A Message to Our Members on the WHOOP 3.0 Launch

Dear WHOOP Community,

We wanted to provide an update on our WHOOP Strap 3.0 launch and discuss the technical issues some members are experiencing with their new devices.

First, we want to thank everyone who has upgraded.  Demand has been overwhelming and we are working hard to respond and fulfill orders as quickly as possible. We’re excited to see so many new and returning members on the platform and hope WHOOP helps you achieve peak performance.

WHOOP 3.0 Connectivity

The WHOOP Strap 3.0 is an entirely new product on the inside, including new data architecture, brand new chips featuring the latest in computational throughput and energy efficiency, and of course, Bluetooth Low Energy. Unfortunately, a defect in one of our electronic components was discovered and confirmed by the manufacturer of that component. The defect leads to straps rebooting themselves. The nature of the defect is understood and, as backed up by diagnostic data we collect on straps in the field, is affecting a very small number of units that have shipped. Fortunately, our engineering team has worked with the manufacturer to devise a firmware level workaround that resolves this issue. This was released the week of June 24th as firmware v8.16.6.0.  If you are not running this firmware version, please do upgrade your strap as soon as possible by visiting your Settings in the app. 

In very rare cases, the issue is severe enough that the strap cannot recover and effectively turns itself off.  In these cases, we have been responding to customers and replacing their straps with ones that we have manually updated to the latest firmware to ensure the issue is gone. If you believe this is happening to your strap, you can verify with the following:

1. When you double tap the Strap, no white lights indicating battery level illuminate.
2. When you put a charged battery pack on your WHOOP 3.0, no white lights illuminate on the pack as they should.
3. When you place your thumb on the bottom sensors of the WHOOP 3.0 for 5-10 seconds and then remove it, you do not see the Green LEDs turn on.

If all three of these conditions are met, please contact our support team and we will replace your device.

WHOOP 3.0 Data Lag

For the vast majority of our members, your strap will not have this issue. However, some members are experiencing a lag in data. The number one fix for this is to ensure you are not force quitting the WHOOP App on your iPhone, instead leaving it running in the background. Killing the iOS app is a signal to the operating system on the iPhone that you no longer wish the app to be running under almost any circumstance, including fetching data from Bluetooth accessories. Please review our tips and tricks to get the most out of your WHOOP 3.0 experience. 

While this tends to improve the experience for users, there are still some cases we have seen where some data lag persists after leaving the app open in the background. Thanks to your support logs and detailed feedback, we are working on improving the reliability of the BLE connection with WHOOP 3.0 and the phone. A new version of the app and new firmware are underway to improve this. Make sure to update your iOS app and firmware when these updates are released in the next couple of weeks.

Customer Support

In addition to the aforementioned issues, we have been receiving a very high number of support requests regarding shipping estimates, membership and upgrade questions, technical support help, and questions about data.  We value the interactions with our members and are carefully reviewing each request, so as not to compromise on the quality of interactions.  

With the overwhelming demand for WHOOP 3.0, we received many more support inquiries than anticipated.  As such, we have developed a queue of support cases that we are working around the clock to resolve, both during weeknights and weekends. We have hired many new support agents to service our rapidly growing user base. We are thankful to our diligent customer support team for rising to the occasion and working extra hard to answer all questions as quickly as possible. 

If you are currently waiting for your ticket to be resolved, here are some quick tips that might help answer your questions: 

1. Technical issues: If the issue is technical in nature, please fill out a ticket via the Help > Email Support in the app.   This automatically attaches a diagnostic log (“support log”) that is critical in order to properly help resolve your technical issue.  Submitting a request by other means for a technical issue will usually result in the first correspondence with us asking for a support log.
2. FAQs: Check out our knowledge center for common asked questions surrounding WHOOP.
3. Shipping:  Easily look up your shipping status with our lookup tool. 
4. Multiple Requests: If multiple issues or questions arise before we respond to your ticket, please respond to the same email thread as the original inquiry so we can answer all of your questions at once.  This ensures response to all of your questions at once, rather than you having to wait longer. 

We are answering every single support request in the order they are received.  Thank you for your patience during this busy time. 

Learnings, Changes, and Path Forward

We understand how frustrating any issue can be for our members.  As users of the WHOOP system ourselves, we are working hard to resolve them to make the experience as great as possible.  Our solutions we devise are based on both your feedback and also our direct experience with the product.

Here are some concrete steps our organization is taking:

1) Resolve data lag issues – Our engineers are busy working on improvements to the reliability of our connections and data transfer speeds.  These will be released as new app and firmware updates. Support logs that come in are always sent to our engineers to be analyzed.

2) Invest in our Customer Support Team And Infrastructure – WHOOP has grown tremendously in the last year.   Many of the processes and team sizes in place are changing rapidly to account for our scale.  We have made a big hiring push on our membership services side and will continue to do so to ensure communications with our customers happen promptly.  Additionally, we are building internal tooling to help route inquiries to the appropriate person more effectively and making sure all feedback is integrated into our product and engineering roadmaps.

3) Better Communication – Many of the support requests we receive can be resolved by better communication to our user base and better education about our product.  We are making steps to improve our support knowledge base, include more blog and podcast content related to our product, features, and updates, and using social media to update our membership.

We know how important every strain, sleep, and recovery is to our members. We are committed to making WHOOP the best tool to monitor and understand your body in order to optimize it for peak performance.  We will continue to make the product and organization better as we grow alongside our community.

Sincerely,

The WHOOP Team