40 questions to ask in a post-event survey

Do you think your in-person, virtual or hybrid event was a success? Well, you won’t know unless you find out and get some feedback! This is so that you can gain valuable post-event data, insights and metrics on the satisfaction and event experience of your participants, speakers and attendees, and guarantee that your next event and all your future events will get better and better, and be even more of a success!

Whether it’s a customer event, marketing event, networking session, product launch party, business meeting, series of conferences, or virtual event, ****post-event surveys or post-event questionnaires will allow you to collect feedback on the success of the event, and the experience, impressions and satisfaction of your attendees, participants, speakers and all the people in your audience, to help you improve the planning and organizing your future events.

And when the process of creating event and customer surveys is as easy to do as with Wooclap, it’s no hassle at all to get the data, feedback and insights you need! All you have to do is write some post-event survey questions that will allow you to collect just the right post-event survey feedback to help you improve future events. Here, we will provide you with 40 questions to ask in post-event surveys.

The best types of questions for post-event surveys

A post-event survey can present questions in many different ways. Such as Likert scale responses, rate and score questions, closed questions and open-ended questions. Here we will explain the best types for asking your participants, speakers and attendees feedback questions, to make sure you will get all the responses and data you need in your post-event surveys, and help you make a success of your future events.

Likert scale responses

Taking the name of its creator, the American psychologist Rensis Likert, Likert scale responses provide several question responses to choose from for respondents to express how much they agree or disagree with a certain question statement, or how satisfied they are with a certain aspect. The scale generally includes 5 to 7 responses, such as:

• Strongly agree / Very satisfied
• Agree / Satisfied
• Neither agree nor disagree / Neither satisfied nor unsatisfied
• Disagree / Not satisfied
• Strongly disagree / Very unsatisfied

The scale might also include other responses, adding further degrees of subtlety to the questions, or adding an option to the responses such as “I don’t know”, or “I’d prefer not to answer”. Such survey questions therefore will invite the respondents to express their degree of agreement with the given statement, for example:

• All my questions have been answered thanks to this conference.
• I will come back to events like this in the future.

Rating questions

• Rating questions allow your speakers, participants and attendees to rate an item using a numeric rating or star system, for example:
• How would you rate the event buffet on a scale of 1 to 10?
• How would you rate your experience of the event on a scale of 1 to 10?
• How would you rate out of ten the likelihood you will come to a similar event in the future?
• How many stars would you give the event buffet?
• How many stars would you give the event speakers?

Closed questions

• Closed questions are questions with a Yes/No answer, and no need to elaborate the responses any further. In post-event surveys, they have the advantage of being clear and quick and easy to respond to for your event participants, speakers and attendees.
• Would you come back for the same event in the future?

Open-ended questions

• Open-ended questions are questions that will invite more elaborate responses from your event participants, speakers and attendees. They invite participants, speakers and attendees to express themselves by writing their own responses, instead of letting the survey questions provide responses. They are therefore useful in gaining new insights and open feedback, and encouraging participants, speakers and attendees to provide specific suggestions on how to help improve the content, planning and organization of future events.
• What did you think of the first training session?
• How do you think we will be able to attract more people to the event in the future?

Multiple-choice questions

• As the name suggests, multiple-choice questions (MCQ) are questions that provide a limited set of given answer responses. The respondents can therefore choose the best of the several given answers. The question can be an open-ended question, but, instead of writing their own responses, the respondents will choose from the limited set of answers the answer with which they agree the most.
• How did you find the presentation given by the speaker X?

A- Very interesting and well-presented, in both content and delivery.

B- I was interested in the topic, but it could have been better presented.

C- The speaker was pleasant to listen to, but I did not agree on the opinions expressed.

D- I didn’t like it at all.

Survey questions by type of event

To make your post-event survey creation easier, below we will provide you with some examples of post-event questions to ask in your post-event surveys, depending on the specific type of event. All you have to do is format them, and, for that, there’s Wooclap!

Create a Wooclap account

Public event (networking, marketing, social, customer meet, etc.)

Customer and marketing events, inaugurations, product launches, evening events and fairs are all events that will attract a varied crowd, made up of a mix of customers and colleagues. So, their opinions will matter!

• Did your experience of the event live up to your expectations?
• Did something about the event surprise you? If so, why?
• Would you come back to a similar marketing event in the future? Why in particular?
• Did the event staff seem helpful and responsive?
• Were there too many or not enough people at the event?

Conferences

• Conferences will generally be attended by specific highly-qualified specialists and professionals and other sector people, but will also sometimes attract a wider audience. Try these post-event feedback questions:
• Were you satisfied with the number of conference sessions?
• Did this session address topical issues?
• Were the speakers well-chosen for the topics and event content?

