8 Questions to Ask Event Attendees for The Ultimate Feedback

Your association puts a lot of hard work into its events. It takes time, money, and a ton of energy to make a memorable event for everyone involved.

‍But without the feedback from your members, how do you know if your events are really knocking it out of the park? You don’t want your efforts to go to waste if your members aren’t enjoying your events. This is why having a survey ready for your members to fill out after events is essential.

‍According to Folio Magazine, surveying is important for associations today because it is the “most reliable” source for feedback from your members. That’s right, reaching out to members can get you the best source of information in order to improve your future events. We’ve talked about the importance of having a post-event survey in the past. But if you don’t know exactly what questions to ask your members, you could miss out on important feedback.

If you’re looking to put together a post-event survey for your event attendees, but don’t know where to start in terms of questions, this post is for you. We’re going over the top 8 questions to put on your post-event survey in order to generate the ultimate feedback for your association. Let’s get started.

1. How would you rate our event overall?

Start off your post-event survey strong by asking for overall feedback about the entire event.

Why does this work? Well, it gets attendees started by just asking for a simple answer about their overall experience. This type of question is great for getting participants to reflect on your event as a whole and deliver their overall feelings on it. You can ask this question two different ways.

‍The first way to format this question is to create a numerical scale that attendees can pick a number on the scale to rate your event. This is an easy system that any participant can follow along to give your association the most accurate result.

Or, you can open up this question for discussion. Create a long-form question and provide room for participants to give their rating and explain their reasoning behind it. This allows you to see your attendee’s full feedback.

2. How would you rate this part of our event?

Once you have an overall rating, you can start to break down the event by each activity and aspect and get more specific answers.

Think about all of the things that make up your association’s event. Whether it’s the guest speakers, venue, workshops, or anything else that attendees experience, it should be included as a question on your post-event survey.

‍You can format this question similarly to your overall satisfaction rating question. However, you can save your members time by keeping it as just a numerical scale. Have members go down the list and give their rating on each individual experience. This will give you a more accurate insight on your entire event, from start to finish.

3. What part of our event did you enjoy the most?

This is a great question to ask if you’re looking to pinpoint what your association does best at its events. Allow your members to share their favorite part of your event with you. Not only does this give you the feedback you’ve been looking for, it also allows them to open up and engage with your association on their best personal experience with your events.

Make sure this question is an open-ended one, giving your members room to explain their reasoning and their experience. You don’t want to cut them short and miss out on valuable information.

4. What part of our event did you enjoy the least?

As a counter to your last question, it’s always good to know which parts of your event could use some work.One of the biggest points of collecting feedback is to use it to make your future events a bigger success. So, if you don’t collect the negative feedback along with the positive, you don’t have the same chances to improve your event.

While it might sting to hear negative feedback, it’s important to allow your members to be honest. Asking them to give feedback on where your event needs improving is only part of the post-event survey process.

‍Allow members to openly express their opinion on where your event needs work. Although, many might feel uncomfortable sharing their negative thoughts with your association. If your association is concerned about members holding back out of fear, you can combat this by making your post-event surveys anonymous.

5. How can our events be improved in the future?

This type of question is great to ask your attendees because it gives them an open range to suggest whatever type of improvements they’d like to see. It’s a great way for your association to get innovative ideas to incorporate into next year’s event.

‍Your members have a lot to offer your association. If you give them the opportunity to share what they’d like to see, you can ensure to see a higher satisfaction rating with events in the future.

‍Leave enough space for participants to answer this open-ended style question. You can either give them the question point blank or add in prompts to get the ball rolling.

For example, you can ask them for ideas on venues, recommendations for guest speakers, or ideas on future workshops. If you want specific answers for different activities, adding a prompt into your question is a great way to go. Give members the power to influence your events with this feedback question.

6. Was this your first event with us?

It’s always important to know if your survey participant is a newcomer to your association’s events, or if they’re a seasoned vet. Why should you know this? Well, their number of attended events can say a lot about their feedback and how they view your event. If they’re a newcomer, they might have been too overwhelmed to take in specific details. However, someone who attends every year and knows your events inside and out might have more to say.

‍Based on their answer, you can know a little bit more about how people view your events as first time attendees and regular attendees. You can also see how your event feedback changes over the years as your events change with it. Frequent event goers might have increased satisfaction as you make changes based on their feedback.

7. Will you attend an event in the future?

As a counter to your previous question, it’s always good to know if your attendees are up to seeing what your next event holds for them.

‍This is the ultimate test in your event attendee satisfaction. You don’t want your guests to be so fed up that they write off all of your association’s future events. By asking this question, you know whether or not your association needs to step up their game with future events. If your survey participants answer “no” to this question, you know it’s time to kick it into gear as far as event planning goes.

8. Do you have any other suggestions for future events?

Create a closing question that allows your members to get all of their feedback out. You don’t want participants leaving like they haven’t said everything they want to.

Open the floor up for suggestions with this last question. This makes sure to fill in any gaps your previous questions might have created as far as feedback goes. This question is designed to be entirely open for any question, comment, or concern attendees might have. It’s a good place to wrap up your survey as well.

‍While these questions are a great way to create a post-event survey, your association can customize its survey any way that works best. You can always add in questions you feel are important in terms of attendee feedback.

‍Consider using these 8 questions when building your own post-event survey and get the ultimate event feedback that you’ve been searching for.