How Scorpion Maintains 90%+ Retention Rates

Sometimes marketing and customer service can be extremely frustrating. You spend all of that time and money to get a new customer, delight them, and then you aren't able to keep them long term. It can set your company back if you don't have the right tools and culture to provide a good customer experience to increase loyalty and retention rates.

Your customers demand quality at every stage of the journey and recent data even shows that customers will spend 17% more for a good experience. With all of the focus, businesses are putting on experience, what is the most important part of customer service and creating a good experience?

Scorpion has a few ideas. If you talk to any Scorpion customer they will gladly tell you all about their love for the company and its employees. Boasting a 90%+ retention rate and 95% of its reviews being 4 or 5 stars, Scorpion has long been a standard for how companies can take care of their customers.

However, there isn't just one magic bullet to how Scorpion is a leader in retention. It's a culture that has been built and developed over 20+ years, but there are a few tips and tricks to help you start to build that for your business.

1. Be customer-obsessed.

If you don't have customers then you don't have a business. What does it mean to be customer-obsessed though? At Scorpion, the culture demands that everyone lead with the customer in mind. That starts with every leader talking with customers frequently to help make decisions for their organization. Even the CEO is frequently engaged in customer conversations each week.

"For a small business, Scorpion technology and marketing is really important to them. Every dollar is hard to invest. They have friends and family who are part of the business. Having been in this space for a long time, I can safely say that there isn't anyone who cares about our customers more than we do. We make it our business to know them," says Julia Cook, CXO of Scorpion.

To truly be customer-obsessed, you need to have the leaders and the culture to make sure everyone knows that without customers there is no business.

2. Surprise and delight your customers.

Customer experience happens along each stage of the journey. Your advertising, website, sales presentation, and follow-ups need to align and have the same message to create a smooth experience.

After your customers have a clear understanding of what you do and why they need you it's important to do the extra things that make that message sizzle. Sending your customer a gift or swag at different points in the journey, writing a handwritten note after a deal closes, inviting them to be a guest on a podcast, or helping them promote their message.

Many Scorpion customers have even been surprised with gifts for their birthdays, wedding anniversaries, and kids' graduations. Scorpion puts a focus on always showing up for their customers even outside of work hours.

"We try to delight our customers at every stop," Cook adds.

Ultimately, you need to create an experience in every possible area. Customers are always excited to join a Scorpion booth at events or share a picture on Instagram of a gift they got from an employee.

3. Listen to your customers.

We all know the importance of listening, but do we do it? Listening to customers should happen in every role. From the content writer putting a blog together to help its customers to the CEO leading the company. When you talk with customers and implement things that they suggest you will find the experience and loyalty with them gets even stronger.

Scorpion frequently talks to its customers. The company also uses tools like Chorus.ai to share customer experiences with several departments to listen and learn from. Listening to its customers is a big part of its high retention rates and brand awareness throughout the industry.

You will see its customers impacting everything from its marketing down to its product roadmap. Every part of the Scorpion business has a customer stamp of approval.

4. Build for your customers.

Are you building products because you think your customers want them or are you truly building for your customers? It can be easy as a business to get distracted by competition or what you think the future might be and lose sight of who uses your products.

A good way to build for your customers is to set up customer advisory boards or have a public product roadmap that customers can vote on. Cook says, "Everything we build is for our clients, and is based on their needs."

That vision is expressed by customers as well. After seeing a new product one of them said, "I enjoyed the new platform and the ‘tour' around it. I am really excited to get in. I feel...like it was made for us."

We live in a world all about the experience. People are willing to pay more for a good experience. It can also bring an edge against competitors focused purely on product, sales, or marketing. When you surprise and delight your customers, learn from and listen to them, and build your company for them you will find that growth and best in class retention like Scorpion will follow.