by Jason Snell
In Praise of Keith from Sonos
I really enjoyed this story by Rachel Karten about how, amid widespread outrage about a disastrous software update from Sonos, the company’s Social Media Program Lead was doing it right:
KeithFromSonos is a Sonos employee who is very active in the r/Sonos subreddit and has somehow won over customers in a particularly tumultuous time for the brand. It’s hard for me to not use jargon here, but he shows up as a customer and not like a brand mouthpiece. When it was announced two months ago that Sonos had a big round of layoffs, someone commented “KeithFromSonos – you still around?”, he replied with a Weekend at Bernies GIF. It was upvoted 788 times. (He, of course, then posted a thoughtful note.) And when Keith isn’t solving user issues, he might be recommending his favorite A24 movies or writing paragraphs about why he loves the r/Sonos community.
I’m not sure how replicable all this is—Keith may just have a unique set of skills and worldview—but I suspect that there are still a lot of lessons here for companies that are interacting with their customers and ecosystems on modern social media.