5 Reasons event attendee feedback is important
So, picture this…You have just executed an event or festival. Months and months, multiple late nights in front of run sheets, hundreds of meetings and phone calls. There’s nothing like a few pats on the back for your efforts and hopefully another successful project!
BUT!
What did your attendees really think???
Sure the few who reached out and congratulated you and your team is nice and makes you feel warm and fuzzy but you and I both know, once in the comfort of their own home and the safety of being behind their keyboard with no accountability for their comments, the exaggerated truth often comes out.
Sure, sometimes feedback can be a tough pill to swallow, but rather than dwell on the negative comments you may receive, use them as motivation and an opportunity to do better next time. Accept the fact, this is the best way to learn and excel at your next event.
So how do we find out this information? and how can we take steps to continually improve in the future and implement what your customers want?
Here are 5 simple tips for gathering feedback and how to use it in the future:
1. Give your attendees a voice!
Quite simply, being an event organiser without paying attention to feedback means starting from scratch over and over. Allowing your audience to provide ideas, suggestions and general feedback is a great way to continue growing your event and ticking the vital box of giving them what they want. It’s also a great time saver and also allows for better budgeting/forecasting!
2. How to take advantage of feedback (positive & negative)
Analyse attendee feedback as a priority and with your team. There’s no use waiting several weeks after the event to assess the feedback. By this time, you and your staff have potentially forgotten certain aspects, or its too late to address any issues that may have been easily overcome with a quick response to the customer.
Be prepared for negative feedback and don’t take it personally! Use it as motivation or a great opportunity to understand where you failed and prioritise it for next time. Tip: Addressing negative comments in this way and then hearing positive comments from the same person after the next event is an amazing feeling.
Be analytical in your comparisons of feedback. This could be between demographics (i.e. age groups) This could also be comparisons between positive and negative feedback…Tally the data into a percentage. For example; 90% were positive about the colour of chairs that were used. Of the 10% who were negative, what colour do they prefer?
In your feedback analysis, how did your suppliers/contractors fair? Determine if they are worth using next time. This is a great way to determine if food vendors are up to the right standard and makes it a lot easier to choose from a large range of options next time.
Use open and closed-ended questions throughout your surveying.
Get a Net Promoter Score. This is when you ask your attendees to give you a score out of 10. The NPS is the average score. 1 = Poor, 10 = Excellent.
3. Be the attendee
In other words, put yourself in the shoes of your ticket holder. The person or people who have paid money to attend your event!
For starters, make giving you feedback easy! We can’t stress this enough…So many times in our early years we would prepare what we thought was the best feedback survey in history. Sent it out to our attendees only to realise later on we hadn’t limited the restriction settings on the google form so people could complete it. Instead, hundreds of emails came through with people requesting access. Instead of getting several thousand responses, we got less than 100!
As we mentioned above. Use open and close-ended questions throughout.
Don’t ask too many questions or too many questions where they have to type multiple paragraphs. Allow people 25-30 words max. You also don’t want to sit through and read novels.
Offer rewards for completing your feedback survey OR offer an entry into a prize giveaway. One year we organised a home stereo surround sound bar worth $500 and received 50% more responses.
Lastly, when you are reading your customer feedback. Put yourself in their shoes, literally envision yourself sitting around a corporate table or in the mosh pit of a dance festival and think about their feedback as you read it.
4. Use ALL digital platforms
It’s usually one feedback survey distributed across as many platforms/channels as possible.
We recommend starting with email. Most events should have gathered email addresses upon the purchase of a ticket or checking into an event at the front gate. Sending an email is the easiest and most personable way to gather feedback responses.
Post the survey in a private facebook group created during your event. Some events may have several groups.
Send the survey out by text message with a QR code or a direct link to the URL where the survey can be found.
5. Collect, Organise & Store Data
Because really…what’s the point? Apart from point 1 above, what is the point of going to all this trouble if you dont have a plan to organise your data into a neat spreadsheet which you can access at a later date? Like many event organisers. Event Generals work is seasonal. We finish one event and we are straight into the next one. 3-4 month later we are working on the same event again and may have forgotten the negative feedback we want to spin on its head for next time.
Keep this data somewhere handy. We usually paste the link at the top of our CRM ready for us to open the job making it the first thing we see. As mentioned above…its a great way to give yourself a headstart and to budget.
For example; Event Generals ran a bar for a large music festival. The feedback was that attendees wanted more choice for spirits. So we used this information, approached some new sponsors and managed to secure cash sponsorships as well as a complimentary product to use at the next event. This satisfies our customers who requested this and we will make more money in the process.
Event Generals offer a range of event services and have the expertise to facilitate your next event OR help you conceptualise a new one.