Last week, we discussed how incorporating a great customer engagement strategy into your startup could help you scale more effectively and efficiently. Today, as promised, we want to provide a 5-step process that you can implement today to improve customer engagement with your digital customers.

Let’s see how we can help you tame that CE chaos before it gets out of hand. Before we do that, please note it’ll help to keep in mind your startup’s overall vision, and CE goal(s) while going through this adaptable process. Now let’s get started:

1. Decide Number of CE Tools You’ll Use

• Quality is better than quantity. Providing options to customers is great, but only if you can manage those tools. You don’t want to become one of those companies that doesn’t respond to a customer because that will have its negative consequences – “50% of consumers give a brand only one week to respond to a question before they stop doing business with them.” –Oracle/RightNow. Choose the right amount of tools while keeping the amount of resources you have at your disposal in mind, and remember you can always add more tools later.

2. Identify CE Tools and a Main Purpose per Tool

• Tool effectiveness. Make sure the CE tools you are choosing align well with the purpose you are using them for. Tools can include your Landing Page/Web Page, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Blog, etc. – basically anything a customer can use to interact with your brand. Check out this post from us on How Twitter Creates Customer Engagement.
• Define a main purpose. A tool can serve more than one purpose, but again quality over quantity/having a focus always wins and you can always add on later when you’re not trying to be a Jack or Jill of all trades in other functions of your startup. Here you want to primarily keep the customer in mind and think about how you can best use CE tools to meet their needs.

3. Identify 1-3 Main Initiatives per Tool

• Serve your purpose. You’ve identified an overall purpose for each tool, now how are you going to accomplish that purpose? Here you’d want to think about how you can purposefully communicate the value you are trying to provide for your customers effectively using the tools you have chosen. So if your twitter account’s purpose is to provide customer support, then its initiatives can be to check your account a certain number of times per day or refer customers to product updates or new FAQs.

4. Designate a Lead and Define Policies

• Lead ensures completion. When you have someone designated as lead to manage each or every CE tool, you can ensure it’s getting done so everyone can free up their energy to focus on what else needs to get done versus worrying about CE needing to get done.
• Policy ensures consistency. Having a process alone won’t create consistency or tame chaos. You need to put some policies in place to ensure things happen when they’re supposed so you can keep your mind clutter free, and sustain your energy for fires that abruptly come up. For example, setting a schedule or time to deal with the management of those tools is a good place to start.

5. Implement and Measure Results

• Process, Policies and Tools. Once these things are in place, you’re ready for action in an organized fashion.
• Reiteration is the magic word. There’s always room for improvement, so put some metrics in place that help measure each tools’ results, and get ready to reiterate and improve.

Just remember, there’s no reason to wait to be memorable! How are you already using processes to tame your startup’s chaos?