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First of all, anyone who says companies aren’t agonizing over ROI of phone, email and web channels is completely out of touch. Our members have these numbers down cold, with a great example of Cisco Linksys eliminating the email channel last year because it was not cost effective. New channels should be held up to the same scrutiny.

The other reason ROI is important is because vendors have been grossly overstating the ROI of the tools. If you are buying them specifically to receive the cost savings touted by a vendor, and have factored those numbers into next year’s budget, there is risk in the project.

I agree there is often a difference between business value and ROI. It is hard to put a dollar figure on having an engaged, collaborative community. But as long as vendors continue to tout huge costs savings for these deployments (in most cases unsubstantiated), I can’t blame executives for expecting a bulletproof ROI.

–John

I’ve been using the term since 2003 when I first heard Kelly Goto use it:
“ROI (return on interaction) as we see it differs from traditional ROI (return on investment) by focusing on customer experience and metrics of satisfaction and success rather than traditional spreadsheet formulas.”

I actually was phone interviewed for a position at Intel in late 2008 and used this as an example of the kind of data one can get – research from an ethnographic perspective. Qualitative data. (No, I didn’t get the job, heh.)

Thanks for the thought provoking post Laurie!

Also, thanks for presenting some specific, proven ways to deal with executives trying to block social software investments by playing the ROI card. The Enterprise 2.0 movement needs more posts like this!