It Is My Belief That Wunderkind Only Cares About Their Investors
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We hired Wunderkind to help us improve the ROI of our exit intent pop-ups. In addition to having them take over pop-up design and implementation, they also took over email flows associated with the pop-ups (e.g. Pop-up promises a 20% off coupon. They were responsible for sending the coupon by email).
Pros
- Sales
Cons
- Support is awful
- Management will not work with you to make things right
- Tool is buggy. It went down for 50 hours during our Black Friday sale resulting in substantial amount of lost revenue.
Likelihood to Recommend
It started with their sales rep, [name], who reached out to us about our existing exit pop-up experience/company. He claimed that they could improve our sales revenue with their tool. I was familiar with Wunderkind prior to [name] reaching out and had heard good things about the company when they were called BounceX. Long-story short, we signed up. The onboarding process took a while, but we were patient because we believed the results would be worth it. The Wunderkind team was able to quickly improve our pop-up revenue, but primarily because they took over some of our email campaigns. In other words, they would collect emails in their pop up (e.g. Give us your email to save 20%.), and then they would send the coupon code to the user and use that sale to boost revenue. Did they actually improve our revenue over our previous tool? Their banners weren’t any better than what we had before, and making any change took a week or more to implement, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that, without email, their service was better. I would encourage any company considering Wunderkind to keep all email functions in-house. Our big challenges came about when the service was down for over 51.5 hours during our Black Friday sale. We know it was at least 51.5 hours because that’s how long it took for them to fix the issue after we brought it to their attention. I have no idea how long the tool was down for prior to us discovering the issue. It’s impossible to know for sure, but we could have easily lost 500+ sales because of their technical glitch. That doesn’t count the brand equity that was lost, referrals from customers who may have been frustrated by the experience, etc. This glitch may have cost us a substantial amount in lost revenue and brand equity. Did a VP follow up and apologize? Did [name] send us a note? No, and you’ll soon understand why. In addition to their services being down for more than 51.5 hours during our biggest sale of the year, we also experienced numerous issues with testing a simple pop up to promote a new product. I was eager to test it as I felt it could be a game-changer for us. Of course, implementation took a while to complete. Once the campaign was finally live, we waited 30 days and requested an update. On December 8th, we received the results of the campaign: V1 (launched early Nov) Impressions: 3,285 Clicks: 221 Submits: 2 Conversions: 319 Revenue: $25,771 A whopping 3,285 impressions for a site that receives 3,000 unique visitors… PER DAY! Was there a “B” version that they were testing against this? Why have only 3,000 people seen this over the span of a month when we receive 3,000 visits per day? Our marketing manager did some research and felt there was a “B” version, but wasn’t certain. Even if there was a “B” version, and a “C” version, we still had well over 80,000 people leave our site in a 30 day period of time without purchasing. The numbers don’t add up. Mind you, we also sent emails stating that we couldn’t see the pop up on our side. We were given the typical advice like: try a different browser, clear your cache, etc. I ran an agency for over a decade, I understand how this all works, and I still can’t see the pop-up. Right around that time, I received an invoice from [name], Senior Client Manager (and our Account Manager’s boss). Our marketing manager sent [name] a note stating that we wanted to meet with him. We had some concerns about the level of service we were receiving and wanted to see if he could help us. We had a pleasant meeting with [name]; I felt like he heard our concerns and was going to clean things up for us. I brought up the issues we were having with the pop-up promoting the new product and was really happy to have a “manager” looking into the issue on our behalf. A week goes by. Nothing from [name]. I thought, What the heck? What does it take to get someone to look at our account and actually help us? So… I send [name] this email: Hi [name], Based upon our last conversation, I thought you were going to put pressure on the team to resolve our issues? We never heard back from you regarding the issues we're having with the sample pop-up. Why are we the ones pushing to have things fixed in a timely manner? This is really frustrating, especially since I've been a fan of your brand for many years. I'm not sure if you guys don't have the support you need to do your jobs successfully, or if we're too small and not worth the time. Either way, you're unable to provide a reliable service, so we need to move on. We have contacted our old pop-up provider and will be moving forward with their service ASAP. Because of all the issues we have experienced, I would like to request a refund for November's services since we had multiple issues with your service during that month (sample pop up and the Black Friday fiasco... which took more than 48 hours to resolve). It seems like the least your company can offer due to the thousands of dollars in lost revenue from your service in the last 45 days. We wish you and the Wunderkind team the best and I hope other customers do not have similar experiences. [Response email] One of the things you’re going to see over and over again is the desire for