WHY?
Overview
Requesting feedback after a workshop, training session, or webinar is a valuable practice that enables organisers to enhance their offerings, boost attendee satisfaction, foster engagement and loyalty, and evaluate the success and impact of their events. Automated feedback requests make this process faster and more efficient. However, if each organisation in the sector implements a unique feedback solution, several drawbacks arise:
1: Duplication of spend
Essentially, if each organisation invests in its own feedback solution, even if they are using the same platform or approach, the total cost of implementation would be much higher than if a shared solution was adopted and maintained collaboratively.
2. Duplication of effort
When each organisation create their own feedback systems, there is duplication of the effort required in determining appropriate questions, identifying key performance indicators (KPIs), and devising ways to measure feedback etc. Additionally, significant time, effort and resources are required to implement and manage the solution separately.
3. Data inconsistency
Each organisation is likely to collect feedback in a different way, which means inconsistent data, making it difficult to compare the results and efficacy of events and workshops across the sector . Using the same data structure allows stakeholders to collectively identify patterns or trends, and to determine which areas need improvement.
4. Usability
If attendees are asked to provide feedback using different systems for each event or workshop, with a different dataset, even if the feedback is made available to them, there is no commonality which makes it difficult for them to assess the usefulness of future events based on their individual level of knowledge, needs or experience.
5. Benchmarks and impact
Accessing and comparing all feedback data in one place makes benchmarking possible allowing each organisation to evaluate the quality of their activities relative to others in the sector, rather than relying solely on their own feedback. Additionally, consolidating feedback data across the sector facilitates a combined assessment of the impact of events on the industry as a whole.
HOW
Suggested steps to get this project up and running.
1: Agree the feedback goals:
First we need to identify and agree on what kind of feedback we are looking for? Is the focus improve the quality of events, to measure their success, or both? Goals also need to be considered from the point of view of the attendees, what information do they need to make an informed desicion about the events they attend and format do they need the information.
2. Agree a feedback solution:
Whilst there are several feedback solutions available that are specifically designed for webinars and workshops including for example, SurveyMonkey, Typeform, Google Forms, and Zoom’s built-in feedback feature. We could go down the rout of integrating thease current tools to pull the data into the growth hub, choose and implement a single solution or build a museums and galleries specific solution into the hub.
3. Agree feedback structure and questions:
Having agreed on the feedback solution, it’s time to design and agree on feedback questions. We need to make sure the questions are clear, specific, and relevant to the common goals. And most importantly relevant to the sector. This could include mix multiple-choice questions to facilitate quick and easy quantitive decisions and open ended questions to gather qualitative feedback.
4. Agree feedback window and collection process:
It’s important to give attendees enough time to reflect on the event, but we don’t want to wait too long either. Having agreed the window, we need to pin dow the process so that we will be able to let attendees know how they can provide feedback and what they can expect and ensure that we are clear about the purpose of the feedback and how it will be used. At this stage we are ready to implement the solution.
5. Analysing and acting upon the feedback:
Once we begin collected feedback, we need to agree and implement the delivery of the results, statistics etc so that:
- Organisers can quickly and easily identify patterns and trends in the data, identify areas for improvement and use the feedback to make adjustments to your events and improve the attendee experience.
- Follow up with attendees and let them know how you have used their feedback, demonstrate that we value their opinions helping to build trust and loyalty with your audience.
- Inform future attendees what improvement have been made, what they can expect from the next event and decide which workshop is right for them.
