Creating an event feedback form? We understand how important generating honest, constructive and actionable feedback is to the organising process for any event. With that in mind, we’ve pulled together a simple guide to show you how to get the event feedback that you need to make your next one better than ever.
Sit down and decide what it is you want to find out from your attendees. Were there new elements to the event this year that need analysing? Were there areas you hoped to improve on from last year you want to assess? Put everything down on paper and then prioritise your subject matters. With each question you ask, think about the results you might receive and what action points you could create from them. There’s no point asking for feedback about something you can’t change!
Make life easy for your invitees. Rather than expecting them to write reams and reams of free text, give them multiple choice answers or ‘on a scale of 1-5’ options and limit your questions to 10 in total. Free text answers could provide you with some of your best feedback, but only ask for a maximum of two comments and leave them until the end of the questionnaire.
To ensure you get honest feedback from attendees, don’t ask people to put their names on the feedback forms. Your guests might not want to cause offence, so give them the chance to do it anonymously.
Find a session near the end of your event that the majority of your delegates will be attending and get as many of your team as possible on the ground to hand out paper questionnaires (and pens for every participant!). It may be an old-fashioned way to collate information, but it requires very little effort on the part of your captive audience and it’s very unlikely anyone will say no if you explain it will only take 30 seconds of their time.
It can never hurt to hold a prize draw for everyone who fills out a feedback form. Separately compile a list of email addresses (to keep the questionnaires anonymous) and randomly select one person to receive a bottle of Champagne. This will also provide you with a list of everyone who has filled out your form, making it possible for you to figure out who might have left early and missed it, so you can send them an electronic one after the event.
Discuss and dissect the questionnaire results with your team and put forward a list of action points.
Get back in touch with your respondents after you’ve gathered the findings of your results, pull out a few key findings and tell your invitees what you intend to do with the information. If your feedback suggests attendees would like fewer breaks and more networking opportunities, show them how you plan to implement these changes next year.
Whatever changes you want to make to your next W12 Conferences event, give our Event Team a call to discuss. They love working with organisers’ new ideas and are great at coming up with suggestions of their own that could help take your event to the next level. You can reach them on 020 3313 1606.