Post-event survey template

Why these ten questions

The template is short on purpose. Most attendees will answer a survey that takes a couple of minutes and abandon one that takes ten. The questions are arranged to give you two kinds of result. The rating questions produce numbers you can compare between events and over years: overall satisfaction, likelihood to recommend, and separate scores for venue, food, entertainment and program length. The open questions produce the comments that explain those numbers and, with permission, a quote you can use in a report or proposal.

How to send it

Timing matters more than wording. Send the survey within 48 hours, while the evening is still fresh, and send one reminder a few days later. Keep the email short, thank people for coming, and say how long the survey takes. For corporate events, send it from a person rather than a no-reply address; for weddings and private parties, a more personal note asking a few close guests for feedback often works better than a formal survey. Include an accessibility question, as the template does, so you learn about barriers you did not see on the day.

Reading the results

Look at the spread, not just the average. A small group scoring an element very low often points to a specific problem, such as a table near a speaker, a dietary meal that did not arrive or a long queue at one bar. Read every written comment and group them by theme. The "what would you change" answers are usually the most useful for next year.

• Share a short summary with the client or committee within two weeks.
• Pass relevant feedback, positive and negative, to each vendor.
• Store results so you can compare the same questions year over year.
• Only quote people who explicitly agreed, and use the name and title they gave.

Privacy and follow-up

Collect only what you need. If you gather names or contact details, say how they will be used, and follow your organisation's privacy practices; the Academy lesson on privacy and photo rights covers the basics. For corporate events, combine survey results with lead and cost data in the event ROI calculator, and see the Academy lesson on surveys and feedback for more on question design.