Generating feedback from your vendors is crucial for your success
The strategy for collecting feedback will help you learn about the needs and expectations of your vendors. It will also help you identify future business and marketing strategies along with other areas of importance related to your event. Think of a time you either had a positive or negative experience with a business. Did you hope for the chance to provide feedback in order for that business to keep doing a great job, or fix the problem? Your vendors all want and need the ability to provide appropriate feedback.
Frame it up
Tell your vendors why you are conducting the survey. Be sure they know their voice matters. Let your vendors know what to expect when filling out the survey. How many questions is it, or how long will it take to complete. Thank them, and remind them again how important their opinions are to you. It is best to send out your survey within 24 to 72 hours of your event.
Ask the right questions
First, you must determine your goals for generating feedback. How will you use the data you collect? What are you willing to change, or not change, based on the results? What information do you need in order to make your event successful in the future?
Sample goals:
- Determine vendor satisfaction in the areas of sales, quality of attendees, event logistics, customer service, price, and venue/location
- Identify the strengths and areas of improvement for your event
Second, keep your questions simple. The use of general and specific questions is key. Avoid using too many open-ended questions, and save them for the most important questions.
A list of sample questions that may help get you started:
- Between 0 and 10, how likely are you to recommend this event to someone else?
- Why did you give our event the score you just gave it? (see question 1)
- How were your sales based on your expectations for the event?
- On a scale of 1 to 5, how did the type of attendees suite your needs? Please explain your answer
- Did the schedule of the event allow for an appropriate amount of time to interact with attendees?
- Was it easy to find the event?
- How likely are you to attend this event next year?
Sometimes, simple and open-ended can be helpful. Try these:
- What should we continue doing?
- What should we stop doing?
- What should we start doing?
Finally, one of the most helpful strategies in formatting your survey is called conditional logic: asking follow-up questions based on given answers. More information on this and other methods will be covered in our next post.
Share ideas or samples of survey questions you have used that have proven effective for you.
