Dive Brief:
- Sonos’ board of directors appointed Tom Conrad CEO on Wednesday after a national search for a customer-first leader for the audio technology company.
- Conrad, who served as interim CEO for the past six months, demonstrated “a deep commitment to delivering ever-improving experiences” and shared his “plans for placing the company at the cutting edge of customer-centric innovation,” board Chair Julius Genachowski said in a press release. “Over the last six months, we’ve seen how Tom has worked closely with all of you to address our urgent challenges, to re-center us on our customers, and to build momentum for the future,” he said in a letter to the company.
- Conrad, a member of the board, has held executive roles at Snap Inc. and Pandora over a 30-year career in software engineering. Prior to his time as interim CEO at Sonos, he was CEO of Zero Longevity Science.
Dive Insight:
Conrad stepped into the interim CEO role in January after former CEO Patrick Spence’s departure. The company was still reeling from a botched app roll out last year that caused customer uproar and led stocks to tumble.
Conrad focused on listening to customers, restoring trust and increasing reliability of Sonos products and experiences.
“When Tom stepped in, customers, the media and many of you were appropriately questioning what had gone wrong and insisting on urgency and answers,” Genachowski said in the letter to the company. “Tom has done a masterful job leading our response, building on his keen knowledge of the company, his extensive experience as a product leader, and a heartfelt connection with our customers.”
In a letter to Sonos team, Conrad reiterated his commitment “excellence and the customer-first principles that were the founding values of our company 20 years ago.”
“Back in January, we began by talking to our customers directly to take stock of just how far we’d drifted from their expectations and then quickly dove into the work of doing right by them once again,” he said.
Under his leadership, the company created dedicated teams for performance, reliability and core experience. The company released a slate of updates focused on improving stability, speed and usability.
Rather than push for speed, the company committed to “fewer but more meaningful initiatives — to do less better,” Conrad said.
The company’s efforts are paying off, Conrad said. Customer and dealer net promoter scores are improving, while household listening hours have increased year over year.
“When I think about everything we’ve learned from this chapter, first on the list for me is the absolute requirement that we deliver seamless experiences that simply work every single time,” Conrad said.
Failure to do that has real-life consequences for customers, he said.
“I’ll never forget the customer who months ago told me that we'd left his parent’s 50th wedding anniversary without music to mark the occasion,” Conrad said. “We can’t let that happen.”
