Sonos voice pouts?

But seriously, while it may not literally pout, it does tend to just shut down when it can’t do something.  Sometimes it will literally tell me “Sorry, don’t understand.”  Then it just quits working.  

So, I thought I’d update you all on my pouty voice assistant issue.  I’m not thinking I’ll get a solution here, but perhaps someone from Sonos might see this and think “wow, we’re blowing this support thing.”

To start with, I have a whole house of Sonos speakers both because of quality, but also based on the excellent out-of-box experience and (used to be) support.  Over the years, I’ve used Sonos as an example of brands that delight when lecturing my business students.  So I come at this with a predisposition that I would continue to be delighted.

Long and short of it is that Sonos voice still pouts.  If you want to know what I mean, go back through the thread.  Anyway, based on recommendations from others, I captured a diagnostic right after the behavior.  I then called Sonos support where I was told that due to unusually heavy volume, my wait time would be 20 minutes.  Forty minutes later, the support person picked up at what I can only assume to be a call center in Asia.

Now he was pleasant enough, but I despair at most of these support conversations.  I find that the employees are very well trained in sympathy (“I’m so sorry to hear about your problem”), but are not so adept at understanding complex or nuanced problems.  Although language was a minor barrier, I don’t think this was some cultural bias on my part.  I’ve lived in Africa, done business in Africa, Asia and Europe and successfully taught myriads of foreign college students.  I feel comfortable in both my ability to communicate a problem and their ability to solve a problem...if they are properly trained and empowered.

In this case, he led me through all the common solutions that I had already tried:  reset your router, reset your speakers, reinstall Sonos voice, sell your house and move to a new town.  None of these worked, as I knew they wouldn’t.  He was able to witness, as much as one can over the phone, Sonos voice at first obeying my commands, then refusing to do so once it ran into a problem (what I call pouting).

Finally, he agreed that I indeed had a problem and that it was beyond his capability to solve.  All this took another 45 minutes or so.  At this point, he said he would escalate this up to level 2 support.  Great.  Unfortunately, due to problems with an update and heavy call volume, level 2 support was unavailable at the moment.  Not to worry, I would get an email with a link to schedule a call.  Okay then.

Sometime that day, I got the email with the link.  I opened it, only to find that it consisted of columns and columns of calendar days that were blank (no times) with no ability to interact in any way with them.  There was simply no ability to schedule.  I thought maybe that was because the schedule slots were all full in my five-day view, so then I carefully paged forward day by day clear up until September  (it was early May when I did this).  Nope, nothing I could schedule.

I replied to the email pointing out that the calendar app was broken.  They wrote me back saying there were slots available on May 27.  This was on May 13th.  I haven’t looked since, but at the time I originally looked, the calendar had nothing I could click to schedule in May, or June, or July, or August. The email, like the human, was brimming with sympathy.  The four-paragraph email had many expressions of support and only one meaningful line:  there were slots on the 27th. If this is level 2 support, I hate to think about what happens at level 3.  At level 4, they probably just come take your system and hand you a discount coupon for Bose.

My conclusion is that Sonos support has gone from exemplary to the point where I will no longer lecture on it being a brand that delights.  I haven’t even gone into the many upsell offers that come with all these communications.  I’m looking at one now on the side of my screen as I type.

Sonos, please fire your head of support and return to selling a product that pleases users at every step of the process.