Training, courses, lectures, and lessons

• Here are some examples of post-event questions to collect feedback from students, apprentices, trainees, course participants, speakers and attendees:
• How much did you think you learned at the event?
• Were there any specific questions that were left unanswered by the speakers? If so, what questions were they?
• Do you have any specific suggestions or feedback in order to help improve this training or make it better in the future?

Survey questions with certain objectives

• Depending on what you want to learn or what event data or feedback you want to collect, below we will provide you with some post-event survey questions to help you achieve your goal.
• For example, if you want insights or data on the participant, attendee and speaker satisfaction, you will want to consider seeking feedback of their overall event experience, in order to learn whether they will recommend the event to other potential event participants, attendees and speakers in the future. This specific type of data is often collected in the process of determining a net promoter score (NPS). Often used in the marketing field, an NPS is generally based on survey questions asking respondents to rate the likelihood that they will recommend a company, product, service or, in this case, future event, to friends, colleagues, potential attendees, speakers or participants. An NPS will also be useful in the process of identifying trends from event to event.

To measure event satisfaction

• Would you recommend this event to other people in the future? (i.e., NPS or Net Promoter Score type question)
• From 1 to 10, what score would you give to the specific product you tested?
• What did you think of this event? (with a scale from “Very satisfactory” to “Not at all satisfactory”)

To learn more about event sticking points

• If there is one thing about the event that will keep you from coming back in the future, what is it?
• Is there something about your experience of the event that really did not leave you satisfied?$

To gather suggestions for future event improvements

• If you could change one thing about this virtual event, what would it be?
• How could this marketing event be improved in the future?

Questions to ask depending on the time the survey is given

Questions right at the end of the event

If your survey takes place at the end of a big day, that is, before the participants go home, you can ask specific questions, details or open-ended questions. This is a great time to gauge satisfaction and get very detailed types of data and feedback on the experience of your speakers attendees, participants, attendees and audience in general. Be careful, or you will risk boring your event attendees, who might just want to get home. So, don’t make your survey too long! Otherwise you will not get many responses or a good response rate.

• What was your favorite part of the day? Why in particular?

Good to know: You can create live surveys, meaning you can send the questions to participants while they are still there in front of you, for example, at the end of a presentation, conference, or work day.

However, you can also use Wooclap’s asynchronous mode to send your survey to your participants once they have gone home! To do this, simply use “Participant pace” mode. After creating your event, click on the "Participant pace" tab on the left, before creating or importing your questions.

You can then publish your event to make it accessible online, and send the URL address to your participants, so that they can complete it whenever they want.

Follow-up questions

If your survey reaches your audience, participants or attendees a few days after the event, consider that certain specific details of the event may already have been forgotten. Therefore, instead of open-ended survey questions, provide multiple-choice questions and rate, score or Likert scale responses, to refresh the memory of the event attendee as they go through specific survey questions on the event. Since some time has passed, it is likely the event attendee will not want to respond at length or in great detail to open-ended survey questions.

• How did you find the reception?

A- Very satisfactory

B- Satisfactory

C- Not particularly good or bad

D- Unsatisfactory

E- Unpleasant

Tip: Don’t wait too long between the event and when you send out the survey to the event participants and attendees, or your respondents may have forgotten almost everything! Two or three days after the event should be the maximum.

Pre-event survey questions

You can even send out a survey before the event, such as a preliminary survey to help measure your guests’ expectations for the event. Their feedback will be useful in making specific last-minute adjustments to the event, or will help you improve the event in the future.

What’s more, you can compare the data of preliminary pre-event survey questions with the data of post-event survey questions. But be careful: having to answer too many questions will affect the response rate! So, if you have both a pre-event survey and a post-event survey, make sure they are short, or you will only annoy your target audience.

• How did you hear about this event?
• Have you already been to a similar event?
• What attracted you the most to the event?
• What do you expect to learn or take away from the event?
• Do you follow a specific diet or have specific access needs?
• Do you have any feedback or criticism to make of the organization and planning of the event (availability of information, accessibility of the location, content of the sessions, choice of speakers, scale of the event, integration of virtual participants and virtual sessions, etc.)?

Tips on how to improve the response rate of your post-event survey

• Is your post-event survey now ready to send out to your event participants and attendees? Great! Here are some final tips on how to make your post-event survey as effective as possible, and to boost your chances of achieving the best possible response rate.
• Choose your timing carefully: the moment you send out your post-event survey is crucial. Consider all that we said above!
• Make sure there is a variety of types of questions: use a mix of Likert scale questions, multiple-choice questions and rate and score questions, so your survey respondents won’t get bored!
• Gently remind your survey respondents to fill out the survey: … but not too much or too frequently! The idea is just to remind them of the survey if they forgot to respond the first time you asked them after the event. After two reminders, you’ll probably have to accept that your target just does not want to respond to your post-event survey. Don’t insist too much, and be happy with the answers you get, because you will certainly get some!