If you’ve been following my activities over the past few days, you know that I recently launched a customer feedback site related to the Sirius/XM merger. As this site begins to gain traction, I wanted to give everyone some additional background as I believe it helps put the issue in context.
On November 13th, 2008 Sirius and XM Radio combined their channel lineup and eliminated what the two companies described as “redundant programming”. Unfortunately, these changes were released with very little communication and no apparent input from the listing audience. Personally, I subscribed to XM for nearly 4 years and switched to Sirius 2 years ago because the programming was significantly better (for my tastes).
When the post-merger programming went live a couple of weeks ago, my wife and I were dumbfounded. We knew nothing of the programming changes yet many of our favorite channels had either disappered or the playlists had been significantly altered without any warning. To say the least, we were appalled at the gross lack of communication by the new Sirius/XM and many others share our sentiments. If you do a Twitter or Google search for “Sirius sucks” you’ll see what happens when a company fails to listen to its customers in this age of socially-connected consumers.
It all boils down to communications. The majority of listeners are upset because the Sirius and XM pre-merger communications emphasized GREATER choice and the “best of both” company’s programming. Yet what we’ve seen is a significant reduction in programming variety because the management team wanted to cut costs. Look, I’m a business owner and I understand the need to lower costs but the method Sirius/XM chose was inappropriate and outright foolish. With stock prices hovering at less than a quarter, now is not the time to be gambling with major changes that could disrupt the user base during an unsteady economy.
My position and motivation is quite simple. Sirius/XM must make a concerted effort to rectify the problem by gathering input from its customers and taking action. Once the votes are tallied, I will send the results along with comments gathered by the listeners in a certified letter to the Sirius/XM board of directors.
You can visit my Sirius/XM listener-feedback site at: http://voiceofthelistener.com