In our experience, only a little over half of event organisers use surveys and polls at their events.
There are essentially two reasons:
- on one hand, there is a fear that people will not respond — unless the tests are compulsory, for example when they are tied to training — and that the whole thing will end in failure. Better, then, to ask nothing at all.
- other organisers fear that creating the tests, distributing them and then analysing the results is too complex and too expensive a process to be worth the effort.
Involving the attendees of an event in surveys and polls can, by contrast, bring many advantages, such as:
- gathering valuable information that organisers, investors and sponsors alike can use to improve later events;
- nurturing the relationship with attendees, who feel more involved and more invested in improving the event and therefore, perhaps, more interested in coming to later editions;
- producing data that is useful for marketing and promotion activities, to be used both with attendees and with the sponsors of future editions of the event.
Against a background of this kind, how can you minimise the risks and take advantage of the benefits without weighing the organisation of the event down too much?
The obvious answer is: by using the right tools which, being designed and built specifically for the world of events, already have the right architecture to meet different needs while staying easy to use.
Even so, a few suggestions on how to use those tools can help. Here are some that come straight from the experience we have built up over 20 years of supporting event organisers on this specific subject. They apply to surveys and polls about the event as a whole or about its individual parts and sessions, and equally to the learning and knowledge assessment tests that are useful for many kinds of events.
1. ASK ONLY WHAT MATTERS
2. AVOID AMBIGUITY
Unclear questions lead to unclear answers, and unclear answers are a waste for attendees — whose time and energy you asked for to no purpose — and for you, because you will not get information you can actually use. So always take care not to assume that your questions mean the same thing to the people answering them as they do to you. To avoid that risk, always try to share your questions with someone who can give you a second opinion. And avoid rolling several questions into one: if you ask two things and allow only one answer, that answer will be of no use to you, because you will never know which of the two questions it refers to, or whether it refers to both. For example: “Did you enjoy J. Belfort’s talk, and would you be willing to hear him again?” Whatever the answer is, you will not be able to tell which of the two questions it belongs to.
3. USE CLEAR WORDS
4. AVOID REPETITIVE ANSWERS (AND REPETITIVE BEHAVIOUR IN GENERAL)
As far as possible, avoid questions that lead to “automatic” answers. The most common case is when, at events with multiple sessions, attendees are asked to rate them one by one, one after another, always answering the same questions (“Did you enjoy…?”, “How would you rate…?”). Even when people do not give up on a task that thankless and that tedious — which is already a great deal to ask — their answers will probably end up all the same or very similar, and therefore essentially useless. The same goes for tests and assessments and, in general, for any activity that looks too much like the one before.
5. USE THE SIMPLEST ANSWERS
Wherever possible, ask people to give their rating on predetermined, standard scales — stars, ranges, or words such as “a little” and “a lot”, it makes little difference — or to choose between alternative answers, with one or more correct options set against incorrect ones.
This not only makes the form quicker and simpler to fill in and reduces the risk of people giving up, it also makes marking the tests and processing the results faster and less prone to error. You can always leave a space at the end for comments or notes, in case anyone wants to use it.
And in any case, always remember: anyone can make simple things complicated, but it takes a genius to make complicated things simple.
6. ALWAYS EXPLAIN WHY
There is nothing worse than being asked to do something without being told why we should do it. If there is no requirement to do it — a requirement usually carries a penalty for ignoring it — and no immediate return from what is being asked of us, such as completing a course or receiving a certificate of qualification once we have filled in the final test and shown that we have acquired certain knowledge, the first question we ask is: “And why should I?” Why should I spend time and energy doing what is being asked of me? Explaining that, even in a few words, can make a real difference to response rates and to the quality of the answers. Try it and see.
Would you like to start creating the surveys and polls for your next event right away?
Call us and we will go through a personalised live demo together: you will see how, with the right tools and a few adjustments, you can achieve surprising results.