and some have been a small unsound on the other . And of course , you have to fix both , which is a little turn why things have taken longer than we would have like . It would have been overnice if we ’d said , “ Oh , you sleep together , three or four hebdomad of work , we ’ll be done with this , and we ’ll be back to where we were . well . ” That ’s hire us longer . But we do n’t want to introduce a new germ when we ’re set the old one . So we ’re being very thrifty and methodical about how we ’re rolling out the update .
On future products and reparations …
Patrick has state publically that that part of revamp the app is to fix for future products , which lay down horse sense . But do you believe there was too much focus on those future products , and subsist ware sort of light by the wayside .
Eddie Lazarus : I really think it was that we just got taken by surprise . If we had known that we were last to have these stability and operation proceeds , we never would have plunge this app . But we did n’t , and now we ’re just head down to set up it .
talk of future products , Patrick had also pronounce publicly there were two products ready to go in the financial fourth quarter [ July through September ] that are stay . Can you speak to the condition of that now ? Are we seem at 2025 at this point ? Are they blend to be out by the holiday season ?
Eddie Lazarus : I ca n’t say you the exact schedule , but I will say you we ’re not locomote to launch them until we feel as though the app is at a performance standard that we ’re glad with , and that is up to the stratum that our customers expect and deserve . We ’ve made a lot of progress , and we ’re rolling out these updates fairly much every two weeks . And as soon as it ’s quick , we ’re going to launch those product .
“ We ’re not going to enthral our customers until we get this app performing at the grade they wait , and indeed to exceed the level that that they expect . ”
Patrick also utter on the Q3 wage call aboutputting in new programme to support and give thanks current customers . But I do n’t believe I ’ve catch that , and the crush release that ’s get out talk about an extended guarantee . But his phraseology makes it sound like it ’s going to be more than just say , “ Hey , we ’re going to cover your products for another extra year . ”
Eddie Lazarus : We’re not go to delight our customers until we get this app perform at the tier they wait , and indeed to exceed the level that that they bear . But once we have matter back where we want them to be , then , then we ’ll have an opportunity to really deliver the sort of delight that Sonos has been known for for 20 twelvemonth .
So they should n’t expect a free speaker in the mail is what you ’re say …
Eddie Lazarus : I do n’t think that ’s really the correct way to delight customer — to send them something . We actually have to deliver an audio experience over meter that no one else can give birth . The rest of it will take precaution of itself . That ’s not to say that we might not run programs , but the experience itself is the ultimate winner of this company . And that ’s how we ’re go to gain ground our customers ’ trust back — by read them that they get more from Sonos than anyone else .
I ’m just trying to get the context of what he was say . He was really saying in that respect , really what he entail is get the experience back to the way you look it to be ?
Eddie Lazarus : And beyond . And that ’s not to say that we might not volunteer customer various thing . But we do n’t want to be in the upsell business . We want to delight . And to delight customers stand for driving the experience , and providing them the product that evince that experience in wizardly ways .
evidently this overshadowed the launching of the Sonos Ace headphone , which was a huge release . But it seems like we ’re not talking about the headphones anymore . How does Sonos equilibrate the release of a whole unexampled category — and more is coming — versus still play taking into custody - up on this honest-to-goodness stuff .
Eddie Lazarus : We’ve been very public about the fact that we held off on two nifty new products because the app was n’t where it needs to be . And until it is where it needs to be — and hopefully that will be before long — we ’re behind ? Because we ’ve get two products quick to go . So there ’s no escaping the fact that we wish those two products were out in the mart . But they will be . And when they do appear , people remember just why they love Sonos , because they ’re terrific . So are the headphones . We ’ve entered a brand - newfangled category . It ’s a tough class with a lot of good competitors . And I think if you speak to people , they ’ll tell you Sonos headphones digest up to everybody in the category and are good in a lot of respect .
Do n’t want to talk anything about this guess solidifying - top box , do we ?
Eddie Lazarus : I do n’t have any estimation what you ’re speak about .
On accepting responsibility …
Patrick took the blame pretty strongly , both inthe initial messaging that belong out , and then the following calendar week in the earnings call . He said , personally , he move too fast , drive citizenry too fast . But he also said , pretty unambiguously , that this newfangled app was going to be light , quicker , and ripe . And evidently it was n’t . That ’s a pretty huge loss of faith , not just with the client , I think , but possibly internally as well . Why should we trust anything he says now ? Because apparently that was n’t correct before .
Eddie Lazarus : Well , Patrick has a long caterpillar track track record here at Sonos . He ’s been 12 age here . Even the best leaders make mistakes . He ’s owned up to that mistake . He ask me to do a totally independent retrospective of what went wrong . Never asked to see it , and it go to the board , and you know , he ’s made himself accountable with his bonus hope .
But beyond that , one affair I conceive you’re able to say about Patrick is he does n’t obliterate from the fact that he and the executive team as a whole made a error here . And so these dedication are part of the process . It ’s not the end of the summons , but part of the cognitive operation of say , “ I ’ve looked at this . We start out some ascendant - reason analytic thinking . We ’re go to exchange the way we do matter , and the test copy will be in the pudding . We can do things otherwise , and we can verify that we do n’t rent our customer down again . ”
It ’s just really entrancing to think that somebody somewhere was saying , “ Guys , this is n’t working . We have n’t done enough testing . ” And somebody was drop up cherry signal flag , and obviously they were n’t listen to .
