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You sent the survey off to your guests. Feedback is handled, and you can check it off the list.
That survey only reaches the people who came, though. It doesn't reach the people who actually worked on the event with you, and they saw a completely different day than you did.
There are three conversations that happen after an event. The event feedback survey is one of them, and it's the one everybody teaches about. It's important, and it deserves its spot. The other two are a phone call and a meeting, and between them they pick up everything the survey can't.
So let's go through all three, starting with the one you've probably already done.
Prefer to watch? The full breakdown is in the video below. Otherwise, let’s dive in.
Your guests: the event feedback survey
The post event feedback survey does a job nothing else can do. It's how you get the actual experience back from the people who paid to be there. Send it.
A few things about how:
Send it fast, within about 48 hours, while they can still picture everything and they're still on that high.
Keep it open for about two weeks, and then close it.
Send a couple of reminders between when it goes out and when it closes, and not too many.
Give them a reason to answer, some kind of incentive.
That last one matters more than it sounds, since the response rate decides how useful any of it is. A survey with no incentive, no promotion, nothing to get people fired up about answering it, is one more email added to the pile of things to look at later.
That's really all I'll say about the survey. There's a lot of good information out there on what to put in one, and you already know to send it. The two that follow are the ones that don't get talked about nearly as much.
Your venue and vendors: the call you've already been invited to
After a decent-sized event, the venue will often want a debrief call. Your vendors may too. It can feel like a courtesy call, and a lot of it is them asking you questions. How well did we do? Where could we improve? How could we have made this easier for you?
Answer all of it honestly. They're asking so they can make their service better for the next group, and possibly for you, if you work with them again.
This is also the moment for names. If you wrote down the people at the venue who did an amazing job, the way I talked about in what's still open after your last guest leaves, this is your chance to pass that along, if you didn't already do it on site.
Post event survey questions to ask your venue and vendors
Then turn it around. Something as simple as, "We've given you some feedback. Would you mind giving us feedback as a client?"
How would you say our communication was?
What could we do better in working with you?
What would make us easier to work with next time?
That's a conversation not a lot of people have, and it's some of the most useful information you can get after an event. These companies are running hundreds of events a year. You might be hosting one or two, maybe a few more. They've watched every version of this go right and go wrong, so they know exactly what a host does that makes their job harder, and what makes it easier.
Ask it especially of the companies you want to work with again: the venue, the caterer, the AV team. It tells them you're willing to do what it takes to work together as a team. If you're still weighing up venues for the next one, that relationship is worth as much as anything in the proposal you're comparing.
A full debrief call is mostly a bigger-event thing. On a smaller event, nobody may offer it at all. You can still have the conversation. Ask for it yourself. It can be a twenty-minute phone call or a Zoom, and vendors appreciate it, because it shows them you want to work with them again.
If you're already thinking about your next event, the free Event Pulse Check walks through everything worth thinking about, from the very beginning of the planning through to the day of your event, and gives you a personalized read on where you stand. It takes a few minutes and the results come back straight away.
Your team: the conversation with a time limit
The last conversation is with your whole team, and this one has a clock on it. Like yours, their memories start to fade.
Your team saw a version of the event nobody else did. They weren't hosting, so they weren't carrying everything you were carrying. They weren't guests either, so they weren't seeing it the way a guest does. They were somewhere in between, looking at the whole event from an angle you didn't have.
Post event survey questions for your staff and team
The questions are close to the ones you answered yourself each night of the event, just a little wider:
What worked well, from where you were standing?
What didn't?
What did you think of the venue?
Did the speakers connect with the audience?
What were you hearing from guests?
What questions were you asked over and over?
Those last two are worth the meeting on their own. Your team spent the whole event answering questions from your guests. The ones that came up again and again are information to take back and put somewhere for next time, whether that's your registration website, an email, your event app, or whatever you're using. If those answers were only ever passed along out loud, verbal updates aren't an event planning system is worth a read.
In the corporate world, we took those internal meetings very seriously. Everything we got back, we applied to the next event, and that's how each one got better than the last.
Why the team meeting can't wait three weeks
There's one thing that gets in the way of all this. If the meeting isn't scheduled soon after the event, it slips. You go away, they go away, you come back to all the work that piled up while you were gone, and weeks later you finally have the meeting.
By then, all those details are gone. Honestly, by that point you're over it. You've moved on, mentally and physically.
So the meeting happens and everybody's polite, and they give back a fraction of what they had. At one point somebody thought, "Oh, I need to remember to say this on the call," and since they never wrote it down, it's forgotten.
That's why capturing things in the moment does more than protect your memory. It catches everything while you still care. The same goes for your team, which is why the people who are good at this encourage their team to do what you're doing: write things down each night before bed, while the details are still fresh. That's the last stretch of the event planning checklist, from first decision to debrief.
Three conversations, three ways to have them
So, your guests, by survey, sent as soon as you can. Your venue and your vendors, by phone or Zoom, where you ask as much as you answer. Your team, in a meeting, while everybody still cares.
The survey tells you how the event felt to your guests. The other two tell you how it actually was, in a way no survey can.
If your next event is already on the calendar, take five minutes with the free Event Pulse Check and see where your planning stands. If your last one just wrapped, put the team meeting on the calendar this week, before everybody's moved on.
