Sonos offers an AI support bot powered by Sierra. The overall experience is decent: it's fast, seems to have access to a large knowledge base repository, and it's clear what it can help with and what it can't. There's definitely room for improvement when it comes to end-to-end issue resolution agent handoff.
Access to tools
I started out by trying to get the AI to help me track an order; it couldn't do this and directed me to a tracking link. I following this up by trying to get it to give me warranty information about an existing product that I own, which it also couldn't do. Lastly, I tried to get it to help me reset the password for my account, which it directed me to an external link for.
It makes sense that the AI wouldn't have the tools necessary to complete all of these tasks, but it would be nice to have some baseline integrations it has access to beyond just the knowledge base, like order tracking for example.
I imagine that a lot of these requests are recurring, and Sonos could save a lot of time for their support team and their customers by handling them inline, rather than directing to an external page or live agent.
Reliability of information / FAQs
I asked the AI how I could play audio from a bluetooth capable device across my entire system, a problem that I encountered a while back that was actually somewhat challenging to find info on via Google. To my surprise, I instantly got the correct instructions (pairing to a bluetooth enabled Sonos such as the Roam, and then using the app to create a group with the other speakers).
I tried to ask the AI something slightly more technical / with an information recency component by querying about how I could see if my system was on the latest software version. It can tell me how to check the version, but when asked what the actual version number was to compare, it tried to connect me to an agent. This information is available on the Sonos helpdesk (there is a release note page that is up to date), so it seems to be a matter of it not having access to this page.
Livechat handoff
Getting connected to an agent is not a seamless experience, the AI doesn't hesitate to connect you, but once you do the entire chat window completely closes and you get a new interface, presumably powered by a different provider. Your existing chat history is gone, although it seems that the live agent has access to it.
Data collection
When you first start the chat, no matter what question you ask, the AI tries to collect your name, email, and phone. This is somewhat frustrating because it just delays getting to your answer, and this information presumably isn't necessary for FAQs it can answer directly (like my question about bluetooth). You can say “no”, and it moves on, which is nice.
This data was directly transferred to the agent connection form, which I appreciated.
Overall, Sonos's bot is quick and knowledgeable but lacks deeper integrations and a seamless live-agent transition.
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