Calculating ROI - How are you doing it?

I was chatting with a colleague about how to calculate ROI (Return on Investment) for support communities the other day — in my experience most organizations will need to get some data from community, some from surveys and some from other orgs, such as their support org.

While discussing, this great video from Brian Oblinger from a few years ago came up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PocWqw0au2M

Totally worth a watch to get the context, but you can also find the slides for that presentation here:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1m6pYbOXipTe0IZU7tFHsOQ0557ynxyl1zpqWg1iramc/edit#slide=id.ga9b2fc80a3_1_54

You can find some additional info on this podcast episode from Brian Oblinger and Erica Kuhl follows the same theme:

Just say No to Page Views (Thanks for that link @PiperWilson !)

You should definitely do your own surveys and consult internally on cost-per-case (sidenote for community members that have done this kind of internal research and these types of surveys, do your responses align with Brian's? or are you seeing different resolution and deflection rates?) as every community tends to be unique, but if we follow the thinking on slide 20-23, we can think about it like this:

(# of Visits) ✖️ ( % seeking support, let's say 50%) ✖️ ( % resolution rate, let's say 40%) ✖️ (% deflection rate, let's say 40%) ✖️ (cost per case let's say 35$)

Yes, I'm leaving out overhead cost for a moment, but stick with me here for a second!

We can simplify that formula to something like:

(# of Visits) ✖️ (0.5) ✖️ ( 0.4) ✖️ (0.4) ✖️ (35$)

which can be simplified to:

(# of Visits) ✖️ (2.80$)

So if my community has 100k visits that could potentially represent 280,000$ in support savings cost (minus the cost of my community).

I made a fun interactive dashboard with this formula you can find here:

HL Vanilla Success Community - How Does Community Affect Ticket Deflection.xlsx

Here is a sneak peek:

Simply input values from your org in the second tab of the worksheet and you'll get the calculation noted above on the pretty first sheet. Feel free to delete our beautiful branding and add in your own to match your own company's branding.

What metrics are you using to prove ROI to your exec team? Do you use a combination of metrics from different sources? Any formulas you've been using to measure ROI that you find valuable when expressing community value?

Find more posts tagged with

Analytics

Analytics & Reporting

ROI

Comments

norahquan

We have been using the above formula (obtaining the data & automating this calculation via a Qualtrics survey & dashboard) to estimate support deflection ROI.

Another KPI we are looking at is the # of times an answered question is viewed by other Community members (after is has been answered). This has been quite tricky to automate the reporting of but will give us an indication of how often a Q&A is 'reused' and therefore potentially benefitted other Community members

Tmetcalf

Hi @Shauna -
This is great stuff and I am glad I found it.
Looking at the formula, I wonder if I can make the following changes:
May I used the Correct Answer Rate (Accepted Answers / Questions Asked) for Resolution Rate?

Cheers,
Toby

Shauna

Hey @Tmetcalf

Thanks so much—glad you found the post helpful! 🙌

Yes, you can definitely use the Correct Answer Rate (Accepted Answers / Questions Asked) as a proxy for resolution rate if your community consistently uses the "accepted answer" feature. That said, there are a couple things to keep in mind:

Not everyone who gets their question answered goes back to mark it as accepted, so this metric might undercount actual resolutions.
Some users find answers just by searching—so they never ask a question, but still get value. These “indirect deflections” won’t be captured if you're only looking at accepted answers vs. questions asked.

Also, heads up that the post you're commenting on is from a while ago, and since then we’ve launched a new out-of-the-box ROI Calculator that takes the spreadsheet math out of the equation and bakes in both direct and indirect deflection. It uses current best practices and lets you customize based on your own ticket cost data.

You can check it out here 👉 New Feature Alert: ROI Calculator

Would love to hear what you think—and whether this fits your use case better!

Cheers,
Shauna

Tmetcalf

Thanks for the reply @Shauna
"Not everyone who gets their question answered goes back to mark it as accepted, so this metric might undercount actual resolutions."

:-) completely agree! I am still seeking a way to accomplish this.
I will read the article and work on a dashboard with cost savings.
Cheers,
Toby

Shauna

Awesome! If you have a sec to report back and share what works for you, I'd love to hear it 🤓

Quick Links

Upcoming Events

HLV Connect: Open Session
⭐️ Got something cool to share? Have a victory in your community and want to show off your accomplishments with fellow community builders? 🙋 Got questions? Bring your community, tactical and random questions and get answers from peers and Vanilla experts! 🗓 Join our very own @ShannonHudebine and @IsabelleK, and a group of…
AI Study Group for Community Managers
Join our AI Study Group for Community Managers. At each session we'll discuss what group members are experimenting with and learning, how we're using AI in our communities, and help one another problem solve. The group meets monthly, and is open to any community professionals interested in the topic of AI. Hosted by our…
HLV Connect: Analytics Endpoints
Hey Vanilla friends 👋 Join @Branwyn T and @Kirstie as they explore the new options available in the analytics API to bulk export and download analytics data - perfect for setting up PowerBI dashboards and using AI tools to better understand your site’s ROI! Have any questions you want to ensure we cover? Add them to this…