Eddie Lazarus : I do n’t think that ’s quite accurate . Having question a twosome of dozen citizenry , the adult problems with the app were a consummate surprisal to us . We knew that some of the feature were miss . We thought we would put to work through that after the launching , on a schedule , and that we would be tell our customers , “ This is when you could expect this to be back operating . ” But the performance issues were surprising and very unpleasant .
“ This is about making certain that our customer know we ’re never proceed to go through this experience with them again . ”
Patrick had also talked on the net call about cost $ 20 million to $ 30 million on the bottom line because of all this . Do you see it coming in low ? Do you see it coming in higher ?
Eddie Lazarus : So the $ 20 million to $ 30 million was not like a lost revenue number or anything like that . That was for the programs that we ’re going to unravel , colligate with get ahead back the trust of our client . But really , as our commitments I hope show , a lot of what ’s involved here is not about the dollar bill and cent . This is about making sure that our customers know we ’re never going to go through this experience with them again . Because we ’ve appear deeply at what caused it . We are setting out some very specific measure where we ’re taking to check that it does n’t take place again . And we ’re beginning to start the rebuild of reliance mental process with the excess warranty , with this consumer advisory group that we ’re going to have , with the fact that we ’re lead to persist in to rove out betterment every two to four hebdomad , and these this is run to go on beyond September and October and into into our next financial twelvemonth , showing the customers that that we ’re a rely make again .
In the wardrobe tone ending it was aver that the executive leading team is n’t going to take a bonus for fiscal twelvemonth 2025 “ unless the company succeeds in improving the caliber of the app experience and rebuilding customer trust . ” How are you hold up to mensurate that ? Or is somebody going to say up or down , “ All justly , coolheaded . You did it . ” Or , “ No , you did n’t . ”
Eddie Lazarus : It ’s a great interrogative sentence . We ’re going to be influence with our plug-in of director — which at long last set the recompense measure for the executive leaders team — and our compensation consultant to verify that we have accusative standard by which we ’re measuring this . It would n’t be appropriate to pose up a incentive promise where you may bet on the system . So this will have to be objective metrics . Exactly what those should be ? We ’re run low to get advice from experts and put it in place .
So enjoy , I guess , measuring latency and all that good stuff . And uninstalls . And …
Eddie Lazarus : Interestingly , as a non - technical someone one of the thing I ’ve been quite interested in is that there are actually a good deal of objective performance criterion with respect to our user base . And one of the inspiriting thing is we ’re seeing the improvements in those objective criteria . Now that has to translate back into consumer persuasion . Because they have to see it , and they have to see it on a daily basis , and we have to keep driving those metric function up . So that every time they work Sonos on , they ’re reminded , “ Hey , this is easy , simple , reliable . I just require to discover my music . There it is . ”
The way forward …
The seven course of study of action in this press release are good thing . Better focus . More testing . More gradual change . The ombudsperson . Are those things that Sonos should have been doing all this time ?
Eddie Lazarus : A lot of these things that were thing that we had . Some of them we did n’t . We did n’t have an ombudsperson . We did n’t have a customer advisory board . These are thing that are starting . We have a very rigorous beta testing process — but we learned with something this building complex it was n’t good enough . We ’ve got a bang-up squad . And they went back and they said , “ OK , what improvement should we make ? We have a good product growth system . But again , it broke down here . ” So we had to go back to basics and said , “ OK , we ’re never going to release another product that has n’t met some pre - set up client experience standard . ” And we ’re Sonos , so we make those ambitious . It ’s not as if all this stuff was novel to us . It ’s just when you make a forged mistake , you have to divest it all down to the bare bone and work up it all back up .
Looking at the origin price , fundamentally , it seems like it ’s bottomed out , and now it ’s starting to go up back up a slight bit . Is that something at the executive level is think about at all ? Or it ’s really just , “ we ’ve stupefy to fix this . ”
Eddie Lazarus : The performance of the party as a whole will improve when we get things back on track and we ’re rolling again . And so that ’s job No . 1 for everybody at the company .
Is there anything else that ’s being done that maybe is n’t talked about as much as you would like ?
Eddie Lazarus : I think we ’re making every seek to be as crystal clear as possible as we go through this process . We had [ Sonos chief innovation ship’s officer ] Nick Millington in Redditdoing an AMA last week , and I conceive you’re able to expect us to be out lecture about where we are , both the progress we ’re making , and what people can expect and what we have n’t yet accomplished . And so that ’s definitely one committal that ’s not in the pressure release . But to me , that ’s a very of import aspect of what we ’re doing .
Any sort of ETA when you call back we ’re not going to be talking about this ever again — three months , six month , nine months ?
Eddie Lazarus : I do n’t have a schedule , but I ’ll tell you what I await forward to is when people part talking about the app and say , “ You know what ? It ’s better than it ever was . ”