the Wunderkind team to “hop on a call,” as if my time isn’t worth anything and we need to hash through our issues by phone, after all issues have been made abundantly clear on the last call with [name] and now by email. My response to [name]: Hi [name], We already shared our frustrations last Monday. I have no interest in hashing through it again, and I have no interest in your creative solutions after we've moved on. You guys have been showing exit intent pop-ups for over a decade, but for some reason, you can't figure it out with our campaign. It doesn't make sense to me, but it also doesn't matter anymore. As I said, we've moved on. We're not the right fit. Is [name] a better person for me to chat with about the refund? As an FYI, [name] is the Client Relations VP. Here’s a response from [name], the Director of Customer Success (It’s unbelievable how many “Customer Success” related managers, directors, VPs etc this company has!!!). [Response email] At this point I’m starting to get really frustrated. I’ve lost probably a million dollars in brand equity and nobody can understand that I have ZERO confidence in their ability to provide a quality service. Really?! My response: Hi [name] and [name], I would have been open to these solutions last week, but not anymore. I have no confidence in your team's ability to serve my company well. It's that simple. I don't understand why the alarm bells go off after you've been fired. You had a week to propose a solution, but didn't. If it takes a week to pull the data you provided, that's horribly unfortunate. I wouldn't do business with Wunderkind for that reason alone. If you aren't able to help us process the refund for November, I'm happy to speak with someone else who can. [Response email] At this point, I’m completely fed up. My next message is directed to VP, [name]. Hi [name], I'm really hoping you can help me. You're a busy executive like me, so let me give you the bullet points: 1. Our pop ups/banners were not working properly for over 48 hours during our Black Friday sale. 2. We've had consistent issues with a new pop up we wanted to test. When we brought our concerns to [name] on Monday of last week, I was left with the impression that he was going to "put a fire under the team" to get the job done quickly. Unfortunately, I never heard back from [name] last week. And I didn't hear back from [name] until Tuesday of this week after I let the team know we were moving in a different direction. For a company that's been in business for over a decade, these issues don't seem like rocket science to fix. I could be wrong and I'm willing to accept that. What I'm not willing to accept is slow/no communication. [name] brought up some fine solutions to our second issue below. Had those been addressed last week, we would have been receptive. As you will learn when you speak with [name] and [name] about this issue, I asked for a refund for last month's service since the ball has been dropped multiple times. I figured that was a fair request considering our losses for the Black Friday issues far exceeded the amount we paid your company. As you can see, I've tried to be polite about this. I'm honestly unsure how else to tell [name] we're not the right fit. [additional email text] I have two suggestions for improvements: 1. When someone brings up a concern, fix it fast. I know you guys tried, but a week is far too long to wait to fix an issue if you're a small business like we are. 2. When a client fires you, move on. I'm not sure what [name] is trying to accomplish at this point. This is a matter of integrity. I don't trust that you guys are going to do what you say you'll do. It's that simple. I hope your team is able to clean up these issues and improve. I ran an agency for over a decade so I know that taking care of customers is challenging. I truly wish you the best. [Response email] Thanks, [name] At this point, I was feeling pretty relieved. Finally, someone who will listen to us and help us move on from this horrible situation. I jumped on a call with [name]. I was very kind (as you can see from my past letters), and I explained that we had already moved forward with our prior company and had no interest in working with them. [name] understood. She told me that “lots of errors” had happened on their end and she wasn’t surprised that we were frustrated. (Side note: I just pulled up our old account manager [name] on LinkedIn, and she is no longer with the company.) She asked if there was anything they could do to rectify the situation and gain back our business. I made it clear that we had no interest in doing business with them in the future. I just wanted a refund of $4,000 (our fee for November) and wanted to move on with my life.[quote]Me: For real????!!!! You can’t do the right thing because you have investors??? The date of that meeting was January 12th, 2022. Over one month later, I heard back from [name] and [name] [Response email] You can imagine my reaction when I read that. Let me make sure I understand this: they can offer a crappy service that costs our business a million dollars and then charge us on top of it? Get this… [name]’s title is VP of Client Relations & Client Growth Here’s a free tip. If you guys treat your customers the way you would like to be treated (and deserve to be treated), you won’t need an army of “Client Relations” managers at your company. I want to make it clear to all of Wunderkind’s investors that I don’t believe for one minute that they want Wunderkind to run its business this way. I’m hoping you prove me right and work out these disastrous issues internally. I’ve copied them on this message so that they can take up this situation with the [names of 17 people]. Anyone considering working with Wunderkind, [name], [name], or [name] should reconsider. In my experience, they won’t do right by you or your customers.
