Questions people ask about TribeROI
How the numbers are made, what we connect to, and what happens to your data. For the full method, read the methodology.
The basics
- What is TribeROI?
- TribeROI connects the tools your community runs on and shows what the community contributed to customer retention, referrals and support deflection. The result is a dollar range, built from your own numbers, that you can take to finance.
- Who is TribeROI for?
- Anyone who runs a community for a business and has been asked what it is worth. If you have attendance, engagement and good stories but no number, that is the gap it fills.
- How is this different from community engagement analytics?
- Engagement analytics count activity such as posts, attendance and replies. TribeROI starts from the same counts, then adds a written claim about why the activity matters and tests it against a result the business already tracks. Every claim keeps its verdict on screen, including the ones that come back refuted.
- Do I have to move my community?
- No. TribeROI reads the tools you already use and changes nothing about them.
How the numbers are made
- What is a Bridge?
- A claim you write down about how a kind of community activity moves a business result. For example: a question answered in the forum is a ticket that never opens. TribeROI shows what the evidence says about each Bridge and keeps the claim visible, where anyone can disagree with it.
- What verdicts can a Bridge come back with?
- Hypothesised, which means it is written down and waiting for enough data. Instrumented, which means the data is there but not yet judged. Corroborated, where the evidence backs the claim. Refuted, where it does not. And Not enough evidence, which means it is too early to call.
- Where does the dollar figure come from?
- Your finance numbers. What one renewal, deal or answered question is worth to you, or the amount an imported renewal or deal already carries. We supply the method and you supply the money.
- Do I get one number or a range?
- A range, whenever the method leaves room for one. The low end counts only claims the evidence backs, and that is the figure meant for finance.
- How does TribeROI avoid crediting the community with things it did not cause?
- It does not compare members to everyone else, because the people who join a community were already your most engaged customers. Each Bridge is judged by timing instead: does a member's business result follow their own community activity, within 90 days, more often than chance would put it there? In a simulation where the true answer was +15%, comparing members to everyone else showed +62% to +72%.
- How does TribeROI measure support deflection?
- You tell TribeROI what one answered question is worth to you. TribeROI counts the questions members answered and prices them with your number. The claim behind it, that a forum answer is a ticket that never opens, is a Bridge, so it carries a verdict like any other.
Your data and your tools
- Which tools do you support?
- Luma, Discourse, Discord, GitHub, DEV.to, YouTube, Pipedrive, HubSpot and Substack connect directly. Slack comes in as a workspace export, Meetup as an attendee list, and anything else as a CSV.
- Does TribeROI change anything in my tools?
- No. It is read-only. TribeROI never posts, edits or deletes anything in your tools. It reads them on a schedule, or from an export you upload.
- What happens when one member has accounts in several tools?
- TribeROI joins the accounts into one person when the evidence is clear, and asks you when it is not, because merging two different people quietly ruins every number built on top. Your member count then describes people, not accounts.
- Are bots and my own team counted?
- Bots are excluded. Your own team is left out of the member network and of who answers whose questions, and you can mark anyone as staff on their profile.
Privacy and security
- Do you train AI models on our members' data?
- No. We don't train models on your members' data, and neither does any provider we use.
- What happens to our data if we leave?
- Member data is deleted within 30 days of the end of your contract.
- Is data moved out of the EU covered?
- Yes. Data leaving the EU moves under the EU Standard Contractual Clauses. The Data Processing Agreement is published at app.triberoi.com/dpa.
Getting started
- How do I get access?
- TribeROI is taking three to five design partners. You get it early and a say in what gets built. Apply on the design partner page.