Honestly I think the issue is with WP8 OS. My Kik Messenger live tile has an update success rate of probably 0.1% (maybe less) when a new text comes in. I probably have received about 1000 text since, and got the red badge to show a new text maybe 10 times. Oddly enough, toast notification is 100% accurate. It's the live tiles that has trouble getting updated.
More recently though, even opening the Kik app immediately after a toast notification, there's a long delay for the actual message to appear. Sometimes it doesn't appear for 10s of minutes later. I don't think WP8 OS is up to par when it comes to the live tiles. It's just too erratic, and it randomly fails. I can only count on toast notification, but only if I can actually hear the notification. And of course, there's no history.
I sent a support ticket to Kik, and they blame Microsoft for the poor capability of the live tiles and the way toast notification interacts with apps in general. The app, in this case Kik, has to poll the server for the new text EVEN THOUGH a toast notification containing the new text was already sent. It seems toast notification + instant update on the app is a huge limitation on the WP8 OS. It appears the background app CANNOT update itself after a toast notification BEFORE the user launches it. Ideally, the user should see the text immediately after launching app rather than having to waiting for a few seconds.
1. Toast notification = 100% right on target
2. Live tiles = hit or miss, random, erratic; sometimes work, most time don't