Case Study: Sonos achieves proactive customer support savings with Pythian advanced analytics

Pythian’s Advanced Analytics Expertise Provided Sonos a Model to Proactively Produce Additional Customer Value

Sonos, the wireless smart speaker manufacturer, wanted to proactively reduce audio drop-offs caused by unpredictable home network conditions and improve the customer experience while lowering support costs. Sonos worked with Pythian and its data science team to evaluate whether diagnostic and Wi‑Fi metrics from its devices could be used to predict when streaming issues were likely to occur.

Pythian built a proof-of-concept predictive model using anonymized Sonos device diagnostics, including packet send attempts, physical errors, and latency, and integrated the data pipeline in the cloud. The solution predicted 56% of audio interruptions with a 6% false positive rate, and Sonos estimated it could cut related support center calls by 60%, creating significant potential savings in support costs.

Sonos