(or ‘Why your feedback forms might be failing you’)
When’s the last time you completed a feedback form? I bet you’ve been invited to ‘review your recent purchase’ if nothing else! Did you bother? I’d suggest that probably comes down to how much you care about the person or organisation who asked for it, as well as how long or complicated the form looked!
A lot of feedback forms – or ‘happy sheets’ as I’ve heard them referred to! – aren’t worth the effort. They are either too vague or too rigid, rendering them pointless in terms of the quality of information they gather. And the “Any other comments?” box at the bottom, well, that’s hardly likely to provoke any spontaneous, magical insight, is it?
Why bother with feedback anyway?
As you’ll have gathered, I’ve been reflecting on this. My last course produced 18 completed feedback forms (every delegate completed one, the most people I’ve had on my course in one session so far!). The bottom line, I suppose, is that every single one said they would recommend the course to others. In itself, that’s personally very pleasing and motivating but it’s not the only question I ask.
Feedback isn’t just about patting yourself on the back or collecting complaints. It’s about understanding how people experience what you offer – your service, your product, your event, your organisation. Asking the right questions to provoke constructive answers means you can actually make meaningful changes. Asking the wrong questions is just a waste of everyone’s time.
Set expectations up front
Like so much in marketing, expectation setting is key but is one of the biggest ‘blind spots’ in feedback forms. People won’t be judging experiences in a vacuum; they will compare what actually happened to what they thought was going to happen. (This is a common problem when organisations use a ‘one-size-fits-all’ form for every occasion; it very rarely does fit every occasion!)
Expectations are another topic I have had cause to reflect on recently, if you’ll indulge a little segway. My parents have just returned from a lovely late spring holiday to Switzerland. One of the highlights they were looking forward to was a trip on the Bernina Express. Undoubtedly one of the world’s most scenic railway journeys, it’s a four-hour meander through some of the most stunning mountain scenery in Switzerland and northern Italy. They got to the railway station only to discover that – being in low season – there was engineering work on the line… and there was a rail replacement bus service instead. (How my brother and I laughed when they told us!) But – only in Switzerland, I suspect – my parents concluded that the bus was probably even better than the train trip would have been. “We could see the railway line in places from the road and it was lower than we were, and went through a good few tunnels, so I think we had a much better view from the bus than we would have had from the train – and we still got to our destination in good time,” enthused Dad. Two very happy customers in spite of the change (hilarious and brilliant!).
Be clear on your offer
In short, if someone signs up for a “hands-on workshop” but gets a two-hour lecture, it won’t matter how brilliant your speaker was, it just wasn’t what they had signed up for and they are likely to be disappointed. Under-selling and over-delivering is also a tricky tactic; although it might result in people praising you to the rafters, will what you’re selling be attractive enough for people to have signed up in the first place?
Better to set clear expectations from the outset so that you actually have something concrete to measure against. Questions like “Did the session meet your expectations?” will have more use when you are confident what their expectations actually were. If you’re tracking responses over time, it also gives you a clearer benchmark to measure improvements against.
What can you actually change?
When it comes to thinking about the questions to ask, think about all the factors that are actually in your control or that you are willing to change. For example, if you are running an event in an external venue, the quality of the lunch or the ease of car parking might have been managed by that venue for that event (arguably outside of your control). However, constructive feedback might mean that you consider either a change of location in future or working with your current venue to make things better next time, either of which would mean an improvement for future attendees.
Qualitative versus quantitative
To try to make our feedback easy to complete, we all tend to veer towards the quantitative, the ‘circle on a scale of 1 to 5’ type answer prompts. At best, this will produce an attractive headline, a vanity metric akin to social media ‘Likes’, but won’t tell you what people really thought. After all, is my 5 the same as your 5? Are you one of these people who only ever gives a 9 out of 10, because no one has ever achieved perfection? And there is that old chestnut of never using an odd number in your scale so that people can’t ‘sit on the fence’ in the middle and are forced to choose, at least, slightly one way or the other.
I’m not saying that I’ve got it cracked but I find that the following seems to work for me, both in terms of making my feedback forms fairly straightforward to complete as well as being constructive for me. For issues that are relatively objective (“Did you find it easy to book?”), I just give the choice as Yes or No, with a space for people to explain if they wish. It’s a pretty closed question so should only call for a binary answer. For issues that are perhaps a little more subjective, I give a limited choice. “How would you rate the course handouts?” for example, is a more open question so I give three optional answers: Useful, OK or Unhelpful, again with space to explain why if they wish. People in a hurry can then whistle down the options, just circling as they go, but those happy to share more have space to write a bit; both will still give me some useful responses.
A note about timing
Like so much in life, it’s about picking the right time to ask for feedback. You are likely to get more accurate responses while the experience is still fresh in someone’s memory, of course. In the case of an in-person event, you’re probably also more likely to get a greater number of responses if you catch them before they walk out the door than if you email them later. That said, there may be occasions when you do want to do a follow-up after a period of time. If you are delivering training and want to ask how they have been able to act on it, going back after six months could well be appropriate. Your challenge at that stage is hoping that they are still engaged enough with the experience to want to tell you!
Every day’s a school day
I can honestly say that I have read and reflected on every single course feedback form that I have collected. The positive comments, of course, do make me happy and are useful to share in future marketing. But anything less than positive gives me something to work on, something useful that could make my course even better in future. My courses evolves slightly every time I deliver it.
And isn’t that the point? We shouldn’t be collecting feedback for the boost to our egos, but because we want to give us customers what they want. (Marketing doesn’t just happen before a sale…)
If you’d like to read about the course for which these feedback forms are gathered, there is a summary here. To read more about my thoughts on good communications, try these, or browse my other articles here.