Audio technology company Sonos operates in both the business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) spaces, but about a year ago, its ecommerce buying experiences were at different levels for dealers and consumers.
Sonos sought to elevate the experience for dealers, who are its buyers, by improving its purchasing portal. To do that, it had to simplify complex buying and self-service ordering, according to James Massey, manager of customer relationship management (CRM) applications at Sonos. Massey spoke at a roundtable session on elevating the B2B buying experience at Salesforce Connections 2026 on June 3 in Chicago.
He homed in on three objectives that allowed Sonos to improve its B2B experience.
- It applied a phased research-to-implementation approach. Sonos said this helped to align stakeholders and reduce risk in complex B2B projects.
- It integrated its commerce platform (in this case, Salesforce B2B Commerce) with its CRM, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and order management system (OMS). Sonos said this helped to create a scalable, unified dealer or partner experience.
- It used dealer feedback and net promoter score (NPS) data to validate design decisions. Sonos increased its dealer NPS score to 29 from 17.
“Generally, most businesses are approaching it from the view of, ‘Here are our products, pricing, ERP integration. We have OMS.’ That’s great. That’s obviously the fundamentals of the B2B experience,” Massey said. “But we approach it from a different angle. What can we do to really elevate the dealer experience? What does a dealer need to buy more from us, grow their business, increase average order value?”
Sonos is No. 244 in the Top 2000 Database. The database ranks North America’s largest online retailers by their annual ecommerce sales.
James Massey (right), manager of CRM applications at audio technology company Sonos, speaks at a roundtable session at Salesforce Connections 2026 on June 3 in Chicago. | Image credit: Abbas Haleem, Digital Commerce 360
How Sonos upgraded its B2B buyer portal
Sonos had run its B2B dealer portal on a legacy system about a year ago. Massey described it as “super old-school” and “a means to an end.”
“Yes, we had product, pricing,” Massey said. “Dealers could go ahead and place orders, but that’s where it stopped. We were lacking the ability to serve information and help dealers grow their business.”
That didn’t match the Sonos brand, he said. On the consumer side, he called Sonos’ ecommerce website a premium experience.
“But the B2B portal felt — not that, basically,” he said. “It was almost like a different company.”
He said there “wasn’t much in the way of information” for Sonos’ dealers if they needed to get in touch with support or account managers.
It has since replatformed to use Salesforce’s B2B Commerce offering. Among its key changes are that logging in takes users to a page that displays their pricing tier, ordering and order tracking. That ordering field includes a type-ahead search functionality in which buyers can look up products by name or SKU, with a toggle for quantity.
Buyers can also search for products as they would on a consumer-facing shopping page. Product detail pages (PDP) include options for quoting and color. They also display stock information and iconography to show a product’s features, such as compatibility with Dolby Atmos or HDMI.
On the quoting side, Sonos’ B2B buyers can lock in a price quoted specifically for them, then later add products to their order at their standard pricing tier. If they have to reach a certain cart value to satisfy any pricing agreements, they can add to their order just before checkout.
Sonos implements AI agent for B2B
Sonos spoke with dealers to ask what their pain points and frustrations were. It asked how it could make their work easier.
“Rather than making internal assumptions about how things should work, we were speaking with our dealers and engaging with our customers,” Massey said.
Part of that factored into how it launched artificial intelligence (AI) agents into its business. Sonos has since gone live with Agentforce, developing an AI agent for B2B customers.
The AI agent handles self-serve journeys for Sonos’ B2B customers, which includes discovery, order history and order placement, Massey said.
“Dealers previously weren’t able to self-serve,” Massey said. “Now, they’re going to the agent and asking it, ‘Hey, where is my order? What’s my rebate?’ Having that agent there is super powerful and continues to close the gap between the consumer and dealer experience.”
The AI agent helps Sonos address general inquiries, he added.
“The fundamental vision we had was the dealer experience deserves the same attention as the consumer experience,” Massey said. “That was our unifying principle that allowed us all to point in the same direction and focus on delivering an experience that gives the dealer everything they need. When that’s your north star, making decisions becomes easy.”
Sonos is also exploring how to improve its dealer locator. That’ll both make it easier for consumers to find dealers and for Sonos to promote those dealers, he said.
“Doing so will be a meaningful windfall for everyone,” Massey said. “It’s better for our consumers. They find it easier to find the expertise they need. It’s better for our dealers. They’re able to sell more. Ultimately, it’s better for the Sonos brand as well.”
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