If you’ve ever been to a conference, you’ve probably received an email requesting feedback once the event has ended. When you click the link, you’re taken to a form with around 7,000 questions. If you’re like me, you start to answer the questions, only to run out of energy as you realize there are 9 more pages to get through. At that point, you close the form without sending it in and move on with your day.
Sometimes, conference organizers even offer gift cards to bribe people to fill out these massive forms. But all they really need to do is ask two simple questions:
- What was the best thing about the conference?
- What was the worst thing about the conference?
And just make them regular old text fields so people can write whatever they want.
I did this when I ran my own events. I had nearly 100% of attendees fill the form out, and the feedback was amazing. Very quickly, you get a sense of what worked well (often it is something you’d never have thought of), and you may discover that the most common complaint is something like “I never had time to use the bathroom during the conference.” You may also notice that no one even mentioned your $5,000 keynote speaker!
Huge bonus points if you wait a month or two to send the form. Then you’ll really know what stood out to people!