While high engagement is a core pillar of any successful community, it's also important to understand the return on investment (ROI) your Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla) community offers your organization. ROI is a key metric to determine if your Vanilla community is helping your organization save money and improve efficiency.
To help with this, Vanilla includes a built-in solution called the ROI Calculator, which your organization's admins can monitor over time to keep a finger on the pulse of this important metric.
📝 Before we begin…
This first iteration of our ROI Calculator focuses on providing metrics for support communities, specifically in the area of ticket deflection.
With this in mind, your organization might be focused on other business outcomes and calculate ROI differently; if so, we value your feedback to enhance the Calculator to support additional use-cases in future iterations.
Access the ROI Calculator
- Access the Dashboard.
- Navigate to Analytics > Analytics > ROI.
How does the ROI Calculator work?
Before we dive into how to configure the ROI Calculator, let's first learn how it functions "under the hood" to perform its calculations. Possessing this knowledge will help you better understand how to adjust the calculator's inputs to align with your organization.
How do we define ticket deflection?
Ticket deflection occurs when a user finds answers in your community instead of reaching out to your support team. There are two primary ways this can happen:
- Direct deflection: A user posts a question and another community member provides an accepted answer. In this scenario, the user received their solution without involving the support team.
- Indirect deflection: A user views existing community content, such as discussions, questions, or articles, and finds the answer they need without submitting a support ticket. Not every pageview leads to a deflection, but a portion of them do.
How do we estimate the number of deflected tickets?
The challenging part is estimating how many community pageviews actually result in deflected tickets. Based on our research:
- Accepted answers: Around 1 in 5 pageviews of posts with accepted answers results in a deflection.
- General content views: For general pageviews (those without accepted answers, like a knowledge base article), about 1 in 20 pageviews leads to a deflection.
We’ll use these ratios in our ROI calculation later in this article.
📝 NOTE: Pageviews for accepted answers refer to any view of a question where at least one accepted answer exists at the time of the analytics event.
How do we estimate the cost of a deflected ticket?
For the ROI calculation, you’ll also need to know how much a deflected ticket is worth to your organization.
Industry averages suggest that each deflected support ticket saves your organization between $15 to $20. However, you can adjust this based on your organization’s specific data to get a more tailored estimate.
How do we calculate ROI?
Once you have your key inputs, you can calculate ROI. Here’s how the calculation breaks down:
1 - Calculate direct deflection savings
Multiply the number of accepted answers in the community by the cost of a support ticket.
⭐️ Direct Deflection Savings = Accepted Answers x Cost per Ticket
2 - Calculate indirect deflection savings
- For accepted answer pageviews: multiply the pageviews on accepted answers by one-fifth of the cost per ticket.
⭐️ Accepted Answer Pageview Savings = Pageviews on Accepted Answers x 1/5 x Cost per Ticket
- For non-accepted answers and general pageviews: Multiply the general pageviews by one-twentieth of the cost per ticket.
⭐️ General Pageview Savings = General Pageviews x 1/20 x Cost per Ticket
3 - Calculate total cost savings
Add the savings from direct and indirect deflections to get the total amount your community saves the organization.
⭐️ Total Savings = Direct Deflection Savings + Accepted Answer Pageview Savings + General Pageview Savings
4 - Calculate ROI
To find the ROI, divide the total savings by the cost of running your community. Then, multiply by 100 to express it as a percentage.
⭐️ ROI = (Total Savings / Cost of Operating the Community) x 100
Example
Let's put all of this together with an example.
If, in a given quarter, your community had:
- 300 accepted answers
- 3000 pageviews of threads with accepted answers
- 10000 general pageviews
- 15$ ticket cost
- A cost of 15,000$ to run the community
Your Direct Deflection Savings = Accepted Answers x Cost per Ticket = 300 answers x $15 = $4500
Your Accepted Answer Pageview Savings = Pageviews on Accepted Answers x 1/5 x Cost per Ticket = 3000 pageviews x 1/5 x $15 = $9000
General Pageview Savings = General Pageviews x 1/20 x Cost per Ticket = 10000 x 1/20 x $15 = $7500
Total Savings = Direct Deflection Savings + Accepted Answer Pageview Savings + General Pageview Savings = $4500 + $9000 + $7500 = $21000
ROI = (Total Savings / Cost of Operating the Community) x 100 = ($21000 / $15000) x 100 = 140% ROI
Configurable ROI metrics
At the top of the Calculator are several metrics you can configure to calculate the ROI savings data displayed in the scorecards and graph.
- Review these metrics with your organization and decide how best to configure them. Descriptions of each metric are provided below.
📝 NOTE: These settings are saved at the community level, meaning (a) they remain in place even when navigating away from the page and (b) they're shared among all admins (changes by one admin results in changes for all admins).
Available metrics
Let's learn about the metrics your organization can configure to calculate your community's ROI. As stated earlier, this iteration of the ROI Calculator is built around ticket deflection for support communities, and the underlying logic behind its calculations is as follows:
- If a user views a page in your community, they might find the information they're looking for instead of submitting a support ticket.
With this logic in mind, you can customize the calculator's ROI calculations with the following inputs:
- Accepted answer pageview ratio representing a deflected case: This defines the ratio of pageviews of posts with accepted answers representing a deflected ticket (usually 1 in 5); in other words, if set to five, we assume one out of every five people who view a page with an accepted answer will find their answer, resulting in a deflected support ticket.
- Pageview ratio representing a deflected case: This defines the ratio of general pageviews (those without accepted answers) representing a deflected ticket (usually 1 in 20); in other words, if set to 20, we assume one out of every 20 people who view a page will find their answer and deflect a support ticket.
- Average cost of a single ticket for your organization: This indicates the average cost of a single support ticket for your organization. 📝 This value is typically $15 to $20 for most organizations. This represents how much money each deflected case saves your organization.
- Community operating cost within selected timeframe: This dollar value reflects the total operating cost of your Vanilla community during the selected time period (define the time period via the calendar menu at the top right of the page). This helps provide a more accurate ROI by offsetting the cost of running your community, so for the most accurate data, be sure to update this value according to the chosen time period.
As you update these metrics, the values are updated in real time in both the statistical scorecards and in the Cost Savings Over Time chart directly below.
Set the Calculator's data time period
At the top right of the Calculator is a calendar icon you can click to view data for a specific time period.
📝 NOTE: For the most accurate data, be sure to update the Community operating cost within selected timeframe value according to your chosen time period.
- The Presets, Range, or Advanced tabs give you flexibility to select the time period you need to view the data you want.
- After choosing a time period, click Apply to view the results.
