Will Pate’s Blog - Tales from a Gen Y internet guy

Online Community Success and ROI

Published on 15/05/07
by Will Pate

The questions I hear most from business about online community are where is the ROI, and how do we measure success? Finally, my colleagues Joe Cothrel and Bill Johnston have gathered public data about online community ROI that helps answer both.

  • Community users remain customers 50% longer than non-community users. (AT&T, 2002)
  • 43% of support forums visits are in lieu of opening up a support case. (Cisco, 2004).
  • Community users spend 54% more than non-community users (EBay, 2006)
  • In customer support, live interaction costs 87% more per transaction on average than forums and other web self-service options. (ASP, 2002)
  • Cost per interaction in customers support averages $12 via the contact center versus $0.25 via self-service options. (Forrester, 2006)
  • Community users visit nine times more often than non-community users (McKInsey, 2000).
  • Community users have four times as many page views as non-community users (McKInsey, 2000).
  • 56% percent of online community members log in once a day or more (Annenberg, 2007)
  • Customers report good experiences in forums more than twice as often as they do via calls or mail. (Jupiter, 2006)

That's it. What Next?

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