That’s because people expect baseline functionality from the tech they welcome into their homes. They want it to do what it’s supposed to do. That’s it—and that’s enough.
For these products, stability is success.
Sonos hasn’t been stable since the day it pushed out a flawed software update. When users opened the new app, they found it was missing essential features of the old app, like the ability to edit playlists and set alarms. For some, entire libraries of music were inaccessible. For others, there were inexcusable lags and speakers that vanished from audio systems in the middle of a song. For most Sonos users, the product was simply worse.
This is an existential conundrum for all kinds of software. The apps that run our lives demand constant improvements—and they can’t have any disruptions. This sort of tech isn’t like a car that you can replace every few years. It’s more like maintaining a house. You have to figure out a way to fix the plumbing while you’re still living at home.
这对各种软件来说是一个存在的难题。运行我们生活的应用程序需要不断改进——而且不能有任何中断。这种技术不像可以每隔几年更换的汽车。更像是维护房子。你必须在仍然住在家里的时候想办法修理管道。
Sonos executives said they had to upgrade decades-old systems that were holding the company back. But the problem wasn’t what they did. It was how they did it—and what they didn’t do.
Sonos 高管表示,他们必须升级阻碍公司发展的几十年旧系统。但问题不在于他们做了什么,而在于他们如何做以及他们没有做什么。
At first, they defended their decision to overhaul a critical piece of aging infrastructure all at once, even as they acknowledged the app had issues.
起初,他们为一次性全面改革一项关键的老化基础设施的决定进行了辩护,即使他们承认该应用程序存在问题。
The day after it was released, the company’s then-chief product officer told the Verge: “It takes courage to rebuild a brand’s core product from the ground up, and to do so knowing it may require taking a few steps back to ultimately leap into the future.”
在发布后的第二天,公司时任首席产品官告诉 The Verge:“重建一个品牌的核心产品需要勇气,并且在这样做时要知道可能需要退后几步才能最终跃入未来。”
But it soon became clear that Sonos had actually stepped off a cliff.
但很快就清楚了,Sonos 实际上已经掉下了悬崖。
Before long, the buggy new app had become as pleasant as a termite infestation. There were so many complaints from disappointed customers that executives seriously considered just going back to the old app. But they couldn’t. After rigorous testing, they determined the previous version of the app was no longer compatible with the rest of its software.
没过多久,这个有缺陷的新应用程序就像白蚁侵扰一样令人不快。失望的客户抱怨不断,以至于高管们认真考虑过直接回到旧应用程序。但他们不能。在经过严格测试后,他们确定旧版本的应用程序不再与其余软件兼容。
All of these problems were compounded by a lack of communication. It took until July for the then-CEO, Patrick Spence, to apologize. Even when Spence detailed his plans for repairing the app, he cautioned that it would take more time. And today, it’s still not entirely fixed.
所有这些问题由于缺乏沟通而加剧。直到七月,当时的首席执行官 Patrick Spence 才道歉。即使 Spence 详细说明了他修复应用程序的计划,他也警告说这需要更多时间。而今天,它仍然没有完全修复。
But at that point, there was almost nothing that any CEO could have said to quiet the uproar.
但在那时,几乎没有任何 CEO 能说些什么来平息骚动。
People buy Sonos products so they can listen to what they want, when and where they want it. They don’t want to hear why they can’t.
人们购买 Sonos 产品是为了能够随时随地听他们想听的东西。他们不想听到为什么不能。
Since the mishandled launch, the company has shipped 20 updates to restore missing features and exterminate “stubborn and esoteric bugs,” Spence said.
自从启动失误以来,公司已经发布了 20 个更新来恢复缺失的功能并消除“顽固且难懂的错误,”Spence 说。
And the company is trying to win back the trust of customers by reassuring them that it has learned valuable lessons from its very costly mistake.
公司正试图通过向客户保证其已从非常昂贵的错误中吸取了宝贵的教训来赢回客户的信任。
The first lesson? It was way too slow in responding to irate users.
第一课?在回应愤怒的用户时太慢了。
The second lesson? It should have been slower in rolling out new technology.
第二个教训?在推出新技术时应该更慢一些。
“In hindsight,” Spence wrote in a Sonos forum on Reddit, “we shouldn’t have introduced such a big change so quickly.”
“事后看来,”Spence 在 Reddit 的 Sonos 论坛上写道,“我们不应该如此迅速地引入如此大的变化。”
When he was CEO, one of his priorities was getting the company moving faster. But there’s a crucial difference between moving fast and speeding. And when companies move too fast, it can end up slowing them down.
当他担任 CEO 时,他的优先事项之一是让公司运转得更快。但在快速行动和超速之间有一个关键的区别。而当公司动作过快时,反而可能会减缓它们的速度。
It did for Sonos. The company delayed two product launches to devote attention to this crisis, which could have been avoided with iterative testing, phased releases and other tweaks to its software-development process. It plans to implement them so that this never, ever happens again.
它对 Sonos 来说确实如此。公司推迟了两款产品的发布,以专注于这场危机,而这本可以通过迭代测试、分阶段发布和对其软件开发过程的其他调整来避免。公司计划实施这些措施,以确保这种情况绝不会再次发生。
After all, for Sonos and so many other companies, there are three words that sound even better than it just works.
毕竟,对于 Sonos 和许多其他公司来说,有三个词听起来比“它能正常工作”更好。
It still works.
它仍然有效。