Notably absent from this comment: the slightest awareness that "your traffic" is composed of people who have preferences.

Yeah, no doubt, "exit intent works", if the only thing you care about is "the return of your traffic". This mindset is exactly how we got to the situation described in the OP.

You are making things worse for your users. You don't care, because you don't think of them as users, as people, as human beings, you think of them as "traffic" whose "return" you want to "maximize".

You are the problem.